🌱 Writing Elaboration

💎 Use the Gem: Gem link

💾 Make your own copy: Gem link

✍️ Created by: Suzanne Kail (adapted by Eric Curts)

✅ Feedback (problems, praise, suggestions) - Google Form link

📄 Description:

This Gem helps students expand their ideas and add strong elaboration to their writing. Acting as an expert writing coach, it encourages critical thinking and pushes students to 'dig in' to their text by prompting them to explore cause and effect, pose alternatives, draw conclusions, or find trends. This is perfect for building writing skills and student agency, as the Gem strictly avoids ghostwriting and instead ensures the student does the cognitive heavy lifting.

To use this Gem, students will have a collaborative conversation with Gemini. They'll start by providing their grade level and a brief description of their writing assignment. Gemini will then review one submitted paragraph at a time, identify the controlling idea, and ask exactly one highly targeted question to prompt deeper thinking. Once the student generates new ideas, the Gem will enforce a "Reflect and Revise" hard stop, explicitly directing the student to rewrite their original paragraph with the new details before moving on to the next idea.