how to teach 5th graders to write an essay

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When I look back to my first experience teaching five paragraph essays to fifth graders, I can remember how terribly unprepared I felt.

I knew that the five paragraph essay format was what my students needed to help them pass our state’s writing assessment but I had no idea where to start.

I researched the few grade-appropriate essays I could find online (these were the days before Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers) and determined that there was a structure to follow.

Every essay followed the same basic structure. I taught the structure to my students and they did well.

I have been teaching five paragraph essay structure and everything that goes with it for several years now. I hope that after you read this blog post, you will have a good understanding of how to teach and grade five paragraph essays.

Once you’ve learned all about teaching basic essay structure, you’ll be ready to grow your writers from “blah” to brilliant! 

Teaching five paragraph essays is just one part of teaching 5th grade writing. Click here to find out exactly how I teach writing to my 5th graders! 

Start with Simple Paragraphs

We always start with simple paragraphs.

Yes, this is basic, but if your students cannot write excellent paragraphs, their five paragraph essays will be train wrecks. Trust me!

We spend a while cementing paragraph structure:

Topic Sentence

Closing Sentence

I give students topics, they come up with their own topics, we write together, they write with a partner or independently, the more variety, the better.

We have fun with simple paragraphs. Then, it’s time to move on to body paragraphs.

Organize and Write Body Paragraphs

Please refer to my five paragraph essay organizer below.

The three body paragraphs are absolutely crucial to the success of the five paragraph essay.

Some teachers have trouble teaching the structure of five paragraph essays because they start with the introduction paragraph.

Always teach the body paragraphs first!

I had a teacher say to me once, “What’s the point of just writing parts of the essay? They need to write the entire five paragraphs to get all of the practice they need.”

I understand that point. However, think of it as building a house. Should you test out the foundation and make sure it’s sound and sturdy before building on top of it? Absolutely! That’s what we’re doing here.

The three body paragraphs are the foundation of the essay.

Ask students to write out their three body paragraphs just like they have practiced…Topic sentence…Detail 1…Detail 2…Detail 3…Closing Sentence.

I “ooooh and aaaah” over their three paragraphs. Students are on their way to five paragraph essays, so be sure to build their confidence.

Teach the Introduction Paragraph

I have to say, this is my favorite paragraph to teach. The introduction paragraph is what draws readers into the essay and makes them want to read more.

We start with what I call a “hook.” The hook captures the readers’ attention and can come in many forms: asking a question, making a bold statement, sharing a memory, etc.

After the hook, I ask students to add a sentence or two of applicable commentary about the hook or about the prompt in general.

Finally, we add the thesis sentence. The thesis sentence always follows the same formula: Restate the prompt, topic 1, topic 2, and topic 3.

That’s all you need to write an excellent introduction paragraph!

I do suggest having students write the introduction paragraph plus body paragraphs a couple of times before teaching the closing paragraph.

Teach the Closing Paragraph

In the conclusion paragraph, we mainly focus on restating the thesis and including an engaging closing thought.

With my students, I use the analogy of a gift.

The introduction paragraph and body paragraphs are the gift and the conclusion paragraph is the ribbon that ties everything together and finishes the package.

When you talk about restating the thesis sentence, tell students that they need to make it sound different enough from their original thesis sentence to save their readers from boredom.

Who wants to read the same thing twice? No one!

Students can change up the format and wording a bit to make it fresh.

I enjoy teaching the closing thought because it’s so open to however students want to create it.

Ways to write the closing thought: ask a question, personal statement, call to action, or even a quote. 

I especially like reading the essays in which a quote is used as a closing thought or a powerful statement is used.

Example of a full five paragraph essay

Let’s Talk About Color-Coding!

Who doesn’t like to color? This is coloring with a purpose!

Training your students to color-code their paragraphs and essays will make grading so much easier and will provide reminders and reinforcements for students.

When students color-code their writing, they must think about the parts of their paragraphs, like topic sentences, details, and the closing sentence.

They will be able to see if they are missing something or if they’ve written something out of order.

Color-coding is a wonderful help for the teacher because you can skim to ensure that all parts of your students’ paragraphs and essays are present.

Also, when you are grading, you can quickly scan the paragraphs and essays. Trust me, you will develop a quick essay-grading ability.

I start color-coding with my students at the very beginning when they are working on simple paragraphs. I add the additional elements of the color-code as we progress through our five paragraph essays.

This is the code that I use:

Let’s Talk About Grading Five Paragraph Essays!

Imagine a lonely, stressed teacher grading five paragraph essays on the couch while her husband is working the night shift.

That was me!

Seriously, guys, I would spend about ten minutes per essay. I marked every little error, I made notes for improvement and notes of encouragement. I reworked their incorrect structure.

Those papers were full of marks.

On Monday, I proudly brought back the essays and asked students to look over them and learn what they needed to fix for next time.

You can guess what happened… there were lots of graded essays in the trashcan at the end of the day.

I decided that my grading practices had to change. I needed my weekends back and my students needed to find their own errors!

This is my best advice:

STOP correcting every error!

Your students are not benefiting from marks all over their writing. They need to find those errors themselves so that they will remember their mistakes and change their writing habits.

Do a quick scan of each student’s writing as soon as it’s turned in to you.

If there are major problems with a student’s writing, call him/her over individually and show him/her what needs to be fixed or put the student with a competent peer editor who will help them fix mistakes.

If you have several students who are struggling with a skill, like closing sentences, do a mini-lesson on this topic.

You can do a mini-lesson with a small group. However, I prefer doing mini-lessons with the entire class. The kids who need help will get it and the rest of your class will receive a refresher.

It’s OK if there are some small spelling/grammar mistakes!

If the errors are few and they don’t take away from the meaning/flow of the essay, I don’t worry about them.

Our students are still learning.

Even your brightest star writer will have a few spelling/grammar mistakes from time to time.

Don’t discourage students from writing because of small errors.

Students who receive papers back with markings all over them don’t think, “Oh boy, my teacher has made it so easy for me to make all of these corrections.” They are thinking, “What’s the point in writing? I must be a terrible writer. Look at all of these mistakes.”

If your students are taking a standardized writing assessment, the structure and flow of their essays will be worth much more than perfect spelling.

Need more help?

I created this five paragraph essay instructional unit for teachers who are new to teaching five paragraph essays OR just need all of the materials in one place.

“Teacher Talk” pages will guide you through the unit and this unit contains all materials needed to help students plan, organize, and write amazing five paragraph essays! Click here to check it out:

I have a freebie for you! Enter your first name and email address below. You’ll receive three original prompts with five paragraph essay organizers AND two lined final draft pages!

Once your students are good essay writers…

These task cards will help your students stay sharp on their five paragraph essay knowledge. Students will review hooks (attention-getters), thesis sentences, body paragraphs, topic sentences, closings, and more. Each card contains a unique writing example!

I suggest using these task cards as a quiz/test, scoot game, individual review, or cooperative group activity.

Click on the image to view these task cards:

To save this post for later, simply pin this image to your teacher Pinterest board!

21 comments.

Wow! I really enjoyed reading this. I’ve always stressed over the thought of teaching writing, but your blog makes me think I can do it successfully. Putting your writing packet on my TPT wish list!

Thank you, Shannon! I appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment. I am so glad that my blog post was helpful to you!

Thanks for the tips! When I taught 6th grade I taught this same subject matter, but struggled to get started. I wish I had this then!

I appreciate your comment! Teaching was much different before Pinterest, wasn’t it?!?

This helped me so much!🙂 thanks a lot, I imagined being one student of yours. I’d be so smart and good at essays! Would’ve been so much easier in person❤️❤️❤️

Thank you so much, Aizlyn!

Thank you so much for this! May I ask where I can see the rubric for scoring the compositions?

You are so welcome! Click on the resource link. Then, you will see the rubric in the preview!

Thank you so much,I am a parent and this really helped me be clear how to guide my son. God bless you always.,

Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment!

you are welcome!!!

This looks great! Looking forward to using your tips and freebies with my 6th graders. 🙂 THANK YOU.

You are so welcome! Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment!

Can’t wait to use this with my class tomorrow! Thanks a bunch for sharing!!

You are so welcome, Amy!

Thank you for making it easy to teach an essay with clarity.

You are very welcome, Yamuna! Thanks for taking the time to leave feedback 🙂

I am so happy I discovered your blog. I just started teaching grade 5 in September I have been searching for a simple method to hel me in guiding them in writing. I will be putting your method into practice in the coming week.

That’s wonderful, Cherry! Thank you for sharing your thoughts! Welcome to fifth grade 🙂

Beautiful lesson well explained! Thank you so very much .

Thank you so much, Cheryl!

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Teaching with Jennifer Findley

Upper Elementary Teaching Blog

How to Teach Writing in 5th Grade

Let’s be real for a moment. During my first year teaching I did a terrible, horrible, rotten job at teaching writing. My students (3rd graders at the time) were not assessed on writing, and I really didn’t know how to teach writing at that point in my career (especially since my students seriously struggled with all things literacy when they came to me).

I remember teaching it and having some fun lessons that I am sure helped the students a little. But mostly, we just aimlessly read read alouds, wrote to prompts, and shared our writing. I “did” all the right things but I didn’t do them very purposefully or effectively. I honestly feel like I should write a formal apology to my first group of students.

Fast forward a few years and a grade level change, and I finally feel like I have a handle on teaching writing. I am super purposeful and everything I do now has a reason behind it. Though my instruction is still not perfect (is anything in teaching ever perfect?), I feel much more confident that I am growing my students as writers and helping them to love writing.

In this post, I want to share how I teach writing in 5th grade (very applicable to 3rd and 4th grade as well).

I spend approximately 9 weeks on each main genre of writing (narrative, persuasive, and informational/expository).  I teach the writing genres in this order: personal narrative, fictional narrative, persuasive, how-to informational, compare and contrast, descriptive/explanatory informational.

Closer Look at Each 9 Weeks

Now, let’s take a closer look at what each of those 9 weeks would look like:

Two Weeks Explicitly Teaching Genre

I spend the first two weeks of my pacing explicitly teaching the aspects of the genre we are studying and writer’s craft as it relates to the genre we are studying. We do this by reading mentor texts and making charts about what we notice the author does well. These noticings then turn into mini-lessons. You can read more about how I come up with writing mini-lessons (and the three types of mini-lessons) by clicking here .

During these two weeks, the students are writing their first essays in this genre, but it is very guided. For example, we would read mentor texts to look for good beginnings, then we create a chart of good beginnings, then we choose a writing topic from our lists (read more about that here ), and practice writing good beginnings. I may have the students write 2-3 beginnings, then chose their favorite. We also spend a lot of time sharing during this time so the students can apply what they are learning and hear lots of examples from their peers.

Three W eeks of Writing Based on Lists and Specific Lessons Based on Students’ Writing  

After we have learned and applied all the strategies for a genre to one piece of writing, we are ready to try out some more. In this three week period, the students choose more topics from their lists to write about.

As the students are writing, they are referring to charts and examples from our previous mini-lessons to help them apply what they have learned. I also do a lot of conferences during this time, but mostly lean-in conferences because I want the students writing and trying out the new strategies.

The mini-lessons during this time frame are very specific to the students’ writing. While I am completing my lean-conferences, I jot down notes of struggles and strengths. At this point in the instruction, I am writing notes about conventions and mechanics for future mini-lessons, but my main focus is on the writer’s craft and getting the students to write and try out the genre.

At this point, it is also clear which students need extensive re-teaching. About 2-3 times a week, I pull small groups for re-teaching. However, I typically only pull the students who are seriously struggling at this point in instruction.

Three Weeks of Writing to On-Demand Prompts

At this point in our pacing, I have taught a lot of writing craft skills, and the students have several essays, applying what they have learned (usually 3-5 essays by this point). Now, it is time to get into perfecting their conventions and practicing on demand prompts .

The lessons during this three week period are very mini and focus mostly on conventions and mechanics. These lessons come from what I see as a need during my lean-in conferences and what I know will help move my students beyond their current writing (varying sentence lengths, using complex sentences, using introductory phrases, etc).

Also during this time, we typically have a longer share time, so the students can hear each other’s writing, give and get feedback, and learn even more writing strategies to use in their own writing.

As I mentioned above, this time is also spent primarily writing to on-demand prompts. These can be a simple prompt, a prompt that also uses a text stimulus (or paired text stimulus), or a prompt in response to a mentor text. This three week period is important because the students learn to write about topics that are not their choosing and they learn to stay on topic and follow the expectations of a prompt (which I explicitly teach them). However, I don’t recommend writing to prompts all the time because it doesn’t promote a love of writing with most students.

Remember how I said I did mostly lean-in conferences in the above section? Well, at this point, I have enough data to group my students into small groups for re-teaching or extension lessons. During independent writing time, I regularly pull small groups (about 1-2 a day) for reteaching. I also mix in independent conferences as well, as needed.

