How often do we tell students to cite text evidence in their answers? It is often a requirement on tests, assignments, and homework. Yet, have we explicitly taught that skill? Have we explained and defined the terms for them? I start by showing the words cite, site, and sight. These words are homophones. They sound the same but have different meanings. Let’s look at the meanings.

• Sight – usually relates to see something, such as eyesight or a beautiful sight. Most often used as a noun.
• Cite – usually used as a verb. Cite is short for the noun citation which means a quote by way of an example, or authority.
• Site – usually used as a noun and refers to a location. Often used as part of the term website.

Text – refers to the source, could be a book, an article, a column, a reference.

Evidence – Proof, the facts that show something is true.

To cite text evidence means to give proof that something is true using a source.

Practing with sentence starters

Now that we explained it, let’s provide some sentence starters. I give these sentence starters to all students. We use them in our speech and language lessons and students can keep them to use in their other classes.

With regular use, it doesn’t take long for students to learn these sentence starters and then they are no longer needed.

Click here for a copy of these Sentence Starters. They are part of my Personal Anchor Charts set for students. I copy these sentence starters on colored cardstock so students can find them in binders.

Citing Text Evidence Sentence Starters: