Thursday, June 26, 2008

English 5 paragraph essay writing lesson

The senior class of English majors is relatively small at the University. I teach this class twice a week. Earlier in the week, I began showing them how to use a Graphic Organizer, using the Four Square Writing Technique, to organize their thoughts around three major religions in the world... Buddhism, Christianity and Island.



Today, I showed the students how to use the Graphic Organizer they'd used to brainstorm their thoughts and ideas on about each religion and how to take these ideas and draft a five paragraph essay. First I modeled for them how to begin.



After modeling for the students how to write the Introduction and first paragraph (I gave them the basic structure to follow), students worked together in a guided practice activity to draft the third and fourth paragraphs.



Each student then copied from the white board the five paragraph essay we developed together to use as their own model for future essay writings.

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