One Week of Publishing

For our final week in a genre, my students choose their favorite piece, meet with me for an independent conference and a final revise and edit, and then type it. We only publish (by typing) one story in each genre. However, we revise and edit every piece that we write. Ultimately, the students decide which of their essays are worth publishing. This essay is also taken as a final grade.

…………..

By the end of the 9-week period, my students have usually written around 6-8 essays in that genre. My expectation is an essay per week, and I do have them turn them in. I use these essays (along with my conferences) to guide my mini-lessons and reteaching groups.

Here is a recap of each 9-Week Period:

Note : I do modify this a bit for informational writing since I explicitly teach how-to writing, compare and contrast writing, and then explanatory/descriptive informational writing separately and then together.

What Does a Typical Writing Lesson Look Like?

The total time I have for writing is 60 minutes (I will share a modified schedule for 30 and 45 minutes, too). Here is how I typically segment my writing time. However, from reading the above section, you will notice that sometimes mini-lessons or share times are shorter or longer, depending on where we are in our pacing.

• 15-20 minute mini lesson
• 30-40 minutes for independent writing and conferences/ small groups
• 5 minutes for closing, sharing, and reflecting

Modified Schedule for 45 Minutes

• 15 minute mini-lesson
• 25 minutes for independent writing and conferences/small groups

Modified Schedule for 30 Minutes

For 30 minutes, I recommend more of an A/B type schedule. Something like this:

A Schedule: – 15 mini-lesson and 15 minutes of independent writing where the students are directly applying the strategy to their writing

B Schedule: 20 minutes independent writing (continued from Monday) and conferences and 10 minutes for closing and sharing

Monday : A Schedule Tuesday : B Schedule Wednesday : A Schedule Thursday : B Schedule

Friday : Whichever schedule you need to meet the needs of your students. I have found that it is better to end the week with more independent writing to apply all they have learned. Likewise, I prefer to begin the week with the mini-lesson.

Materials I Use to Teach Writing

• Mentor texts- For mentor texts, I use tradebooks (picture books and excerpts from longer works), released exemplars from state assessment, student stories (shared with permission), and teacher-written stories. You can read how I used one mentor text during my persuasive writing unit by clicking here .
• Anchor charts – As a class, we create anchor charts for almost every writing mini-lesson I teach. Those anchor charts then provide an anchor for the students while they are writing. Want to see charts that I used to guide some my persuasive writing mini lessons? Click here to go straight to the post .
• Student reference charts – My students use their writing notebooks to keep their writing lists and to keep reference charts for almost every lesson that I teach. We create an anchor chart together and then I give the students a printable copy of the chart that is already made or that I make after the fact. These charts are glued into their writing notebook and they refer to them regularly as they write.
• Sentence stems -Most of my students are nowhere near proficient writers when they come to me. One way that I support my students is through sentence stems. Based on the needs of my students, I may provide sentence stems for beginnings, adding more details, using transitional phrases, or conclusions. The best part is that the stems give the students much needed confidence in their writing. As they become more confident, they will move away from using the sentence stems and create more original and unique sentences.

What About Early Finishers?

Since I use a workshop model and the students work through the writing process primarily at their own pace, I do need to have expectations and procedures in place for early finishers. Here are the three different procedures I have put in place over the years for my students who finish a writing piece early:

1. The easiest one is already embedded in my instruction: the students choose another writing topic from the list of topics we generate at the beginning of a new genre.

2. The other option is to request a peer conference with another student who is already finished. If you choose this, you need to have a clear procedure in my place for finding or requesting a student, what to do if no one is ready to hold a peer conference with you, and you need to explicitly teach the students how to hold peer conferences.

3. For some students, they need a bit more structure when it comes to choosing an “early finisher” activity.  This is where my writing choice boards come in. I have one choice board per genre that I teach. As we learn about a genre, I print the choice board and place it on a ring. Over time, the ring will have several choice boards. Early finishers may grab a ring of boards (I make about 5-6) and choose any prompt from any of the choice boards.

These writing choice boards are available in my TeachersPayTeachers store. The resource includes 7 writing choice boards in all! Click here to see them now.

Preparing for Writing Assessments

The question I always get is: How do you use a workshop model and still prepare your students for very “unworkshop” like writing assessments? The answer is that I embed it throughout in an authentic way.  Let’s take a look at an example:

My students are expected to write essays in response to two texts. So, when my students are learning how to write compare and contrast essays, we pull up information, articles, and read alouds for them to integrate their information from. This is authentically preparing them for the writing assessment in a way that still engages them in the writing.

Here is another example:

While we are writing persuasive essays, we may read two articles from two different perspectives on the topic we are writing. Then we will use those articles (and our own reasons and experiences) to craft a persuasive argument. But I never do it in a this is “test prep” way. I always try to authentically and naturally introduce the text as a way to support and strengthen our writing-this makes a HUGE difference with the students’ mindset.

Another way that I prepare my students is by taking the last nine weeks of my pacing (or 6 weeks if the writing test falls sooner) to review and practice all three genres of writing together. I think it is very important that the students are exposed to writing in all three genres together and not just in isolation. This helps solidify the differences among the three types. A resource I use to jump-start my review of all three main types of writing is my Writing Test Prep Resource.

This resource has sorts, prompts, practice printables, teaching posters, and more. It is a great way to review all three genres of writing and teach students how to analyze and respond to writing prompts. I use this resource at the beginning of my  last nine weeks of instruction. It lasts about a week to go through the resources and review all the genres.

After using that resource , we move into more rigorous text stimulus writing (as required by my state assessment). However, because I have embedded this type of writing in my instruction all year, this is nothing the students haven’t already seen or done.  The activities from the Writing Test Prep Resource then go into a test prep writing centers to continue reviewing before the day of the test.

I plan to write another blog post about preparing your students for writing assessments all year (and in authentic, engaging ways). Stay tuned for that!

Is how you teach writing similar or very different from how I teach? I would love to hear your thoughts on writing instruction. Let me know in the comments.

P.S. Do you want to see how I teach reading? Click here to read a detailed post that breaks down how I teach reading in 5th grade.

Share the Knowledge!

Reader interactions, 37 comments.

February 9, 2017 at 10:42 am

Thanks for this post! It is great to get a look behind the curtain into the way other teachers teach writing. Lots of schools are rolling out blanket approaches now and I really think it is best to leave it to the person that knows the class best – the teacher!

That said it helps no end to learn about other people’s practice.

Love your blog 🙂

February 13, 2017 at 8:52 pm

Thank you for your kind words! Yes, it is great to have choice and to see how other teachers teach. I am always saddened when I hear that so many teachers don’t have the choice to do what they know is best for their students.

February 16, 2017 at 5:05 pm

Thanks for sharing! It’s great to see what strategies and procedures other teachers are using in order to enhance what I’m doing with my students.

February 18, 2017 at 3:58 pm

Hey I love this idea, what’s the best way or resource you have to get started!

February 19, 2017 at 12:36 pm

Hi Michelle, I am working on a resource for launching writers workshop, but it won’t be ready until next school year. Until then, I recommend Fountas and Pinnell Guiding Readers and Writers, which is where my philosophy and instruction is grounded.

August 2, 2023 at 11:11 pm

Hi! Is a resource available?

March 25, 2017 at 10:50 pm

I feel as if you are an answer to prayers, as a first year teacher of 5th grade, my writing instruction has not been successful as far as I can tell. I am nervous to the writing assessment, but I now have hope that I can make some changes and improve my teaching. Thank you for sharing your craft.

March 30, 2017 at 10:42 pm

I definitely agree with your writing pacing. I like that you spend nine weeks on one genre. That makes total sense to me! My district requires us to teach all three genres, narrative, opinion, and informational, all in one trimester. There is just not enough time to really focus on one genre. I also agree that it is so important to use students’ own writing to guide instruction through mini-lessons. I’ve found this to be very valuable in my classroom.

April 1, 2017 at 11:09 am

So glad you found this helpful, Meghan!

July 10, 2017 at 3:52 pm

Just a quick question- I loooove this format for teaching writing but just have a couple questions. How do you start the year? Do you just jump right in with narrative the first week, or do you teach any of the 6 traits? Or anything similar? Just curious how you map out the first few weeks with writing. Thanks!

July 22, 2017 at 11:34 pm

This is wonderful! Thank you for sharing your craft. Do you implement 6 + 1 writing traits at all? Or do you just do it without calling them that?

August 20, 2017 at 7:52 pm

I have been teaching Lower Elementary for 17 years and am in my first year as a 5th grade teacher. The team I have joined has not been teaching writing and my background is writer’s workshop. This is a big help in figuring out how to implement Writer’s Workshop into my day since I’m going it alone.

August 21, 2017 at 12:24 pm

I just want to take a moment to say THANK YOU for this. I have been struggling with writing instruction (last year was not good) and I have been searching for a post like this to help breakdown the workshop model. Thank you again for posting it! You are amazing.

July 22, 2018 at 7:53 pm

My sentiments exactly!!!!

August 25, 2017 at 12:31 pm

Hi!! First year 5th grade teacher but 13th year teacher. I can’ wait to really dive into this and read what great ideas you have!! My district uses a series and it lacks in some areas. I had a question about where you find inspiration for your mentor texts? Thanks

September 15, 2017 at 2:13 pm

Thank you so much for sharing a modified schedule for 30 minutes!!!

September 27, 2017 at 5:12 pm

Thank you for this post. I will take away much to break it in to smaller pieces for better organized conferences. I am curious though, what is a reasonable essay length to expect from a student? I would like to set a standard for a minimum on paper writing/typing page or word count for beginning year and end of year expectations. Maybe you have some reasonable amount you have expected for their age/grade level in each session and assessment? Some are gifted and can explain in detail their story, but putting into written form tends to stop up the creativity in my experience for a few.

October 19, 2017 at 2:14 pm

Hi Jennifer,

Where do you get ideas for the on demand prompts that you use the last 3 weeks of the units? Thanks!

November 14, 2017 at 10:15 pm

Thank you for this post! I just found your website, and have really enjoyed reading how you teach all your classes! I am new to 5th grade this year, and struggling to fit everything in. I work at a bilingual school, and I get one hour of English Literacy every day. In that time I am suppose to cover reading, writing, grammar, and spelling. Do you have any suggestions on how to divide the time?

September 15, 2021 at 7:59 pm

I have that same questions. We are on a 9 period – 6 day rotation schedule with 2 groups we see ( AM and PM). Some days I see the kiddos for 80 mins and other days it could 120. Within that time frame some of those 80 min days its split. For example I have them for period 6 for 40 mins but don’t get them back until period 8 for another 40 mins. Any ideas on how to fit grammar, reading workshop, and writing workshop in would be HUGE! Thank you for your help.

May 22, 2018 at 12:21 pm

Sister thanks for this sincere post you helped show me how to take responsibility for my teaching. I teach writing under some difficult situations 40 mins weekly. It started out as a special storytime/ shared reading/ read Aloud but and now creative writing. I have struggled for 4yrs and recently the Lord helped me to approach writing using Persuasive, narrative and expository. What about poetry? It gets confusing but reading your post helped out with some perspectives. God bless you dear.

July 16, 2018 at 8:32 pm

Thank you so much for these tips and guides. I have been struggling to teach writing for five years now, especially with the way they expect students to cite text, use it appropriately and almost perfectly during their testing. Unfortunately at my school and most schools in my county writing is not taught until students get to fourth grade, where it is tested. In addition, the state does not release any mentor texts, only from the sampling year, which district personnel tell you to ignore as they are not good examples. I wanted to know where do you gather your mentor texts from? I love the idea of students learning from the other writers, but I don’t know where to find these resources. I would greatly appreciate any of your assistance. Thank you!

November 11, 2018 at 7:53 pm

How would you differentiate for Learning Support Students in a 3rd Grade that can’t write a sentence independently?

January 6, 2019 at 1:06 pm

I found this so helpful! Although I’ve taught for a number of years this is my first year teaching grade 5 writing. It was reassuring seeing your outline of the different genres of writing. We’ve done narrative and fictional writing so far. This gives me direction for the new year – persuasive writing. The links for anchor charts and mini lessons are so helpful – thank-you so much! I’m feeling inspired and excited to start up again after the break!

January 6, 2019 at 9:52 pm

Hi Jen, I am so glad you found this helpful! Thank you for your kind message!

May 11, 2019 at 10:21 am

Thank you! This is very helpful! I teach 5th grade writing (and only writing-our students rotate and another teacher teaches reading) and started halfway through the school year. We just got a new writing “program” called SRSD for informational writing, and I really like it, but it’s more of a method of writing than a paced program, so this is really helpful for determining how much time to spend on each part. I have very limited resources currently for mentor texts, but use a lot of articles from Newsela- they have lots of articles on various topics and you can change the lexile level, which is really helpful! Since I don’t teach reading but all of our informational writing is based on texts, this has been a great resource!

