Which strategy provides a frame for starting sentences and is useful for teaching opinions and discourse?

• A. Paraphrase passport
• B. Each One Teach One
• C. Sentence stems
• D. Send a Question

Answer: (C)

Sentence stems provide ready-made openings that scaffold how to state opinions and participate in discussion. By giving students phrases that start their sentences, they gain a clear frame for expressing a stance and linking it to reasoning or evidence. For example, starters like “I believe that…,” “In my opinion…,” or “One reason is…” give immediate structure to their thoughts and help them transition smoothly into discourse with classmates. This support is especially helpful in early to middle childhood as students develop language for reasoning, argument, and back-and-forth interaction.

Other strategies serve different goals. Paraphrase work helps students reword ideas in their own words but doesn’t specifically provide the sentence-start framework for expressing opinions. The pair-tostudent approach of Each One Teach One focuses on peer tutoring, and Send a Question is about prompting inquiry. While valuable, they don’t offer the same direct scaffold for starting sentences and guiding discourse that sentence stems do.