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Bookswithtea
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...the 5 paragraph essay format? My 15 yr old has done years of narrations and summaries. He's good at that, and also has done a few really good creative writing assignments as well. But we are slogging through a composition right now where its critical that he have a working theme and then chronological points that back it up. He keeps re-writing the same thing, which looks more like a narration with no theme.  Its not like he isn't trying. I just don't think he understands? I've said it a million times today alone, and I don't know how to explain it another way...
He's just barely 15, and a sophomore. Is it possible that this is part of the rhetorical stage and he's still in the middle stage (thinking of Laura Berquist's book here)??
Do your young 15 yr olds write decent 5 paragraph essays where they stay on topic or is this normal?
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mothering ds'93 dd'97 dd'99 dd'02 ds'05 ds'07 and  due 9/10
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Barb.b
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Hi! I hesitated saying this to my ds, but I finally told him it was like a math formula : intro para, 3 middle paragraphs and conclusion paragraph. I broke it down further: each of the 3 middle paragraphs had a topic sentence, back up by 3 middle sentences (at least) then a concluding sentence. I hate to make writing sound like a formula but it really helped. You could even put this "formula" into an outline to help him further. My son is very math and science minded so this helped. Also showing him some samples and breaking those down helped too!
Good luck! teaching writing can be frustrating!
Barb
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Bookswithtea
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As far as I'm concerned, the entire 5 paragraph essay format is formula writing! I keep going through the format, but he doesn't seem to see the big picture.
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mothering ds'93 dd'97 dd'99 dd'02 ds'05 ds'07 and due 9/10
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SallyT
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I'm trying to teach this to my online students right now. The ones whom I had in co-op last year, who were 14-16, got it fairly quickly. Once they can do an outline, they usually can go from there. I have a couple in my class now who are making me beat my head against the wall, because I cannot get them to use what I've GIVEN them -- the first time around, I pretty much make the outline a fill-in-the-blanks affair, supplying thesis, topic sentences for body paragraphs, and a concluding sentence which will end the essay, and filling in the rest of the framework with "Write a sentence in your own words which says X." Either this is too deceptively simple -- they think I can't possibly mean for them to copy my sentences -- or they don't want to do it my way. Still working on that one. Once they get that part, the rest will be easy.
My kids from last year aren't perfect at it yet, but they basically get it. Some kids are minimalists, and getting any substance out of them is like pulling teeth, while others are wanderers -- they have a lot to say, but it tends to lead them around by the nose, into the woods of confusion. Those are the ones I have a hard time convincing to do an outline . . . it's not second nature to that kind of writer, but it helps.
If you want to see what we're doing, you can check out my posts on outlining and drafting here. I'm not trying to blow my own horn, but all my kids from last year, including my own 14yo, did more or less get it when I taught it the way I'm doing right now.
Hope that's helpful.
Sally
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Barb.b
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Bookswithtea, I agree about 5 paragraph essays! They seem so contrived! And yet I feel forced because of the essay on the SAT and such. I was reminded of something that worked for a friend of mine - she would have her kids record what they were going to say into a tape recorder. I Haven't tried this with my kids so I don't know if it would work. I guesse it depends on the type of learner?
Just my 10 cents but I think there is a developmental aspect to writing. My ds struggled with this also and it seemed to get better. Unfortunately if someone else is grading the composition they may not see it that way. One more thing I thought of: sometimes it helps to put the composition away for a couple of days or a week. Then have him read it again. He is in a rut and will be able to look at it with a fresh mind and ideas. Sometimes it is like a mouse at a wheel, one can keep writing the same thing over and over.
Barb
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JodieLyn
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what about giving him something to write that has almost built in form.. for instance.. writing up directions for a project.. there's a first step and a second step etc. So it's relatively easy to set out these are the steps we'll learn and then this is how to do the first/second/third/ step and then something saying how it all worked.
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guitarnan
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I am working with my ds (16) and dd (10) on this and I think there are definitely both formulaic and developmental issues to consider.