August 30, 2019 at 12:49 pm

Hi! I am absolutely in love with your resources. They have helped me tremendously! I was curious if you had resources similar to the reading/grammar resources for writing?

September 8, 2019 at 4:41 pm

Hi Brooke, I don’t for writing. For 5th grade language, I do have some resources which you can see here:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Jennifer-Findley/Category/ELAR-Language-Resources-88773

Thanks for asking!

March 3, 2020 at 12:20 pm

HI there. I have been using a lot of your resources for ELA during this school year and decided to research how you teach writing. I have never been a very strong writing teacher and realize that I am doing my students a disservice in this area.

I need some ideas on how to do an effective writing review in 5 weeks time to prepare the students for the state assessment, which is at the end of April. Mind you, I have not been teaching writing as effectively as you have during the year. I currently have a 90 minute ELA block which includes reading, writing, grammar, etc. I think I may only be able to do 30, maybe 45 minutes per day.

What do you recommend? Feel free to email me your response if you would like.

Thanks so much!

September 30, 2020 at 6:11 am

This article is EVERYTHING right know! I am currently teaching 4th Grade ELAR as a first year teacher, I am struggling to teach writing well! My student are all very low, and struggling to provide good writing- do you have any tips? Thanks for all writing this?

March 10, 2021 at 10:49 am

I love every one of your resources and they have been a huge hit in my classroom. We have totally adopted your math centers and resources while I was departmentalized so I am eager to add in ELA when we go back to self-contained with our fifth graders. I would love to hear about how you organize the ELA instruction for students – how many notebooks, folders, what they are called, what gets turned in daily, weekly, how many and which ELA grades are weekly and which ones are final project grades. Love how real you are. Any attempt to add structure to this crazy ride of education is so greatly appreciated

April 25, 2021 at 2:54 am

Hi Jennifer, I was happy to come across your Anchor Charts for persuasive essay on your website when searching on how to teach my son to write a persuasive essay. I would love to have your anchor charts for narrative and informative writings. Do you have a digital package I can purchase where you have the anchor charts information all together to help out homeschooling moms by any chance? Thank you.

June 5, 2021 at 7:52 am

Love your resources and posts. Thank you! How do you balance reading and writing lessons? Through a week or another time period, what’s your schedule for when you teach writing and when you teach reading? Hoe do you successfully plan for both?

August 4, 2021 at 8:36 am

Excellent information!- I am a tutor and was trying to gauge my pace with what typically happens in schools- I do not think you are typical- you are a 99%ile teacher I can tell- but still extremely helpful. Thank you so much!!!

November 7, 2023 at 9:09 am

Not sure how much you read this post these days, but I wanted to put a question out there anyway. I am a fifth-grade teacher at a hybrid school. We plan lessons for 5 days but teach in our classrooms on M-W-F only. Parents teach at home T-TH. This has its own unique challenges. But teaching writing is the bane of my existence. We are forced to use a program called IEW. I hate it! Kids who have been on the program are some of our worst writers. But I have to use it. Have you ever heard of it? What we have is really not a curriculum either. So it leaves me pulling my hair out most days. Any advice on teaching writing when you are getting to teach 5 days?

November 7, 2023 at 10:33 am

I haven’t heard of that program, but that does sound so difficult! How are your students assessed in writing? Are they writing just to prompts or in response to texts? Feel free to send me an email to jennifer @ jenniferfindley.com (no spaces)!

November 9, 2023 at 7:16 am

Thank you so much!!

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Welcome Friends!

I’m Jennifer Findley: a teacher, mother, and avid reader. I believe that with the right resources, mindset, and strategies, all students can achieve at high levels and learn to love learning. My goal is to provide resources and strategies to inspire you and help make this belief a reality for your students.

5th grade writing

by: Jessica Kelmon | Updated: August 4, 2022

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By now, your child knows that writing is a process that requires research, feedback, and revision. This year, kids are expected to respond to others’ prompts for improvement and learn how to evaluate their own work, too.

Super study skills

In fifth grade, taking notes becomes an essential academic skill. Fifth graders use books, periodicals, websites, and other sources to do short research projects. Kids learn to use several sources to investigate a topic from different angles — both on their own and as part of group work with peers. Your child should keep track of all the sources they use and note what they learn, the name of the source, and the page number or url so they can find it again to create a source list or bibliography later. A big step in your child’s research process this year: taking the time to review, categorize, and summarize or paraphrase the information they’ve learned. What did your child find out about the animal’s habitat from each source? Sorting evidence into categories and summarizing information will help your fifth grader with the planning, writing, and revising stages of their writing project.

Can your 5th grader get organized to write an essay?

Revise, rewrite

By now, your child should understand that writing is a process requiring several steps: planning, first draft, revisions, editing, and publishing or sharing work. Your child’s planning work should include reading and rereading, taking notes, finding additional sources, discussing how new knowledge fits into what your child knew before, visually organizing the information they plan to include, and determining the best way to clearly present their evidence as a cohesive set of points. After the first draft is written, the teacher and other students will offer feedback: asking questions to elicit new details, suggesting ways to clarify an argument, or pressing for new sources of information. Don’t be surprised if there are a few rounds of revisions this year: it’s how your child’s writing gets stronger. If revisions aren’t enough to improve your child’s writing, then this year your child may be required to rewrite the piece or try a new approach . Once the structure and contents are set, final edits are the time to perfect spelling and grammar. All this work on one writing assignment is meant to help your child think of writing as a multistep process so they can evaluate their work and see that — if it’s not up to snuff — they should keep trying until it is.

Fifth grade writing: opinion pieces

Your child’s opinion pieces should start by clearly stating an opinion about a topic. Then, kids should set up and follow a logically ordered structure to introduce each reason they’ll offer in support of their opinion. Their reasons should be supported by facts and details (a.k.a. evidence), and your child should use linking words, such as additionally, consequently , and specifically to connect evidence-backed reasons to their opinion. Finally, kids should close their argument with a well-articulated conclusion that supports their original opinion.

Fifth grade writing: informative writing

Logic reigns when evaluating your fifth grader’s informative writing. The purpose of this type of writing is to convey facts and ideas clearly. So a logically ordered presentation of supporting points is, well… quite logical. Your child should clearly introduce the topic and present related information in the form of a few clear, well-thought-out paragraphs. Kids should draw on facts, definitions, concrete details, quotes, and examples from their research to thoroughly develop their topic. To clearly connect their research, fifth graders should use advanced linking words (e.g. in contrast, especially ) to form compound and complex sentences that convey their points. Remember that your child’s presentation matters: making use of subject headings, illustrations, and even multimedia to illustrate points is encouraged whenever they make your child’s work more logical and clear. Then, to wrap it up, your child should have a well-reasoned conclusion.

Check out these three real examples of good 5th grade informational writing: •” How to save water ” •” Saving a Resource ” •” Water Saveing ”

Can your 5th grader write an informational essay?

5th grade writing: narrative writing

A narrative is a story. Whether inspired by a book, real events, or your child’s imagination, your child’s story should start by introducing a narrator, characters, or a situational conflict. Fifth graders will be asked to use classic narrative devices like dialogue, descriptive words, and character development. Your child should be able to show how characters feel and how they react to what’s happening. Finally, the events should unfold naturally, plausibly bringing the story to a close.

Grammatically correct

By now, your fifth grader should have a solid understanding of the parts of speech. This year, your child should learn to use and explain the function of conjunctions (e.g. because, yet ), prepositions (e.g. above, without ), and interjections (e.g. Hi, well, dear ). Kids should also start using correlative conjunctions (e.g. either/or, neither/nor ). What’s more, students learn to form and use the past, present, and future perfect tenses ( I had walked; I have walked; I will have walked. ). With this tense mastered, fifth graders will be expected to use various verb tenses to convey a sequence of events and to recognize and correct any inappropriate shifts in tense.

Check out this related worksheet: •  Active and passive sentences

More sophisticated language

This year your child will: • Regularly refer to print and online dictionaries, thesauruses, and glossaries to spell challenging words correctly. • Use academic vocabulary words in writing. • Use more nuanced descriptions (think advanced synonyms and antonyms). • Master homographs (e.g. understand that bear means the animal and to support or carry). • Employ common idioms, adages, and proverbs (e.g. “born yesterday”; “the early bird gets the worm”; “failure teaches success” ) • Interpret figurative language like similes (e.g. “light as a feather” ) and metaphors ( “it’s a dream come true” ).

This year, your child will learn to use commas after a sentence’s introductory segment (e.g. Earlier this morning, we ate breakfast .), to set off the words yes and no in writing (e.g. Y es, we will ; and no, thank you ), to set off a question from the rest of a sentence (e.g. It’s true, isn’t it? ), and to show direct address. (e.g. Is that you, Mike? ) Your child will also use commas to separate items in a series. (e.g. I want eggs, pancakes, and juice .)

Your child should also be taught how to consistently use quotation marks, italics, or underlining to indicate titles when citing sources in reports and papers.

Check out these related worksheets: •  Punctuating a paragraph • Simile or cliche? •  Homophones and homographs

And it’s live!

The final step in writing this year? Publishing! Once all the hard work (the research, planning, writing, revisions, edits, and rewrites) are finished, your fifth grader’s ready to publish. Many classes will experiment with printing work or publishing it on a blog, website, or app. While teachers should be there for support, your child should be doing the work. The point is to learn keyboarding skills (2 full pages is the goal for fifth graders) and to interact and collaborate with peers. This could mean, for example, that your child reads a classmate’s published work online and either comments on it or references it when answering a question in class.

Updated August 2022

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Hello Fifth

A Teaching Blog

Writing in Fifth Grade

May 23, 2020 by Jill Shafer

I am so excited to share all things WRITING today! Because I’ve taught several different grades, I come to fifth grade knowing a bit more of the progression students have experienced as writers.  We have Lucy Calkin’s Units of Study available to us, and I also have been trained in Step Up to Writing, Nancy Fetzer, thinking maps, and I’m sure there are more that have occurred since I began my career in 2003. I frequently get asked what I use and what I use is a mix of resources that will hopefully give students exposure and practice with writing pieces that will grow and stretch them. We cover the three major genres: expository, narrative, and persuasive. We also practice constructed responses, produce response to literature essays, and learn from mentor texts and authors. You can check out THIS freebie to get a glimpse into our general scope and sequence but like with all things teaching, we also remain flexible. Our reading and vocabulary/word work block is in the morning but we do writing after recess (specifically before lunch).

I work really hard to tie in things like sentence structure and grammar into our writing mini-lessons.  The work we do in the morning is best when it is incorporated with the work we do later as writers. Okay, so let’s break down the different things we do and what it looks like.

Because I teach fifth, they come with a really solid foundation of what four parts go into a constructed response.  At our school, we do RACE: restate, answer, cite evidence, and explain. I explicitly teach each one, going over what the expectations are in fifth and then practicing all together.

We spend the first month of school really working on these.  We use picture books to begin.  I just type up the text and copy; Mr. Peabody’s Apples and Fly Away Home are two of my faves.  You can read more about them HERE .

When we begin our first novel study , we transition into text responses that match with our discussion and the story.

We start slow and scaffolded, but with each one, I release more and more to them.  It REALLY helps to have students color code their answers, underlining each component of RACE in a different marker or colored pencil.

 We LOVE using THESE mentor texts from Ralph Fletcher.  I have stories saved on my Instagram (@hello_fifth) that go through it in DETAIL.

This typically only takes 15-20 minutes and is a GREAT way to warm up writers!  I use these constantly when they’re in the publishing stage of the writing process, since I may not have a new mini-lesson to deliver.

November 18, 2020 at 3:23 am

Very helpful! Thank you!!

February 9, 2021 at 5:52 am

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Help your 5th Grader Write a Great Essay

Writing essays can be a daunting task for students. 5th-grade students have a strong foundation of writing skills to help them construct body paragraphs and express their ideas using complex sentences. Still, they may need an extra push to write confidently and expressively.

The most challenging task when writing an essay is starting the writing process and learning to be confident.

Helping students tackle the task and build their confidence in writing multiple types of essays such as a persuasive essay, an informational essay, or even a narrative essay such as short stories takes a lot of practice, focus, and support from instructors and parents.

Learning to Express Ideas

Pre-writing is a crucial step in the writing process. Fifth graders should be in a place in their writing journey where they can perfect all the pre-writing strategies before they even write a word of an essay.

This will set them up to successfully construct excellent five-paragraph essays consistently.

When your child sits down to write a five body paragraph essay, the very first thing they should do is read the prompt. Understanding what the prompt is asking for is the first step in being proactive about writing an excellent essay.

