I’ve written in my books and here on this blog about how I often have students – ELL and proficient English students – respond to simple writing prompts with a paragraph following either an “ABC” (Answer the Question; Back it up; make a Comment/Connection) or “PQC” format (Point/Quote/Connect).

You can read my past posts about it here, including several models.

My ELL Geography students are studying Mexico right now, and I thought readers might find it useful to see an example of how I scaffold a writing prompt using the ABC format.

Here’s a picture of it, and you can download the sheet here.

ABC prompt

If you have any suggestions on how to make it better, or have sources of similar scaffolds, I’m all ears!

I’m adding this prompt to The Best Posts On Writing Instruction.