We are using Jump In for dd 10 and they break it down like this:
Brainstorm ideas
Formulate topic sentence/mission statement
Choose 5 supporting reasons
Cross off the two weakest
Arrange the remaining three in logical order
Write a paragraph for each of the three reasons
Write an introductory paragraph
Write a concluding paragraph
I know this is very simplified, but basically that's what you do for a persuasive (SAT) essay.
My ds used Format Writing in 9th grade - it is an excellent book - but he didn't remember much of it when it was time to prep for the SAT. (That's the developmental part!) If you need a text, I'd certainly recommend Format Writing - it starts with effective paragraphs, moves to the infamous 5 paragraph essay, diversifies to various essay types and branches out to other useful types of writing (book report, business letter, etc.).
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lapazfarm
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Another tack to take is to find some good samples of student-written 5 paragraph essays and have him break them apart.
I did this with my middle-schoolers (back when I taught in a classroom) and this really helped them see the structure of it. I had them circle the topic sentence and conclusion sentence, number and underline the three main ideas, give a letter to each of the supporting evidence sentences in each paragraph, etc.
We did this with several good essays, then I found some that were less well-written and we did the same thing. They could really see the parts that were missing.
Then they were ready to write their own essays, one part at a time.
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SallyT
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You knoooow, once you get the format down and internalized, it's really NOT contrived at all. It becomes second nature, and you can do anything with it. Learning it goes against the grain of "writing as expression," but for dealing with any humanities subject, there's literally no better preparation, both in terms of being able to write about something in a scholarly way, but also in terms of being able to think analytically.
I'm a poet by profession, and I'm as fuh-lakey as they come about writing being all personal and spiritual . . . and I HATED making formal outlines when I was in school, because I'm much more an inductive learner. But I've found in teaching kids to write academically that it's useful to be able to map out -- at some stage in the process -- a detailed structure that you can look at the way you'd look at a road map, or like a machine that you're about to set into motion. And this isn't a bad way to think about writing at all. The poet William Carlos Williams famously said that a poem is "a large or small machine made of words" -- an essay's just a bigger machine made of words.
Anyway, the 5-paragraph essay isn't contrived, any more than a sonnet is contrived (or at least, they're both really, really contrived, but contrived isn't bad). And it IS something which your child's college professors will be amazed and impressed that your child actually knows how to do. So -- courage! It's an endeavor which has great value far beyond getting through the SAT.
(sorry, I'm pretty much dreaming 5-paragraph essays right now . . . didn't mean to launch into a tirade about them!)
Sally
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mariB
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We do lots of 5 paragraph essays. A visual is sometimes nice.
-a funnel for intro paragraph...with thesis state at bottom
V
thesis
1. paragraph one (with at least one quote)
2. paragraph two (one quote)
3. paragraph three (one quote)
Conclusion with funnel flipped around
/\
-thesis at top with broader statements funneling out.
a good place to start might be with a religion paper.
Question: What is the purpose of life?
Thesis: The purpose of life is to know, love, and serve God in this world.
Now you have a thesis and you can have your child write a supporting paragraph for knowing God, a supporting paragraph for loving God, and a third paragraph on serving God.
Hope this helps a little...just my 2 cents :)
And sending prayers...
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Barb.b
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I find that an outline is invaluable! First give him a generic one:
I. intro para (how to do this one sometimes depends on the subject) but have an introductory sentence, introduce the 3 middle paragraphs and end with a thesis.
II Topic sentence for 2nd paragraph
A. Supporting reason with example
B. suppporting reason with example
C. Supporting reason with example
D. concluding sentence - comment, or sum up
You get the point. create something like this that could be used for almost any 5 para essay. He uses it by creating one with topic sentences and reasons specific for his paper. Then to write the 1st rough draft, he must have this outline next to him and write right from it! IF he is writing a book analyis or essay for the same course my son is in then they will expect it like this. Actually in the earlier grades we have to send in the outline along with the report. It does get easier. I don't know - it might be experience more then developmental. I started my now 11 and 16 yr old on this several years ago at the same time and they got the idea about the same time! If this is to send to someone else to grade I would suggest doing some essays of your own to give him experience. He will get it, it just is very different from the writing he is used to. Saxon says about some math like algebra that "it isn't difficult, just different".