You want them to ponder these questions: am I writing a persuasive essay? Am I writing an essay on a topic requiring me to do my research? Will I need to list evidence? Am I writing a narrative story that requires figurative language?

How to Successfully Brainstorm An Essay

One excellent way to get the brainstorm rolling is to have your fifth-grade student utilize a graphic organizer such as a cluster map as a way to write down all the related words or small phrases they can think of about the prompt.

The organizer will help get their creative minds rolling until they write something they are interested in or perhaps even excited about exploring further.

Brainstorming is a crucial component of teaching writing. This first step should be the most relaxed, no-pressure section for the student.

As a fifth-grader, your child will have a good idea of how to brainstorm different ideas on paper, but an essential part will be to organize these ideas into something of an outline.

Through brainstorming, students learn to think creatively to answer the prompt. Sometimes logical thinking is also required. For example, with a persuasive essay, students must brainstorm their arguments and develop reasons or evidence to back up their claims.

Supporting this step will allow students to perfect the details of the content they’re writing about and give them the main idea for their entire essay.

How to Turn a Brainstorm into an Outline

Encouraging your fifth grader to write a quick outline in a way that’s organized according to the five-paragraph essay format will give them a solid foundation to write their first rough draft.

These pre-writing skills are crucial in turning students from simple sentence writers into detailed five-paragraph essay writers.

Five-paragraph essays are the standard way to construct an essay, including writing an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

Using this format, your fifth grader should write a short and straightforward outline that showcases every paragraph’s main ideas and contents in logical order.

Instead of freewriting the essay off the top of their head, an outline in the five-paragraph essay format will help your fifth grader have a guide to help them construct the first draft of their essay and flesh out ideas when they write body paragraphs.

Constructing a 5 Paragraph Essay

Read below for a brief five-paragraph essay instructional unit to help you guide your child in writing an exceptional essay.

1) How To Write An Introduction

In the five-paragraph essay format, the introduction is vital in grabbing the reader’s attention and holding it throughout the essay.

When teaching writing, the introduction is explained as the initial place to set up the topic of the essay. It usually requires a direct address of the contents to follow in the form of a thesis.

A thesis statement is a sentence in the introduction that directly answers the prompt and has reasons and evidence for the writer’s claim. It’s like a short preview of what the students will write about in their body paragraphs.

Furthermore, students write the thesis at the end of the introduction paragraph and ensure it follows a specific sentence structure to make it stand out as the most critical part of the intro.

2) How To Write Body Paragraphs

An excellent way to help students be confident in their work is to help them build clear strategies or steps to tackle daunting parts of an essay, such as a body paragraph.

Acronyms are one good way to remember all the steps of constructing a remarkable body paragraph. For example, TEEA is a wonderful acronym to get your fifth grader started on the task.

TEEA stands for:

T: Topic Sentence

The topic sentence is the very first sentence of a body paragraph. It explains what your section is about and its main idea. Ideally, this should be one sentence long and directly explain the topic at hand.

For the second section, you will want your fifth grader to answer the following question: WHY are you talking about this topic or idea? Why is this important? This should be about 2 or 3 sentences long because you will want your child to use lots of details to support the idea in the topic sentence.

  E: Example

In the third section, the student should prove what they explained about their topic by giving a solid, real-life example. This can be 2-3 sentences. The key here is to make the example applicable to the topic and explanation.

A: Analysis

Lastly, the analysis explains how the example supports your topic. This will probably be 1 or 2 sentences.

The analysis is the most tricky part of a body paragraph. The best way to get your child to think about this is to emphasize the how question. How does your example prove you are right? How does the example relate to the topic?

Using TEEA, your child will be able to construct a clear and strong body paragraph for almost any prompt or topic.

3) How to Write A Conclusion

Lastly, to conclude an essay, students must think about what idea they want the reader to leave with after reading their essay.

To start, students can use their introductory paragraph as a guide. They should restate their essay topic or thesis differently.

Next, students should summarize the main points made in the body paragraphs.

After this step, students can play the “so what?” game. Have your fifth grader think about what they’ve written in the conclusion, then answer the question, “so what?” Why is this important? Why should anybody care?

The very last sentence of the conclusion is a fantastic place to answer the “so what” question and leave the readers with a good impression or the desire for more information.

Using this instructional guide, with practice, your 5th grader will be able to construct logically sound and impeccably organized essays in no time.

The Reading Ranch Method

Struggling writers can experience various difficulties in any step of the writing process. The Reading Ranch Intervention Program is a research-based program to help students strengthen their writing skills in an interactive and dynamic environment. Our curriculum prides itself on being an interactive writing curriculum proven through various studies to immensely help struggling writers. Contact us today if you’re looking for help with your child who struggles in school and at home because they are stuck when they write and unable to keep up with their peers. We offer either online or in-person programs we feel confident we have something just right for every family.

Kiran Gokal   is a freelance writer, teacher, and lover of the written word specializing in content articles, blog posts, and marketing copywriting. For the past three years, she’s been teaching bright young students all about reading and writing at The Reading Ranch®,  while also lending her writing skills to different businesses and non-profits in the education sector.

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Teaching the 5-Paragraph Essay: Tips to Make It Easier

Even though students start learning about the 5-paragraph essay in middle school (sometimes even elementary!), it seems like they magically forget everything by high school. In this post, I hope to share some tips for teaching the 5-paragraph essay to teens.

Teaching the 5-Paragraph Essay Tip #1: Know Your Success Criteria

Before even discussing the 5-paragraph essay with students, make sure you know your own success criteria.

Success criteria are the standards by which you’ll measure students’ ability with the task. 

There are multiple ways to approach the 5-paragraph essay, and every teacher has his or her preferences. Maybe for you starting the essay with a rhetorical question is just too blase, and you expect a more exciting hook. Perhaps you expect seven sentences in a body paragraph while your colleague is content with five. 

Make sure you know what success looks like in your classroom before you begin teaching anything to students. 

Teaching the 5-Paragraph Essay Tip #2: Don’t Do It In Isolation

Teaching the 5-paragraph essay just for the sake of it is never going to work. Students need buy-in before they’ll even think about attempting something hard. 

So try to avoid a unit that’s just about writing a 5-paragraph essay. Instead, make sure students have a compelling topic to write about.

This could be a literary analysis essay–especially if the novel in question is a hit with students. 

It could also be a research paper in which students can choose between engaging and controversial topics. 

Give students the topic about which they’ll be writing first. (I would even give them the actual essay assignment before talking about how to write an essay.)

If you can get them to care about the content of their essay, getting them to understand the format will be much easier. 

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Teaching the 5-Paragraph Essay Tip #3: Break It Down Piece By Piece

This is where high school teachers mess up. They assume that, because students have probably done this before in earlier grades, they can rush the essay writing process. Sadly, you can’t.

While some students might be able to write a 5-paragraph essay in their sleep, a lot will have completely forgotten the format. Or they’ll struggle with citations and tracking their sources. Or they remember what the thesis statement is but can’t start their body paragraphs. 

For most students, there are going to be holes in their knowledge. Go over the format of the 5-paragraph essay slowly.

In my 5-Paragraph Essay Mini-lessons resource , I break down the 5-paragraph essay into five lessons: an overview, the introduction paragraph, the body paragraphs, the conclusion paragraph, and citing sources. 

You could break this down even further and spend an entire day talking about thesis statements or writing conclusion sentences. 

Basically, while you can teach the 5-paragraph essay too quickly, it’s almost impossible to go too slowly.  

(Want to break down the 5-paragraph essay even further or have plenty of time to build up students’ skills? Try teaching claim, evidence, and reasoning skills first! This will make a huge chunk of the 5-paragraph essay a breeze for your students!)

Teaching the 5-Paragraph Essay Tip #4: Provide Examples

Just like with everything else you teach, you can’t provide too many examples for students. 

When it comes to the 5-paragraph essay, you should even present examples for the pieces of paragraphs. (“Here are some examples of thesis statements…” and “Here are some examples of clinchers…” etc.)

If possible, however, I recommend you not show examples using the same topic that your students will be using for their papers. It’s too tempting for students to copy. 

Instead, model for students how they can rephrase the essay question you gave them and fill in the blanks to create their own thesis statement. Or create sentence starters to help struggling students begin their claims. 

Don’t show them a completely done essay on their topic; give them tools to help them get there on their own. 

But do use examples from other essay topics, so students can learn what a strong essay looks like. 

Teaching the 5-Paragraph Essay Tip #5: Don’t Write It Chronologically

When I have students write an essay, I never have them write it from beginning to end. 

Instead, we spend a day writing our thesis statements. The next day, we write all of our claims. The day after, we gather and construct our evidence, and so on. 

I encourage my students to write in the order of what is most important to the overall essay–not in chronological order.  (And I use the most scaffolded outline in this resource to do so.)

Writing a hook (the first sentence of the essay) can require some creative thinking. For some students, this will completely stall them out for days–even weeks–if they let it. And while they may end the unit with the world’s greatest hook, they’ll still have the rest of the essay to write.

Instead, if I can get students to start with the thesis statement, the rest of the essay will be easier. They’ll know their stance and their major ideas. 

Plus, you can grade an essay if it has a few strong ideas strung together. You can’t even begin grading an essay that just has a few sentences of the introduction. 

Teaching the 5-Paragraph Essay Tip #6: Let Them Use Tools

No, I don’t mean you should accept ChatGPT essays. 

But students could use ChatGPT to ask questions about their topic if they get stuck. They shouldn’t, of course, use this as a source in their essay, but it could help get some struggling students thinking about their major supporting arguments. 

Students should also be allowed to use citation generators like EasyBib.com or CitationMachine.net.  

I, personally, have never formatted a citation by hand since learning about these tools, and if a real-world English teacher isn’t manually citing sources then students shouldn’t certainly have to. 

Instead, make sure students know what proper citations look like and teach them how to use these websites–and their limitations. 

Help students use these websites and double-check the generator’s work, rather than teaching them the useless (and time-consuming) skill of creating citations manually.  

There are all kinds of accessibility tools out there, too. Students who struggle to read should be allowed a screen reading extension–especially for research-heavy papers. 

If you have struggling writers, reach out to your school’s librarian or tech guru to see what kind of software your school computers might already be equipped with to help make essay writing easier for your students.  

Teaching the 5-paragraph essay probably won’t be the most fun you have in your classroom. But, if you break it down, go slow, and provide plenty of examples, you might be able to avoid a mental breakdown grading those same papers. 

If you’d like to make teaching the 5-paragraph essay as easy as possible on yourself, check out my 5-paragraph essay resources. 

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Teaching How to Write a Five Paragraph Essay

Having already taught your students how to write a FIVE SENTENCE COMPARISON PARAGRAPH  you have the base materials required to construct a Five Paragraph Essay Outline.

While the Five Paragraph Essay is far from the best form for students to express their ideas, the organizational skills learned while writing a five paragraph essay will built the essential foundation required for their future progress.

Though we will move quickly from how to write a five paragraph essay to writing a more organic multi-paragraphed essay, all teachers must have a handle on how to teach the fundamental skills.

Instruct students to sit in groups of five and provide them with the following quotation, cut up into the five individual sentences:

Summer is better than winter because it offers comfort and freedom.  In the summer people wear shorts and sandals which allow their skin to breath, taking in the fresh air while being warmed by the afternoon sun.  Not only that but the days are longer offering time to swim in neighbourhood pools, bike along wooded paths, and sit outside in the shade of large oak trees reading a new book.  Also, summer brings the Warped Tour music festival, Ribfests, and community BBQs that end in firework displays that turn the night sky red, green, and orange.  During the summer one is granted the opportunity to explore in comfort, from the moment the sun rises until the sun sets fifteen hours later.

Instruct students that they will be rebuilding the paragraph in the most logical manner.

Each group member will then be required to write a justification for why they placed their sentence in the order they did.  Ideally they will come up with some of the following reasons:

• The first sentence offers a clear opinion, setting up the rest of the paragraph
• The third and fourth sentences can not be second due to their transitional words, “not only that”, and “also”.
• the final sentence rephrases the opening opinion while offering a transition into the first body paragraph.
• The second sentence adds a deeper explanation for the stated opinion, while being free from transitional words, and also being connected to the final sentence’s transition

Once students have explored the introductory paragraph, provide them with the  ESSAY PLANNING SHEET  (PDF provided in the Resource section at the bottom of this page).

Students will fill out as much of this sheet as possible, based on their current paragraph.  They will start by addressing the thesis of the piece.

Teaching how to Write a Thesis

A strong Thesis has two main parts, the theme the essay will be addressing, and the specific focus that the writer will use to hone their ideas.

You can teach students that the theme is their main thought, and the focus is why someone should care about it.  For example, if you just said, “Summer is better than winter?” why would anyone care about what you had to say.  It fails the “So what?” test.

“Summer is better than winter.” “So what?” “…”

If you can answer “So what?” then you will most likely have a solid foundation for an argument.

