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Children's Mental Health Ontario
International Edubloggers Directory
The Learning Disabilities Association of Canada
Dec
11
Writing Better Essays- Using A Graphic Organizer To Structure The Essay
Filed Under Writing Better Essays
Students sometimes have a difficult time organizing their jot notes into a five paragraph essay. I use the five paragraph essay graphic organizer to help them do this. Notice the colour coding. The coding helps them see the structure. I simply ask them to fill in the organizer using their jot notes. I don’t expect complete sentences or paragraphs at this point. That comes later. The organizer will structure the essay for them. After they compete the organizer they can begin writing the actual paragraphs. I usually check the completed organizer to see that they have filled in all the parts.
Sometimes students don’t understand that they have to support their arguments or thesis. They just want to state it. I tell them it’s like court. They are like lawyers and have to convince the jury of their argument -the thesis, so they have to give the best possible evidence they can to support what they are trying to prove. They usually understand it when I put it that way.
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5 Responses to “Writing Better Essays- Using A Graphic Organizer To Structure The Essay”
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Love it, Elona! So simple and so clear.
Actually, the structure and simplicity of using paper reminds me of Dave Seah’s Printable CEO form. My favorite tool that Dave’s made is the online flash task timer that beeps at your every fifteen minutes to keep you on track! Here’s that task timer. Take care, Elona!
S.
The Technicolor Paragraph is one way I try to help my students see their different jobs as a writer. The colors identify their point, explanation, and evidence. As long as I repeatedly require students to write one of those paragraphs in class, they tend to remember to use the technique in their own writing. Maybe it’ll help:
http://www.toddseal.com/rodin/technicolor.html
Thanks Todd. I’ll try the technicolor paragraph with my new classes in February. It really looks promising.
Get yourself some Bic 4-color pens for your students to use and get used to that clicking sound of moving from red to blue.
Start this technique off with a topic really easy and about which your kids know a lot. Do it as a class on the overhead and have the kids write it down when you’re done. Then, I have them working in groups of 4 on another easy topic; those paragraphs go on poster paper to hang on the wall where we talk about strengths and weaknesses. I increase the amount of points possible and my toughness in the grading as I decrease the amount of students working together on the assignment. Finally, all kids are writing their own paragraph, have had a change to practice writing it at least 3 times with others, and should be feeling pretty good about the technique. That’s when it’s worth the most amount of points and I grade the toughest.
The key is repitition, though. I haven’t had my juniors work with this writing too often this year so when I brought the idea back again at the end of the semester, the results were awful, where the quotations had nothing to do with the point, they weren’t explaining themselves. It was bad. But once they’ve got the model, it’s a good way to write and have them focus on a specific aspect of writing. I’ve been working on sentence variety using this model with my seniors.
Well I’m off to buy Bic- 4 color pens. The clicking will be music to my ears. I like your idea of increasing the possible points as you go along. Thanks again.