Gook Luck!
Barb
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Bookswithtea
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I understand how to teach it. I have done all the things y'all have mentioned. Its like there is some kind of brain disconnect. It reminds me of when you are teaching a child phonics and you first show them how to slur the sounds together from cuh-ah-t to cat, and they just don't get it.
I was just wondering if he is the only young 15 yr old who doesn't know how to do this?
I am starting to regret the years of narrations we have done. Its a totally different skill and it almost seems like its a handicap for him now because he keeps slipping back into that format instead.
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mothering ds'93 dd'97 dd'99 dd'02 ds'05 ds'07 and due 9/10
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Barb.b
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 I totally understand! Your phonics example is perfect. Yes, I think it is common for kids around this age to struggle with it. I also think that if we ride out these times of "brain disconnects" (I like that term! Here we use the term brain freeze too)there will be the other side! I think we all as homeschool moms can relate to how frustrating it can be when we teach it and reteach and they still don't get it! Hang in there!
Barb
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Angie Mc
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My dd has identified herself as a writer since she was very young. She is planning to go to college for writing (journalism currently.) I was very surprised to find it *very hard* for her to learn how to write a 5 paragraph essay! This type of writing reminds me of learning how to read. It takes 3 things; developmental readiness, knowing the code, and practice. My dd wasn't ready to "discipline" her thoughts and writing in this fashion until she was ~14. In addition to knowing the code (like all the steps mentioned above,) she also needed to be made aware of what she needed to leave out, or leave behind, from her other ways of writing and communicating. In her case, she needed to leave behind her opinions (lol), flowery language, hedging words, dramatic diversions, and the like. She wasn't pleased, or sold, at first. With practice, and time, she came around - especially when she pieced together that she needed to write well and quickly in order to do well in college. Now she loves knowing that she can write an essay quickly and well when needed!
I anticipate the my 13 yo son will not be able to write a good 5 paragraph essay for some time. I don't worry though because in all honestly, I didn't learn this format until I was in my Master's degree program  . I learned it in one evening with a very patient and caring professor who noticed that I couldn't write clearly to save my life  . I was developmentally ready, he showed me the code, and I practiced with much relief, knowing that I could write well and just hadn't learned how to yet.
Praying for you and your ds!
Love,
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Angie Mc
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SallyT
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Yeah, I hear what you're saying about the developmental thing. Sometimes, especially for an intuitive writer (one who can just WRITE, easily and fluently, without having to think about it as a process) it's really, really hard and counter-intuitive to think in terms of a structure. That does come more easily and naturally to some than to others. In a sense that's good -- it's good to have something to work with and shape, rather than trying to squeeze blood form a turnip. But it's such a totally different process from, say, narration, that it can seem like foreign land. That doesn't mean that doing all that narration was bad -- it's just that shifting to a whole new level can be even harder than getting going on the first one, which is now so familiar and comfortable.
I really am thinking about sonnets a lot in relation to this . . . if you've been writing free-verse poetry forever, learning to write a sonnet seems IMPOSSIBLE. It's a totally different process and doesn't even feel like writing poetry, and you write a lot of truly lousy ones in the process of learning. So you just keep writing the lousy ones and thinking about how they're not a sonnet yet, until finally you get it. And then it feels like breathing and you could write them all day -- if you persevere through the lousy ones to get to that point!
Sally
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ALmom
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Theresa had a really good point. I've had a few folks who struggled through the writing process and finally got it, and some with whom I'm still working. I am not a good teacher of writing. It is hard for me to help them with the finer points. The interesting thing is that an approach that worked fantastically with one child, doesn't cut it with another. I had some children who simply had to see how the paper they attempted could have been improved - and then they took off from the big picture. These were not helped with simple instructions or formulas, as much as having someone else really edit their paper and show them how it could have been improved. Each paper got better and better. My problem is that I had to get outside help quickly when my children went passed my ability.
My artsy children seemed to need to see the whole. They needed to see how someone else might improve their work - specific suggestions, etc. They didn't always agree with the comments, but they got the idea of what made their paper confusing, less interesting, too wordy, disorganized, whatever.