“Summer is better than winter.” “So what?” “So, you have more comfort and freedom.” “Ohh, o.k.”

Filling out the Essay Outline Sheet

Students should have the following information based on the paragraph.

ESSAY THEME: Summer is better than Winter. FOCUS:  Summer offers more comfort and freedom. THESIS:  Summer is better than Winter because it offers more comfort and freedom. TOPIC 1: Clothing options SUBTOPIC 1:  Wearing shorts and sandals SUBTOPIC 2:  Loose clothing allows comfort outside SUBTOPIC 3 (Optional): TOPIC 2:  The days are longer SUBTOPIC 1: More time for friends (swimming) SUBTOPIC 2:  More time for solitary activities (reading) SUBTOPIC 3 (Optional):  More time for exercise (biking) TOPIC 3:  More festivals SUBTOPIC 1:  Music festivals (Warped Tour) SUBTOPIC 2:  Food Festivals (Rib Fests) SUBTOPIC 3 (Optional):  Community events (Fireworks)

Once students have filled out the essay outline sheet based on the information provided from the exemplar paragraph, they should begin filling out the “evidence” column.  They should have at least one  SPECIFIC DETAIL  per subtopic.

For example: Warped Tour, 2019 – Cleveland Ohio – June 8th ( https://vanswarpedtour.com/ )

At this stage it’s more important that they’ve recorded their evidence, and know where it’s from, rather than being focused on the correct MLA or APA way to embed and cite their examples.  After all, this is just an outline.

Personal Devices

This is a great opportunity for students to use their personal devices to research specific details.  You may want to take five minutes to teach a mini-lesson on specific vs. vague details.

Once students have completed their outline, and recorded specific details you can move on to having them write a body paragraph.

Writing a Body Paragraph

Explain to your students that a FIVE PARAGRAPH ESSAY  is…  FIVE PARAGRAPHS .  I know this will come as a shock to them, but they may wonder what each of the paragraphs are.   Of course, the five paragraphs are:

• Introduction

You can explain to students that the opening paragraph they assembled acts as the introduction paragraph, and that each of the three body paragraphs will explore one of the three topics it set out.

You can then provide them with an example of a body paragraph, demonstrating how each subtopic and its supporting evidence, can be integrated to form a coherent paragraph.  Each subtopic should have two or three clear sentences devoted to it.

During the summer months there are far more festivals that provide opportunities for self-expression, and entertainment.  Music festivals take place in large fields where stages have to be quickly assembled and disassembled as the festival moves across the country.  This rapid construction, and comfortable gathering place for people to stand outside can only be accomplished during the summer.  For the comfort of both fans and musicians, The Warped Tour hosts its three shows between “June 8th [in] Cleveland, OH” and “July 20 [in] Mountain View, CA”.  On top of music festivals, summer is also when food festivals attract large crowds.  As they, too, tour from city to city large open air spaces must be free from snow and ice to attract those seeking the finest BBQ their country has to offer.  In Toronto, Canada “Gates open June 28th” for “Toronto Ribfest”.  Providing an opportunity for friends and family to eat together long into the night before the “9:03pm sunset” is something that winter can not match.  Finally, community events such as large firework displays “along the beach, celebrating the birth of [the] nation” can only be appreciated during the warmer months.  Volleyball, picnics, swimming, and bright explosions high in the sky are only ever combined when the water is free from ice, and the air free from snow.  Though music festivals can be expensive, bands often offer free shows during food festivals and community events, allowing those on a budget to fully experience and enjoy everything that summer offers.

Highlight that this paragraph is approximately  250 WORDS.  Most five paragraph essays are given a 1000 WORDS  word count.  This will fit that model:

• Introduction – 125 Words
• Body Paragraph 1 – 250 Words
• Body Paragraph 2 – 250 Words
• Body Paragraph 3 – 250 Words
• Conclusion – 125 Words

Next, ensure they understand that each SUBTOPIC  had at least two or three sentences devoted to it, before the paragraph concluded with a transitional and summarizing sentence.

They should also note that each of the subtopics is supported with at least one quotation.

Releasing Responsibility

Allow students to choose either  TOPIC 1  or  TOPIC 2 to develop as their own body paragraph.

If possible, assign different topics to different groups, so that you have at least one group working on  TOPIC 1  and one group working on  TOPIC 2 .

After twenty minutes, have each group write their paragraph on chart paper, and display them in your class.  You will now have an  Introduction ,  Body Paragraph 1 ,  Body Paragraph 2 , and a  Body Paragraph 3 .

Consolidation

To conclude the lesson, and the essay, explain to students that a conclusion should rewrite the information from the introduction, while hammering home any last points they want the reader to take away.

By now, students have a mostly-complete five paragraph essay in front of them.  They should now write the concluding paragraph on a half-sheet of paper, and hand it in as an Exit Card before they leave for the day.

Essay Outline Sheet – WhatBinderDotCom.pdf

What’s Next?

Now that students know how to write a  FIVE PARAGRAPH ESSAY  we will quickly show them why no one actually writes essays that way, and why – going forward – they should avoid writing essays like that as well.

They will learn that a  MULTI-PARAGRAPHED ESSAY  is just as easy to write, and can be written with the same organizational sheets.  This one step will take their work from being ready for the classroom, to being ready for the world at large.

Navigate the Essay Unit

• How to Teach Essay Writing Skills
• Identifying and Avoiding Common Essay Problems
• Teaching how to Write a Five Paragraph Essay
• Understanding that Five Paragraph Essays do not Exist in the Wild
• The Importance of Supporting Your Claims with Evidence
• Embedding Quotations as Supporting Evidence
• Teaching how to Go from Text, to Outline, to Essay
• Student Learning through Digital Editing and Revision
• Release of Responsibility: Writing the Final Essay

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This is super helpful; a life-saver for me, actually. I am a grade one teacher tossed into grade seven this year (due to making class sizes smaller because of COVID) Thank you so much for posting your knowledge free-of-charge for people like me to access freely! Much appreciated!

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How to Teach Paragraph Writing – Using Transitions in Paragraph Writing

This is the last of four in my series on Teaching Paragraph Writing.

If you’ve been following along, you know that we’ve discussed Topic Sentences, Supporting Ideas and Details , and even Conclusions …

And now we’re going to do a little more advanced work by adding transitions to our paragraph. These tiny words and phrases can make a big difference in paragraph writing. Transitions really make paragraphs flow. They also help readers understand the paragraph’s organization.

So, how exactly do I teach transitions for paragraph writing? Well, compared to teaching conclusions…it’s a breeze! 🙂

1. Brainstorm a Transition List

Some students have a pretty good foundation for basic transitions in writing by the time they enter my class for 4th/5th grade. Of course, I would like to expand their little brains with additional ones, but overall, I’d say many students in upper elementary are off to a good start.

Before I give examples and do any real modeling of transitions, I like to have students work in pairs to come up with a list of possible transitions on their whiteboards. Once they’ve worked on this for a while, we go over their answers and try to make a class list of as many new transitions as possible.

2. Go Over the Transitions Reference List

Next, (notice the transition?) I pass out a mega-list of transitions I have compiled. We discuss category types and appropriate times to use the general groups of transition categories.

When we’re finished discussing these, I ask students to keep this list and use it as a reference. I may either ask them to put it in their binders or glue it into their Writer’s Notebooks. The list below is the one I actually use and is included in the Transition packet.

3. Talk Through the Paragraph Using Transitions

I know that sometimes students see writing as a chore. I may love it and I try to get them excited about it too, but even if I do cartwheels about what we’re doing, it’s still about as fun as brushing teeth for some students.

One of the ways I try to keep their motivation high is to sometimes do writing lessons or “work”, without students actually lifting a pencil. I often make a deal with my students when we do certain practice or modeling activities that if they stay with me, stay tuned, stay on task, AND participate, that they won’t have to do the actual writing part…this time, for the modeling part that is.

There will come a time when it’s their turn to write, of course. So, how we “Talk Through” a paragraph is that I start a simple paragraph…like How to Take Care of a Dog or How to Succeed in School, and students help me by “feeding me” the sentences as we build the paragraph together.

When we get to the supporting ideas especially, we discuss which set of three transitions would work the best for where we want to take our paragraph. This oral practice (visual too, as I sometimes speed write it as they tell me ideas) is a great way to practice using transitions.

4. Independent Working Times

Before students actually write paragraphs with the correct use of transitions, I have them look at some paragraph examples to find as many transitions as they can find. They also do a number of worksheets that ask them to add a transition that makes sense or to circle the best transition for a particular sentence or paragraph.

All of this practice reinforces the concept of using transitions before asking students to write on their own. This process for each component of paragraph writing has made a huge difference for my students.

You can definitely make your own materials for this, but if you’d like a ready-to-use resource, I created a unit on transitions that will save you time.

Transitions in Writing

5. Time to Actually Write!

Now that my students have a really good foundation for transitions, it’s time to put all of this together and have them actually write their own paragraphs. I always have students make a t-chart ( see the post on topic sentences for an explanation ) on the back of their paper or on a separate sheet of paper before we start to organize their ideas and to pre-plan it out.

I make sure to choose my paragraph topics carefully, so they are familiar to ALL students. For example, writing one on Disneyland or Hawaii is not going to work for many students who haven’t been able to go there. Also, I try to make them fairly interesting, so they’ll enjoy the writing process a bit more.

A few of my favorite topics include My Favorite Place, My Favorite Sport/Hobby, and My Best Friend (or one of my best friends for those who have too many to choose just one!). I also make sure to give students a specific assignment of what to write in the beginning. I have found over the years that for many students, an open-ended assignment of “Write a paragraph about anything you’d like” means that they often spend MOST of their time trying to decide what to write. I try to avoid this by choosing the paragraph topic for them but once in a blue moon, I let students choose.

Once students learn a concept, we’re never really finished with it. I like to spiral whatever important skills we learn in order to strengthen them and build upon them throughout the year. So, we continue to practice paragraph writing as we go, and eventually, I teach students to write a five-paragraph essay…whew! 

My philosophy is that if we can get students to truly understand the parts of a paragraph and master the basic structure of a paragraph, we can help them create quality paragraphs. This leads to quality essays and reports.

If you are in need of a huge time-saver bundle of paragraph writing resources, I would encourage you to take a look at my Complete Paragraph Writing Bundle .

These are the materials i have created and used for many years and i cannot tell you how much they have helped my students grow as writers. this bundle comes with both print and digital formats to give you greater flexibility, here it is if you’d like to check it out:.

If you’d like to get more teaching ideas for paragraph writing, here are a few posts you might like:

Topic Sentences

Supporting Ideas and Details

Conclusions

5 Tips for More Effective Paragraph Writing

• Read more about: Writing & Grammar

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Last updated on July 29, 2023 by Not So Wimpy Teacher

Teaching Opinion Writing: 8 Must-Do Tips

I love teaching opinion writing. And students love it too. Opinion writing is the third writing genre I teach. I recommend teaching writing in units, starting with personal narrative, informational report, opinion writing, and finally, fiction. 

This approach allows you to spend eight full weeks practicing one specific type of writing so students can truly master the skills. Today I am sharing 8 Must-Do Tips for teaching opinion writing. For more information about what to teach in each genre, check out my handy writing guide: What to Teach in Writing .

Check out this video about teaching opinion writing:

Keep reading to see our best tips for teaching opinion writing.

1. Start with a pre-assessment

The first must-do tip for teaching opinion writing is to start with a pre-assessment.  The pre-assessment allows you to see how much students know so you can tailor your lessons appropriately and it allows you to measure student growth at the end of the unit.

 Give students a simple writing prompt and one writing period to respond to it the best they can. Try not to answer too many questions during this writing time. You want to see what students know.

Use a simple rubric to score the sample (but don’t add the grade to the grade book). Then you can use the sample to plan your lessons, formulate conference groups, and use as a baseline. It’s not realistic to expect all your students to master all the opinion writing skills after eight weeks. But when you compare their pre-assessments to their final masterpiece, you will be able to see how much they have grown as writers.

2. Provide examples

At the beginning of your opinion writing unit, you need to spend a day or two teaching WHAT opinion writing is. You can’t expect students to write strong opinions if they don’t know what opinion writing looks like.

Use lots of mentor text passages (I include them in my writing units) and books. Once you’ve gone over several examples of what opinion writing is, a task card scoot is a great way to check for understanding.

3. Give choice

Allow students to choose their own writing topic. This is the best way to increase their excitement and ownership. No-one wants to be told what to write about. Imagine if someone told you that you had to write an opinion piece on why NASCAR is the best sport and you didn’t know anything about NASCAR. That wouldn’t be a very fun assignment. 

Students feel the same way. They are much more invested in a writing project when they can choose what to write about.

