The Pre-AP ELA classroom trains students to craft complex sentences. By doing this, students build a foundation for complex thinking and for communicating ideas clearly. Students improve their reading comprehension through writing instruction and practice while simultaneously learning to create clear sentences that incorporate textual evidence. By first concentrating on sentences and paragraphs, participants in this workshop learn how to help students acquire strong skills they can later use with essays and other types of writing. TESS components include: 3C,1E,4E. OBJECTIVES: Examine foundational writing techniques, specifically at the sentence and paragraph level, that enable students to comprehend text and incorporate textual evidence. Explore the progression of writing tasks in the Pre-AP English 1 classroom.