With some of mine, the typical outline was more torture than the actual paper and seemed to hinder their writing process more than help. I wish I'd known about the graphic organizers for these children. It just seems more in keeping with how they could have gotten a handle on organizing thoughts.
Some of mine did better with a more step by step, formulaic approach from the start. Others, it was best not to show this until they had the big picture idea of what they were supposed to do.
I'm also looking at suggestions from Dianne Craft for overcoming a writing glitch. Since we had physical visual problems and evidence of visual-motor integration issues, this makes some sense and we can do it rather cheaply too  .
Please take all of this with a huge grain of salt, as this is my experience as someone who likes to write, but does not do it at any kind of professional level and certainly didn't have a clue how to teach it (I still struggle with that). They are just observations in terms of what seemed to finally help some of mine.
Janet
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margot helene
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I have read this thread several times and wanted to reply, but I've found lately that when I spend a few minutes doing more than just skimming online, I've lost an hour . . . And these days I can't afford it. So . . .I put some muffins in the oven and I've given myself just the time it takes to bake them to write a response. Sorry if it's jagged, or is unrefined - no time to smooth it out. And no offense intended if it sounds brusque. 
First to Books - I agree that persistence is the key. He will get it; just like in phonics, he will finally slur those letters. Give lots of examples and show him where he needs to stop narrating and make an argument. I'm working with a girl now who is a "good" writer like Angie's daughter, but she can't get the idea of sticking to the thesis. I've worked with her for a year and now in the most recent effort she finally got a few paragraphs without summarizing/flowering. Also, of real importance is a clear writing prompt. This gal I was working with was getting really broad and confusing prompts from her curriculum provider, so her writing was all over the place trying to address everything they had in it. So the first thing I did with her was rewrite the prompt so that it focused on only ONE thing, or gave her the option to choose ONE of several choices. Are you able to do that with the prompts he's getting?
About the 5-paragraph essay with the 3-point thesis: It is good to learn the structure because it then applies to any writing you do in the future. (intro with thesis, supporting paragraphs, conclusion) However, I see it as an 8th or 9th grade skill. Once the student has the structure, he/she must work on depth and style. [One of our local public high schools here requires for graduation a 10-page paper with a 3 part (not 3-point) thesis.] One problem some students have is that they stop with the 5paragraph 3-point and can't expand their thoughts beyond it. I had a student in co-op who wrote them daily in an SAT prep program. He could write one in 10 minutes and would then flick it across the table at me. Oh and sure enough it fit the structure, but if I were the SAT scorer I would not have rated him highly. NO DEPTH, no thought--just skeleton.
So while I am saying that learning the structure is good, it is not the end. And, my problem with the 3-point thesis is that not every thesis has three exact points to be made about it. And I hate having to force a student to try and extract 3 things to say about it - that's when it becomes contrived in my mind. So I teach it, and work on it until the student has mastered it and then we set it aside and work on style, or work on developing a thesis that can be defended in 2-3 pages without having to have exactly the number of points in it as there are paragraphs in the paper. The 3-pointer does produce a cohesive essay, but not always a mature one. It is prior in knowledge, but must lead to more sophisticated writing. Does that make sense? It's just my humble .02 after 25 years of trying to get 12-14 year olds to write (the last 10 of them trying to explain to others what I do). I think what Sally is doing with her students is beautiful, and because they are talking about the writing, her students will be more mature writers.
I highly recommend the Lively Art of Writing by Lucille Payne for high school. The examples are horribly outdated, but the teaching is excellent. I'm sure there are other books, I just like that one. One student I used it with that went on to Christendom said it the most helpful thing she did in all of high school.
Out of time
Blessings to you all,
Margot
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SallyT
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Margot, that's a great point about expanding the 3-point idea to a 3-PART idea. The basic structure is there to be expanded on, broadened, deepened, etc. I had my co-op kids last year, after writing 5-paragraph essays all fall and winter, do a 10-page research paper on precisely that model, and I'll do it again with my onliners this year. They all moaned and groaned and wailed about how they were never going to get anything like 10 pages out of their topics . . . but they did.