But that doesn’t mean choosing a topic will come naturally. Plan to spend 2-3 days of your opinion writing unit teaching strategies for generating topics. Two of my favorite strategies are challenging students to come up with lists of their favorites (things like hobbies, goods, movies, etc.) and things that they want (a kitten, to go camping, to eat ice cream every day). 

They can pick a favorite item from one of those lists and turn it into the topic for their opinion essay. They will use their essay to try to convince you that they are right. (Toy Story is the best movie, Why I Should be allowed to eat ice cream every day).

4. Draft early

This might be the most important tip for teaching opinion writing or any type of writing. Let students draft early in the process. 

If you try to teach every skill prior to letting students write, they will get bored. Plus, it is impossible to teach them everything they need to know before they start writing.

Instead, let them draft right away. Then each day you can teach a mini lesson on important skills. After you have taught the mini lesson,  have students go back to the draft and revise using the new strategies you have just taught.

The key is to keep this process simple. Break mini lessons down into bite-size pieces. Have students practice just one or two strategies a day. And don’t expect perfection.

5. Plan bite-sized lessons

When teaching opinion writing, you will need to teach students to use both reasons and examples to support their opinions. But it is super important to separate these into different lessons. 

You will want to teach a lesson or two on using reasons to support opinions. And then another lesson on using examples. When taught together, most students don’t understand the difference between reasons and examples. 

Plan to spend more time focused on reasons because they are essential to good opinion writing. Some kids may never understand examples in your grade level, but they can still have a quality piece of writing if they include reasons.

6. Look for the opposing opinion

Another important strategy when teaching opinion writing is to help students identify the opposing opinion. When they anticipate objections, they can strengthen their own reasons. 

A great way to do this is by asking questions. 

• Who won’t agree with you? 
• What will they say? 
• How can you change that opinion?

When students anticipate opposing arguments, they become better at supporting their own opinion.

7. Make time to edit

I believe that writing is process. First, students draft. Then, they revise. And finally, they edit. When teaching opinion writing, let students spend a day editing their essay. Give them resources like word lists, anchor carts, or editing checklists to help. Also, don’t overwhelm them by having them try to correct every mistake. Instead, have them search for specific errors, like commonly misspelled words or missing punctuation, one at a time.

Then, spend  another day having a peer edit their writing. Fresh eyes can often pick up a lot more errors. And the peer can also flag if something doesn’t make sense.

Here’s a bonus tip: reading their own essay out loud helps students to discover more of their errors. 

After students have done their editing, resist the urge to correct all of the remaining errors. They are kids and their writing is not supposed to be perfect! Seeing a page marked up with pen is discouraging to everyone.

FREE Editing and Revising Centers

Want to make editing even easier? Check out my FREE Editing and Revising Centers !

This FREE resource includes centers to help your students master tricky editing and revising skills.

Inside you’ll find:

• 18 hands-on centers, each focused on one specific skill
• Differentiated activities for grades 2-5
• Narrative, opinion, and informational writing tips, examples, and practice activities
• Editing and revising checklists
• Detailed teacher directions and center signs

These centers make a great review activity! Divide your class into groups and let them work together to read the tips, review the examples, practice the skill, and discuss their ideas.

I know you and your students are going to love them!

8. Celebrate student writing

Finally, when you are wrapping up your unit on opinion writing, set aside some time to celebrate.

Find a fun way to publish. Maybe create a class book, “In our humble opinions . . .” or try posting opinion pieces on a class blog. Create an Opinion Page bulletin board and hang up student work.

Try a writing celebration. Have a publishing party and allow students to share with one another. Put them in small groups and let everyone read their writing. Or ask students to share their favorite paragraph. Or try an Opinion Opening Night.

When you make it fun, students look forward to completing their next writing piece.

Opinion Writing Units

My opinion writing units have EVERYTHING you need to make teaching opinion writing easy. 

These units are available for grades 2-5 and come with 8 weeks of opinion writing lessons. They include:

• Lesson plans
• Mini lessons
• Anchor charts
• Mentor texts ( you don’t have to purchase any additional books or spend hours hunting in the library!
• Writing tasks
• Conference forms
• Rubrics and more

The lesson plans are simple. All you have to do is print and teach .

Students will learn all of the skills necessary for writing persuasive essays with a strong opinion: how to use facts and reasons, how to write topic and concluding sentences, how to structure paragraphs…and so much more!

Finally, these units make writing fun for your students. You may even find that your students beg for more writing time. And when students enjoy writing and get lots of practice, they perform better on standardized tests. 

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Look what Kimberly M. had to say:

This is THE BEST way to teach opinion writing! I love that the mentor texts are provided and that they are fun, interesting, and relatable to my students. It is so fun to read the mentor text to my students and ask them what they think the authors’ opinion is, what their thesis statement is, what their reasons and examples are, etc. I love that this unit focuses on each portion of the essay a little bit at a time. I love to teach reasons and examples with color codes, that way students know that their reasons support their opinion and the examples support their reasons! There are so many wonderful tools for teaching and learning in this resource, especially the anchor charts! I like to use them as a guide to create larger anchor charts with my students, but they cover all of the information that I need in the unit! – Kimberly M.

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Second Grade Opinion Writing Unit

Third Grade Opinion Writing Unit

Fourth Grade Opinion Writing Unit

Fifth Grade Opinion Writing Unit

More tips for teaching writing.

Want even more tips on how to teach writing? Then you will love my online professional development course, the Not So Wimpy Writing Masterclass . I specifically developed this online professional development course for teachers in grades 2-5 to help simplify writing workshop and provide the tools and strategies you need to be a more confident writing teacher.

You’ll learn tried and true strategies for how to teach writing , including how to:

• Teach writing in units
• Create manageable mini lessons  
• Keep students on task during independent writing time
• Implement a successful writing workshop without chaos and confusion
• Transform ALL your students into eager and excited writers who have the skills needed to perform well on standardized tests

In short, this course is designed to help you become a more confident writing teacher , regardless of what writing curriculum you have (or don’t have).

And the Masterclass is so easy to take. It’s entirely online ! You can watch whenever and wherever works best for you. And you get lifetime access to the course, which means you can return to the videos over and over again.

Check out the amazing bonuses!

Not only do you get 38 training videos , a 10-hour professional development certificate , a course workbook, and tons of tried and true strategies that have been used successfully in thousands of classrooms, but you also get these incredible bonuses:

• Compare and Contrast Reading Response Essay Writing Unit – Give your students extra practice with this tricky skill with my easy-to-use lessons.
• Bonus Module: Video Trainings of 3 Genres – See the must-know tips and tricks for teaching the most important skills in personal narrative, informational report, and opinion essay writing.

Ongoing Support – You’ll get immediate access to the exclusive Not So Wimpy Writing Gurus Facebook group where you can ask questions, get ideas and inspiration and interact with the Not So Wimpy team and Masterclass alums (aka other teachers).

​​ Registration for the Not So Wimpy Writing Masterclass is currently closed. Be sure to sign up for the Waitlist so you will be the first to know when we open it again. Sign up now so you don’t miss out!

I hope you enjoy these tips for teaching opinion writing. You can also find tips for teaching personal narrative and informational report writing .

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Not So Wimpy Writing Masterclass

Do you struggle to find time to teach writing? Do you find it a challenge to deliver lessons that help all of your writers? Would you like to learn a simple and effective way to teach writing? The Not So Wimpy Writing Masterclass is an online professional development course for grades 2-5. In this course, you will go from feeling overwhelmed to feeling confident and excited about teaching writing.

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Fifth Grade Essay Writing Worksheets and Printables

How to Write a Fifth-Grade Essay

How to write a sixth-grade essay.

Essays in the fifth grade should be concise, clear and flow easily. Students need to be able to express their ideas with proper and effective word choice and use a variety of different sentence structures. Logical sequencing of main ideas should be evident throughout the essay. In the fifth grade, students learn to expand and elaborate on their ideas. They are describing and going more in-depth in their writing than in previous grades. Fifth-grade students are exposed to different styles and genres of writing, so their writing will begin to reflect the varied structures and purposes of writing.

Decide on an essay topic. Your teacher may provide an essay topic to explore or you may be able to come up with an idea of your own. Either way, you can decide from what angle you want to approach the topic. Keep the topic focused and narrow. The essay's information should fit easily within the length of the essay assigned by your teacher. Write down various ideas that occur to you as you prepare to write the essay. You can use a graphic organizer such as a cluster map of your thoughts or brainstorming to help you organize your ideas.

Write a thesis statement. The thesis statement is the main idea of the essay and it expresses what you want to tell the reader in one or two sentences.

Research the topic. Keep research within the bounds of the essay's topic so you don't waste time searching for and reading unnecessary material. Take notes of what is important and supports the thesis statement. Also keep track of where each piece of information is found so you can easily cite your sources if the teacher requires it.

Plan the essay. Write an outline that lists each section of the essay, including an introduction, middle and a conclusion. Paragraphs that support the thesis will be in the middle of the essay.

Write a first draft of the essay. The introduction should catch the readers' attention and contain the thesis statement. The middle will contain the information you found and your ideas about it. The conclusion should summarize your main points and tell readers why the topic is important. For example, if you're writing about the history of the Sputnik satellite launch in 1957, you could state in the conclusion that Sputnik helped to begin the space race between the former Soviet Union and the United States and it helped pave the way for the building of the International Space Station that is shared between the two countries today.

Look over your essay and make sure there are no grammatical or spelling mistakes. Also pay close attention to how the essay is structured. Each paragraph should contain sentences that express the main idea of the paragraph. The paragraphs in the body should be arranged in a logical order, such as from least to most important or in a step-by-step order if you're writing a how-to essay. Make any changes you think are needed to make your essay clearer and then write out your final version when you are satisfied with it.

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• Great Schools: Your Fifth Grader and Writing

Leyla Norman has been a writer since 2008 and is a certified English as a second language teacher. She also has a master's degree in development studies and a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology.

