The purpose of this "teaching tips" article is to describe practical classroom instruction that helps elementary students write expository responses to narrative texts. It focuses on the importance of scaffolded, interactive discussions comprised of a combination of teacher think alouds and similar student responses before, during, and after writing. Embedded within such instruction is the use of inquiry listening as a form of formative assessment. The article opens by highlighting a problem posed by a local literacy assessment and standardized test preparation measure for the focal children, namely, inconsistencies between the text structure analyzed (narrative) and the required product (expository textual analysis). Next, it outlines specific instruction involving interactive discussions that lead to comprehension of text structure(s) and clear conceptualizations of expected formats for written products. These include a) frontloading with photographs, and b) thinking aloud about writing samples.