Here again -- and I can't believe I'm going to bat for the boring old outline -- is where formal outlining REALLY helps. Whether you're writing a 5-paragrapher or a 10-pager, doing an outline, with those boring Roman numerals and As and Bs and 1s and 2s makes the idea of pushing a concept farther, unpacking it (like dividing the idea of generosity in Beowulf into two categories of generosity and thinking about each), and really developing it with specific examples from a text, visual and concrete, and you see how all the parts fit together.
Ultimately I agree with Margot that the big problem with many young writers is that they say too little, too perfunctorily. They're used to the idea of a paragraph as maybe four sentences -- I push my kids to write roughly seven-sentence paragraphs (and with some of them, with this first paper they've just written, I've had to say, "Write a topic sentence. Then write a sentence introducing the first aspect of that idea. Then write a sentence that begins with "For example . . . ," and so on).
And yes, not all writing fits neatly into five paragraphs, but having a standard to deviate from means that the deviations are deliberate and the writer has mastery over how they happen, instead of it all happening by accident, as in a train wreck, because the writer isn't in control of the form (not arguing with what Margot said -- just adding!).
This is a topic of current and continual interest to me -- I just got back my first lot of papers from my online kids (including my own daughter), and there's one whom I'm trying to persuade to try things my way. She reminds me a lot of me as a student: great natural writer, highly disinclined to do anything that isn't strictly "creative," not much into structure of any kind. The outline/structured essay thing does not come naturally to her, but I think it's worth her trying it this way, for the sake of exercise . . . but I think I'm also going to suggest some of these other ways into the idea of outlining to her, to try to get her to visualize better what I'm asking her to do . . .
Anyway, great conversation.
Sally
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Angie Mc
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SallyT wrote:
This is a topic of current and continual interest to me -- I just got back my first lot of papers from my online kids (including my own daughter), and there's one whom I'm trying to persuade to try things my way. She reminds me a lot of me as a student: great natural writer, highly disinclined to do anything that isn't strictly "creative," not much into structure of any kind. The outline/structured essay thing does not come naturally to her, but I think it's worth her trying it this way, for the sake of exercise . . .
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Yep, this is my dd! I asked her the benefits for her of mastering a writing format:
Angie's dd said wrote:
Using a format helps my writing, and me, to look better because handing in a bunch of chaotic creativity can make you look sloppy. The format is a container to work within to show my creativity, no matter the topic. It helps me to get started and finish and to see all the necessary parts to include. From here I can branch out and avoid sloppiness which allows me to be even more creative, to better showcase my creativity. Creativity can get lost if the reader can't understand me or stops reading because I'm not being clear. At first I felt following a format was unnatural. Now I also realize that I didn't like being disciplined, remembering all the parts. Once I learned the code and had it down, *it* felt natural! I can write quickly and my writing looks polished and I don't worry about it. I can bang out a 500 word essay in 30 minutes if necessary. Yes!" |
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Love,
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Angie Mc
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margot helene
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Angie Mc wrote:
Yep, this is my dd! I asked her the benefits for her of mastering a writing format:
Angie'said wrote:
Using a format helps my writing, and me, to look better because handing in a bunch of chaotic creativity can make you look sloppy. The format is a container to work within to show my creativity, no matter the topic. It helps me to get started and finish and to see all the necessary parts to include. From here I can branch out and avoid sloppiness which allows me to be even more creative, to better showcase my creativity. Creativity can get lost if the reader can't understand me or stops reading because I'm not being clear. At first I felt following a format was unnatural. Now I also realize that I didn't like being disciplined, remembering all the parts. Once I learned the code and had it down, *it* felt natural! I can write quickly and my writing looks polished and I don't worry about it. I can bang out a 500 word essay in 30 minutes if necessary. Yes!" |
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Awesome . . by jove I think she's got it!! This is exactly what I've been trying to gently get my student to understand. It's still a highly creative process . . . You use your creative powers more in making your ideas understandable. I love the "container" image. I will print this out!!!
margot
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4Real Forums : High School Years and Beyond
Topic: When do they really *get*...