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| | --> by BUSYTEACHER_admin 309,447 views Their college life is impossible to imagine without paper work, and that is why it is very important for them to know how to write an essay, an assignment, a dissertation, a composition, etc. So, your task as a teacher is . How to do that? What aspects to pay attention to in order your students could become the best essay writers? Here you are welcome to find some tips concerning the most important essay aspects to tell your students about. Step by step, you will make it much easier for them to understand the principles of essay writing and their importance for their future practice. Remember, that an essay is not only about writing skills, but it demonstrates the ability of your students to research as well. So, you task is to teach them to research. That is why try to reject the chosen topics if they are too easy for a student, and you see that it will not take much time to write such a essay. An essay is not an essay without any research. Explain your students, that it is always better for them to choose a topic they understand well and have an opportunity to make a research on. is important for every student to get, that is why do not forget practicing different research tactics with them: tell in details about the methods they can use to find all the information needed, how to use this info wisely, and what are the best ways to distinguish the important facts. An essay can not be just a piece of writing about general things everybody knows and understands perfectly. So, teach your students that they should not be in a hurry to write their essays at once they've chosen the topic. Make them When a student perfectly understands what he writes an essay for, it will be much easier for him to draw the outline and start writing. For your students to understand what a good piece of writing actually is, just give them some examples of excellent essays. It may be an essay of your former student for example. When they see a sample, your students will have an idea what a good essay should look like. Use samples to tell students about each element their essays should include. They will perfectly understand what the good introduction is, what an informative body of an essay should look like, and how to make an appropriate conclusion. Moreover, your students will also have an opportunity to see how sentences are built, and what grammar constructions are used in an essay. Choose some topic and make a list of points your students would need to mention if they wrote an essay on it. Such a technique will give them a better understanding of what and essay is, and . Make sure that all students perfectly understand the fact they should follow an essay outline, because it will be much easier for them to write this piece of paper. Make it clear to them that every point of the outline should start from a new paragraph. Moreover, the smaller these paragraphs are – the more attractive an essay will look for its readers. It is not very comfortable to read very long paragraphs, as it will be more difficult to get the point in such a way. Eventually, it will be easier for students themselves to compose shorter paragraphs of an essay. And here comes its most important part that is called an introduction. As a rule, students find it very difficult to write this part of their essay, as they do not know how to start a piece of writing in order to attract readers' attention and tell them shortly about what this essay is about. It is clear, that an essay will not be good without a proper and attractive beginning, so, your task is to explain this moment to your students. Tell them, that no one will continue reading their essays if they do not make it eye-catchy and clear for a potential reader. Moreover, an essay introduction should be intriguing a bit. Depending on the topic of an essay, students can start it with a story from their personal experience. This is a good way to grab an attention. Discuss this option with your students, listen to their suggestions. Discussions will help them learn the material better. Now it is high time for a conclusion, which is not less important than an introduction by the way. It is a real art to finish your in a way your reader would feel good and satisfied with everything he has read. Tell your students how to conclude their essays appropriately. Explain, that it is not good to abrupt a piece of writing. And do not forget to mention, that a conclusion of their essay should contain a summary if all points they discussed in the body! To summarize everything mentioned above, we can say that the importance of essay writing skills should not be underestimated. Such skills will help students express their thoughts clearly and write really good and even professional essays and other kinds of paper work during their further study at colleges or universities. Be sure, they will thank you for teaching such a necessary information to them. . Alex is a copywriter of website and a passionate reader of Stephen King's books. If you enjoyed this article, please help spread it by clicking one of those sharing buttons below. And if you are interested in more, you should follow our Facebook page where we share more about creative, non-boring ways to teach English. . That's 4,036 pages filled with thousands of practical activities and tips that you can start using today. 30-day money back guarantee. --> Copyright 2007-2021 пїЅ Submit a worksheet Mobile version Sign up to get access to exclusive teaching resources, activities and, ideas! How to teach Opinion Writing to 3rd, 4th and 5th Graders Effectively Opinion writing, or Persuasive writing,  can be effectively and easily taught to 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. Unlike narrative writing where creativity and flair come into play, the elements of opinion writing are more structured, almost formulaic, and thus easier to assimilate. Teaching The Structural Components of Opinion Writing Students are known to turn out better writing pieces if they have direction. Hence explicitly teaching the structural components of a persuasive/opinion essay is essential. If students are taught the form and structure of opinion writing, the job is half done. The success of the other half pretty much depends upon the writer’s content knowledge of the subject. Teaching the structure of an opinion essay can thus be broken down into three major sections: The Introduction, The Body, and The Conclusion. ✏ The Introduction of Opinion Writing How many times have we reminded our students that the beginning of an essay is so very important – that it has to arrest the reader’s attention so they are hooked to continue reading. For the introduction to be effective, it must have a hook , the writer’s opinion, and a thesis statement . This is the structure of the introduction. If students just practice writing an introduction on several given writing prompts for a week, adhering to structure for this section, will be second nature. The Hook In the Introduction Teaching students just one way to hook the reader in an opinion essay is not enough as different types of hooks would create different effects – besides we need to give our little writers lots of choices when it comes to writing. This flexibility goes a long way in getting their creative juices going when writing supporting details that support their opinion. 5 Popular Hooks to Support the Opinion So you can teach your 3 rd , 4 th, and 5 th graders to begin their opinion essay with any one of the five different hooks. Interestingly, they are also called sizzling starts. And rightly so. Students may begin with any one of the below hooks: Strong Statement Rhetorical Question The first two starters are popular starters and I often encourage my 5 th graders to use either of them in their introduction. Writing the Opinion of an Opinion Essay Right after the hook, students write their opinion on the issue after weighing the pros and cons. Now for the lower grades (grades 1-3), students could simply begin their opinion with any of the phrases: ‘In my opinion..’ ‘I firmly believe…’ ‘I am of the opinion…’ However, 3 rd , 4 th, and 5 th graders need to show more sophistication in their writing, so beginning with these opinion starters would not do justice to the writing skill they are actually capable of implementing. Instead, students need to convey their opinion subtly by reflecting on the issue. This will consequently lead to the thesis statement that follows next and sums up the introduction. ✏ Writing The Body of an Opinion Essay We can teach our 3 rd , 4 th, and 5 th graders to adhere to structure when they write the body paragraphs of their opinion essay too. Each body paragraph needs to have a reason introduced by a topic sentence , supporting details that support the reason, and a concluding sentence that sums up that body paragraph. If students are explicitly taught this structure, then they are more likely to stay on task and won’t get carried away in their writing. So, how many body paragraphs should there be? The best number, I tell my 5th-grade students is – three. Each reason is given its very own paragraph, with the last paragraph reserved for the most important reason. The least strong reason should be sandwiched between the first strong reason and the last. This is in keeping with the notion that the beginning and end of any piece of writing are the most important. ✏ Writing The Conclusion of an Opinion Essay Some students are known to get so carried away with their reasoning in the body paragraphs that they often skip this last important section or don’t have the time to write it – if sitting a timed writing examination. It is in this section, that students need to be reminded to re-visit their opinion, provide a summary statement of their reasons, and the most important of all – give a call to action that causes the reader to reflect on the issue.  In a real-life context, this call of action would induce the reader to take action on the basis of the arguments put forth. The Effective Approach to Teaching Opinion Writing Now that all the structural elements of an opinion essay have been dissected, how does one go about teaching them explicitly to students – that is the question. Based on my personal experience and in my opinion, the best approach would be to teach each structural component separately . This would entail providing ample practice and modeling on the elements involved. Once students have a good understanding and practice of the structural components of each section, then they can write out the entire opinion essay, given a prompt. Prior to doing so, brainstorming ideas for each section on a graphic organizer would help structure students’ writing further and provide direction. My Summary of How to Teach Opinion Writing to 3 rd , 4 th and 5 th Graders So just a few take-away points for you when you next teach your 3 rd , 4 th, or 5 th graders how to write an opinion essay. 1. Teach students each structural component separately prior to having students write out the entire opinion essay based on a prompt. 2. Teach students how to write the introduction first in an opinion essay. This should include the different types of hooks, the opinion, and the thesis statement. 3. Teach students how to write the body of an opinion essay. This should also include each reason introduced by a topic sentence, 2-3 supporting details to support the reason, and a concluding sentence to conclude the paragraph and link back to the first reason in the topic sentence. This explicit teaching should be done for all body paragraphs. 4. Teach students how to write the conclusion which restates the writer’s opinion, provides a brief overview of the reasons, and gives a call to action. 5. And above all, remind students to edit their draft prior to publishing. All this explicit teaching needs to be adequately supported by teacher modeling and ample student practice for each structural component of the opinion essay. To conclude this post, structure provides focus and clarity of thought. Both of which we desire our students to have in order for them to turn out writing pieces that they are proud of and that we enjoy reading and – yes marking. Need a collection of self-written mentor texts ( no need to spend on books ), print-n-go sheets, interactive notebook activities, Scavenger Hunts, flipbooks, anchor charts, posters, checklists, and  marking rubrics  to teach your students a step-by-step approach to writing an opinion essay effectively? Then access the Opinion (Persuasive) Writing Growing Bundle. Teaching Opinion Writing digitally? Learn more here. And if you’d like a set of free Opinion Writing Signal Words posters to display in your classroom, access the link in the image below. Until Next Time… 4 thoughts on “How to teach Opinion Writing to 3rd, 4th and 5th Graders Effectively” That’s great to know Luna – Thank you 🙂 Wow this is awesome! Glad you liked this post! Thank you 🙂 Leave a Comment Cancel Reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Growth Mindset Quotes For Kids 21 Free Posters For Activities Simple Compound and Complex Sentences Examples Fun Fathers Day Activities For Kids Tightening Tension Pebble Rock Boulder Narrative Writing Sizzling Starts Narrative Examples Strong Leads 20 Proven Reading Comprehension Strategies With Actionable Reading Responses Terms of Use COPYRIGHT © 2024 TEACH2TELL •  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED  •  SITE DESIGN BY LAURANE RAE We noticed you're visiting from Australia. We've updated our prices to Australian dollar for your shopping convenience. Use United States (US) dollar instead. Dismiss GET TEACHING TIPS AND FREE RESOURCES Skip to primary navigation Skip to main content Skip to primary sidebar Skip to footer The Brown Bag Teacher Teach the Children. Love the Children. Change the World. July 7, 2015 Teaching Students to Organize Writing Color-coding to organize writing, 4-square graphic organizer. If my family was not home, I would not like the Cat in the Hat to come over. I do not want the Cat in the Hat to come over because he would make a mess. In the book he made a mess in the tub and he kept rubbing it on everything. If this happened at my house, I would tell him to go out. I would not let him come over. A Quick Visual Check to Organize Writing Color-coding paragraph structure gets students (and me) to visually check for missing parts in their paragraph. In the paragraph below, this friend read about Martin Luther King Jr. during Read to Self and wanted to write about him during Work on Writing. When she went to color-code her paragraph, she realized she had skipped writing a wrap-up sentence. And again, this friend could easily see she provided lots of reasons, but did not take the time to explain them. This was a ‘cold’ On Demand prompt, so it was interesting for me to see as a teacher what we were missing. After looking at several paragraphs missing green, we went back and practiced explaining our details and reasons! Learn the Structure…then Change! Now, not all paragraphs are structured the same. So, I do teach my friends to be flexible. Sometimes (toward the end of the year), our color-coding only denoted different parts of our paragraph. Below you’ll see a paragraph we wrote as a class about wood and jumping spiders. The main idea and wrap-up sentence are the same color (because they have the same jobs). Our comparisons are one color (green) and our differences are one color (red). In this situation, I want students to be able to easily differentiate between the parts of the compare/contrast paragraph. Here is another example of some shared writing we did (this paragraph took us two separate mini-lessons). Again, we were flexible in our colors – grabbing the EXPO markers on the tray – but still making sure to identify the parts of our writing – main idea/wrap-up sentence, comparisons, differences. Teaching students to color-code their writing is a simple way to help our friends organize their ideas and easily check to see if something is missing. But, as seen in our compare and contrast paragraphs, flexibility is key. We need to teach students that the colors aren’t as important as the content. It’s a slow transition, but an important one! Other Blog Posts Teaching and scaffolding students to write inform/explain is a tough skills. I’ve shared more ideas, strategies, and resources throughout the blog. Click on any of these title to read more! Paragraph Writing with Littles ( blog post , resource ) Gathering and Organizing Research Using Prior Knowledge to Deeper Research  Scaffolded Research in Primary ( blog post , resource) FREE Work on Writing Papers Sweet! Thanks so much for joining me. Now check your email to confirm your address & snag your freebies. Happy Teaching! -Catherine There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again. Related Posts Reader Interactions July 7, 2015 at 7:58 pm I love this post! I really like the paper with the cat and dog and then the student picks their favorite pet—is that something you created? If so, have you considered a pack like that in your store? I love the rubric at the bottom!:) & the reading included with the writing! July 8, 2015 at 2:01 pm I love the 4-square writing paper. Did you create this? July 9, 2015 at 3:08 pm Your four square paper would even help our 5th graders write a paragraph at the beginning of the year. They seem to forget over the summer. I'll try it for sure. Thanks. Beti July 22, 2015 at 3:05 pm We're required to use the Step Up to Writing program at our school. I use highlighters to organize my 1st & 2nd graders writing also. Green for topic sentence and closing sentence. Yellow for supporting details/reasons. Red for information about the supporting details. I like that you give the word "because" special attention. It's difficult to get kids to want to explain their thinking in writing. Making this a special word could help encourage students to explain their thinking in other subject areas too. Great idea! November 2, 2015 at 5:03 am It will be a great creative work among the