Your Collins Toolbox

Every teacher needs a toolbox for building solid academic skills, critical thinking, and content-area understanding. Collins teachers have three power tools at their disposal to build active cognitive engagement and use writing to help clarify thinking and convey ideas.

Read more about each Collins Power Tool Power Tool below...

Summary Writing

In this structured assignment, students read content-based nonfiction texts or articles (typically around 500-1000 words depending on reading level) and use the Ten Percent Summary Focus Sheet to identify central ideas in their own words. To prevent the copying-and-pasting that is common among inexperienced summary-writers, word count is capped at 10% of the length of the original article (i.e., A 750-word article must be captured in 3-5 paraphrased central ideas that total no more than 75 words). Add our S“T”Art sentence, and voila! You have a Ten Percent Summary!

Why teachers LOVE it: It provides students with a consistent and predictable structure that maximizes focus on central ideas as opposed to minute details, and the 10% cap on word count minimizes plagiarism. The S “T” Art sentence can be used for all kinds of text-based responses, like those that appear on state assessments. And the Focus Sheet and FCAs make grading quicker.

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places ​you'll go."

― Dr. Seuss

Argument Development

Students wrestling with the many high-level skills required of argument writing need a framework to follow, and that’s exactly what we offer. The HELPS Focus Sheet provides a structure for outlining and analyzing possible reasons to support an argument. Our Claim Template helps students compose well-written thesis statements–arguably the most crucial step in developing an effective argument essay. And our Scaffolded Argument Essay walks both teachers and students through the entire process from start to finish using a series of Type Three assignments and argument-specific FCAs.

Why teachers LOVE it: ​Our structure can be easily applied to any argument essay and can be modified for grades 312. Both the HELPER Focus Sheet for elementary and the HELPS Focus Sheet encourage students to broaden their research and consider all the evidence before finalizing their claim, while the Scaffolded Essay streamlines the entire process and provides an opportunity for feedback throughout the writing process rather than waiting until the very end when everyone is exhausted!

“But no matter what students remember in 5, 10, or 30 years, they will always need to know how to argue. How to reason. How to think. Good Thinking can help can help us prepare our students for the things that really do matter most." ― Kristi Loudon

Sentence Expansion

Who ever said Type Threes need to be long? Our newest–and perhaps favorite–power tool is a one-sentence Type Three assignment that packs a big punch. Teachers provide a content-based “kernel sentence” on which students are asked to expand, and carefully selected FCAs guide students in how to do so. For example, an art class might expand the kernel sentence, “The artist painted,” with these FCAs: 2 facts, proper nouns capitalized, and 2 vocabulary words, resulting in “Picasso painted some of his best work during the 1950s, including his children Paloma and Claude, using his signature brushwork and layering."

Why teachers LOVE it: What’s not to love? It’s quick, it helps students review content, it gets them using content vocabulary in context, it’s easy to grade, and it helps students to write more sophisticated sentences without getting bogged down in the grammar jargon of an English class! Teachers love the ease of use and students love how doable it feels.

Sentence Expansion is “a teaching, learning or assessment tool in any subject.”

― Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler

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Read the Collins Writing Exchange from May 2025 for more ideas.