students who have been tired and used to get more bored when they saw same syllabus and approaches, so something new to it will be highly amended between them. article rewriter online November 14, 2015 at 9:40 am Online English Grammar Check Tool automatically proofreads our writing for basic grammar, punctuation and spelling errors. English writing is an art; however, any of us can make it effective in any field of life if we constantly keep on improving it. See more proper sentence structure checker August 20, 2023 at 3:07 pm The Brown Bag Teacher’s approach to teaching students how to organize their writing using color-coding is innovative and effective. It’s evident that visual cues can play a significant role in helping students structure their thoughts and ideas coherently. As a former student, I remember the challenges of organizing essays and ensuring that every paragraph flowed seamlessly. For those who might be grappling with essay organization or any other aspect of essay writing, I’ve had a positive experience with this https://domyessays.com/reviews.html . Their experts can guide you in structuring and refining your essays to perfection. September 26, 2023 at 10:37 am Teaching students to organize their writing is crucial for academic and professional success. It equips them with a valuable skillset for clear communication. While educators play a pivotal role, sometimes students might benefit from additional support. This is where the best writing service can step in, offering guidance and expert assistance in honing their organizational skills, ultimately helping them excel in their writing endeavors. September 27, 2023 at 6:06 pm At https://essaypro.com/sociology-essay-writing-service has sociology essay writing services that will help you cope with assignments of any complexity. Essays on various topics are exactly what you need. You can get help from the very best experts with years of experience and completed orders. A lot of positive reviews show how satisfied customers are with this service. Many people come back to this service because here you will be able to place orders completely safely. October 6, 2023 at 6:27 am July 2, 2024 at 8:08 am As a sociology student, managing coursework alongside other responsibilities can be challenging. AllEssayWriter’s specialized sociology essay writing service https://allessaywriter.com/sociology-essay-writing-service.html has been a lifesaver. They pair you with knowledgeable writers who deliver meticulously researched essays, showcasing a deep understanding of sociological concepts. Affordable and reliable, AllEssayWriter has significantly eased my academic burden while boosting my grades. July 19, 2024 at 10:56 am Helping students develop organizational skills is crucial for their academic success and overall development. For those interested in additional resources to support students’ academic needs, I recommend checking out AssignmentWriting.services . They offer useful tools and services that can further aid students in managing their assignments effectively. Keep up the great work in providing such helpful content! 3what’ll Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. Please go to the Instagram Feed settings page to create a feed. Teaching with a Five-Paragraph Essay Example Looking for a five-paragraph essay example? Look and listen in as a fourth grade teacher models this strong writing structure for her students. Ms. Sneed Grades Her Kids’ Paragraphs As our favorite fourth grade teacher graded her class’s latest paragraphs, she let out a satisfied sigh. First they tackled paragraph structure. Then they learned to elaborate. Additionally, they improved their writing by varying sentences and using transitions. Now that they had the writing strategies down, her kids were ready to scaffold from one paragraph to the five-paragraph essay . Purposefully tackling each genre of writing – then scaffolding from shorter to longer – was sure to work for her. A Five-Paragraph Essay Example Ms. Sneed turned and opened her laptop. With just a few clicks, she found it. Her favorite prompt, You Should Try It , asked kids to persuade others to try an activity – in five paragraphs. Teaching Paragraph by Paragraph The following Monday, Ms. Sneed stood in front of her class. “Today,” she said, “you will learn how to write a longer essay.” Several kids looked a little unsure, but their teacher continued. “For now, I’ll take you through a five-paragraph essay example. That should ease your concerns.” First Paragraph Ms. Sneed projected a sample. “The first paragraph, or introduction, includes a thesis statement and supportive factual reasons.” With the mention of a new term, thesis statement , more kids looked uncomfortable. Some squirmed in their seats. “Now I know the term  thesis statement is new, but no worries! You know it as a topic sentence. However, the thesis is the main idea of a multi-paragraph composition.” The teacher read the paragraph aloud. “Can anyone pick out the thesis for this persuasive essay?” she asked. One student slowly raised his hand. “Wouldn’t you like to try water skiing?” “Yes! Although it’s written as a question, this sentence offers an opinion. Furthermore, the entire essay supports this thesis. Can you find the author’s three supporting reasons?” Using the five-paragraph essay example, the class soon established the supporting details too: improving health, impressing friends, and teaching them to ski. Second Paragraph “Now let’s look at the second paragraph,” Ms. Sneed said. “You identified one of the main details as health. As you can see, this paragraph expands on that reason.” “That’s just what we were doing with one paragraph,” piped up a girl in the back row. “Um-hm. True. But writing in five paragraphs gives you more room to elaborate.” The kids seemed to relax in their seats. This wasn’t so bad after all. Third Paragraph With no further ado, she pulled up the third paragraph. “See, paragraph #3 discusses the second main supportive detail.” After they read the paragraph aloud, Ms. Sneed asked, “Who can find the topic sentence of this paragraph?” “Isn’t it the first sentence?” said a boy with purple glasses. Ms. Sneed nodded. “Easy peasy. The main idea of this paragraph, as we said before, is the second reason.” Fourth Paragraph For the fourth paragraph, Ms. Sneed tried a new tactic. “Okay, think-pair-share! Find the the topic sentences and smaller details that support it.” Her students knew what this meant. Immediately, they turned to their seat partners and began to discuss. After a few minutes, groups began to share: “The first sentence is the topic sentence again,” said the first spokesperson. “And the details are the steps in teaching,” said the second. “Ahh, a sequence paragraph inside a five-paragraph persuasive essay,” Ms. Sneed remarked. That famous teacher smile spread across her face. Fifth Paragraph “Here we have the final paragraph, or conclusion,” the teacher continued. After she read the paragraph aloud, Ms. Sneed pointed out the restated thesis statement and details. “It’s a repeat of the first paragraph in different words.” A Five-Paragraph Essay Example – and a Hamburger! Quickly, strode toward the board. She picked up a marker and sketched a hamburger with three patties. “Does this look familiar?” Everyone smiled and nodded. Ms. Sneed’s favorite analogy for an writing a paragraph ! “We just used this again,” their teacher said. “The top bun is the first paragraph. It introduces the main idea with a thesis statement and supporting details. The first hamburger patty explores the first detail; the second, the second; and the third, the third! Finally, the bottom bun wraps it all up with a restatement of the thesis and details. This helps you write, as well as find the main idea and supporting details .” “It’s just a giant version of the paragraph,” said a small girl in the front corner. “Yep,” replied Ms. Sneed. “Not hard at all – if you know what you’re doing. Over the next few months, we’ll write more of these essays in our ELA block . Then you’ll feel even more confident.” How to write a perfect essay Need to write an essay? Does the assignment feel as big as climbing Mount Everest? Fear not. You’re up to the challenge! The following step-by step tips from the Nat Geo Kids Almanac will help you with this monumental task.  Sometimes the subject matter of your essay is assigned to you, sometimes it’s not. Either way, you have to decide what you want to say. Start by brainstorming some ideas, writing down any thoughts you have about the subject. Then read over everything you’ve come up with and consider which idea you think is the strongest. Ask yourself what you want to write about the most. Keep in mind the goal of your essay. Can you achieve the goal of the assignment with this topic? If so, you’re good to go. WRITE A TOPIC SENTENCE This is the main idea of your essay, a statement of your thoughts on the subject. Again, consider the goal of your essay. Think of the topic sentence as an introduction that tells your reader what the rest of your essay will be about. OUTLINE YOUR IDEAS Once you have a good topic sentence, you then need to support that main idea with more detailed information, facts, thoughts, and examples. These supporting points answer one question about your topic sentence—“Why?” This is where research and perhaps more brainstorming come in. Then organize these points in the way you think makes the most sense, probably in order of importance. Now you have an outline for your essay. ON YOUR MARK, GET SET, WRITE! Follow your outline, using each of your supporting points as the topic sentence of its own paragraph. Use descriptive words to get your ideas across to the reader. Go into detail, using specific information to tell your story or make your point. Stay on track, making sure that everything you include is somehow related to the main idea of your essay. Use transitions to make your writing flow. Finish your essay with a conclusion that summarizes your entire essay and 5 restates your main idea. PROOFREAD AND REVISE Check for errors in spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammar. Look for ways to make your writing clear, understandable, and interesting. Use descriptive verbs, adjectives, or adverbs when possible. It also helps to have someone else read your work to point out things you might have missed. Then make the necessary corrections and changes in a second draft. Repeat this revision process once more to make your final draft as good as you can. Download the pdf . Homework help Science lab, (ad) national geographic kids almanac. Terms of Use Privacy Policy Your California Privacy Rights Children's Online Privacy Policy Interest-Based Ads About Nielsen Measurement Do Not Sell My Info National Geographic National Geographic Education Shop Nat Geo Customer Service Manage Your Subscription Copyright © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society Copyright © 2015-2024 National Geographic Partners, LLC. All rights reserved 285 IMAGES Paragraphs For 5th Graders 5th grade essay writing worksheets fifth how to write a How To Write An Essay For 5th Graders How To Teach 5Th Graders To Write A Persuasive Essay How To Write An Essay For 5th Graders 5 paragraph essay 5th graders VIDEO HOW TO TEACH A POETRY LESSON FOR 5TH GRADERS/ TEACH POETRY/ 5TH GRADE#poetry #firstyearteacher How to Prepare Elementary Students For the State Writing or ELA Test (Easy Standardized Test Prep) Adding a Conclusion to an Informative Essay // 5th grade writing lesson online Pick. Organize. Write! (POW!) Can your 5th grader get organized to write an essay? 4th 5th Grade Topic: Planning for an essay (non-text based) COMMENTS How I Teach 5th Grade Writing Learn how to help your fifth graders write strong sentences, essays, and research reports with tips and ideas from a veteran teacher. Find out how to create writing reference notebooks, choice boards, and sparkle words to improve your students' writing skills. Five Paragraph Essays Learn the structure and steps of five paragraph essays for fifth graders, from simple paragraphs to introduction, body and conclusion. Find tips, examples and color-coding strategies to make teaching and grading easier. How to Teach Writing in 5th Grade Learn how to teach writing in 5th grade with a 9-week pacing guide, mini-lessons, and on-demand prompts. See how to differentiate instruction, revise and edit, and publish essays in narrative, persuasive, and informational genres. HOW TO TEACH A WRITING LESSON IN 5TH GRADE/ IDEAS AND ... Hello there friends! In this video I'll go over some writing ideas and strategies that you can implement in your 5th grade classes. I'm no writing guru, but ... 5th grade writing Learn what your fifth grader will learn about writing this year, from research and revision to opinion and informative pieces. Find examples of good 5th grade informational writing and get worksheets to practice grammar and punctuation. Writing in Fifth Grade Learn how to teach writing at a fifth grade level with various genres, mini-lessons, mentor texts, and pen pals. See examples, resources, and tips from a fifth grade teacher with experience and training. Help your 5th Grader Write a Great Essay Learn pre-writing, outlining, and five-paragraph essay strategies to help your 5th grader write confidently and expressively. Find tips, examples, and a guide to write an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Teaching the 5-Paragraph Essay: Tips to Make It Easier This web page offers some tips for teaching the 5-paragraph essay to high school students, such as breaking it down into pieces, providing examples, and writing non-chronologically. It does not provide a model paper written by a student or a link to one. Teaching How to Write a Five Paragraph Essay Students should have the following information based on the paragraph. ESSAY THEME: Summer is better than Winter. FOCUS: Summer offers more comfort and freedom. THESIS: Summer is better than Winter because it offers more comfort and freedom. TOPIC 1: Clothing options. SUBTOPIC 1: Wearing shorts and sandals. How to Teach Paragraph Writing Learn how to teach upper elementary students to use transitions in paragraph writing to improve flow and organization. Find a list of transitions, a unit on transitions, and a complete paragraph writing bundle. Teaching Opinion Writing: 8 Must-Do Tips Learn how to teach students to write an opinion essay with these tips and strategies. Find out how to start with a pre-assessment, provide examples, give choice, draft early, plan bite-sized lessons, look for the opposing opinion, make time to edit, and celebrate student writing. 5th Grade Essay Writing Worksheets & Free Printables Our fifth grade essay writing worksheets will give them the encouragement they need to remain composed while composing. From understanding various text types and their purposes in the organization of an essay to synthesizing research to write essays, our worksheets will provide the practice and reinforcement students need. Fifth grade essay ... Can your 5th grader write an informational essay? Watch this video to see how 5th graders learn to write an essay. Step 2: write, revise and edit.GreatSchools is a nonprofit organization that helps millions ... How to Write a Fifth-Grade Essay Learn the steps to write a clear and concise essay in the fifth grade, from choosing a topic to revising your work. Find tips on how to use a thesis statement, research, outline, and cite sources. How to Teach Your Students to Write an Essay Outline. The last thing to do before starting to write an essay is to make its outline. Choose some topic and make a list of points your students would need to mention if they wrote an essay on it. Such a technique will give them a better understanding of what and essay is, and how it should be written. Make sure that all students perfectly ... How to teach opinion writing 3rd grade, 4th grade, 5th grade Learn the structural components of an opinion essay and how to teach them explicitly to students. Find tips, examples, and resources for hooks, thesis, body, and conclusion. Teaching Students to Organize Writing Teaching 5th grade writing, essay after essay, I saw my students struggle to organize writing their ideas and paragraphs. They would have great ideas, but they would be scattered and undeveloped. So, teaching 1st grade, I knew it was critical that I teach my friends to organize writing. How I Teach Argumentative Essay Grades 5-8 Looking for writing professional development? My 10-module video course will walk you through ALL the steps of an engaging writer's workshop. You'll see pict... Essay Writing: Lesson for Kids Learn how to write an essay in three easy steps: choosing a topic, brainstorming, and writing. Explore tips, examples, and activities to improve your essay skills. Teaching with a Five-Paragraph Essay Example Learn how to write a persuasive five-paragraph essay with a sample and step-by-step instructions. Follow a fourth grade teacher who models the structure, elaboration, and transitions for her students. How to write a perfect essay Learn how to brainstorm, write a topic sentence, outline your ideas, and revise your essay with these tips from the Nat Geo Kids Almanac. Follow the steps to create a clear, organized, and interesting essay on any subject. Five Paragraph Essay Instructional Unit Products. $48.50 $62.50 Save $14.00. View Bundle. 6th Grade Writing Bundle. This writing bundle is perfect for 6th graders! Take your students from sentence writers to amazing five paragraph essay writers with the resources in this bundle.The resources in this bundle may be purchased separately or you may save money and buy the bundle. Help teaching my 5th grader how to write essays The requirements are basic as it's their first time doing them. There is always a few prompts to write about. I've tried with the basic Intro paragraph, 3 body paragraphs, and a closing paragraph tying it all together but he's just not getting it. I was so good at writing essays, and so is his older sister, but he's definitely my child ... essay homework paper phd review speech study thesis