Writers Notebook: Paragraph Structure

Want a yummy way to teach your students the proper structure for a paragraph? I brought in a pack of Oreos to accompany this lesson.

After we went over the parts of the Oreo paragraph, we read the paragraph and used our highlighters to identify the parts of the paragraph. 

I LOVED doing this because all year we just had to say "Oreo" and they knew exactly what they needed to do to fix their writing! 

Apparently I have a thing for using food to teach... hey it's effective! Click HERE for a free powerpoint lesson on paragraph structure using a hamburger! 

How to Write a Topic Sentence

When writing a topic sentence, I say that every topic sentence needs a TOPIC and A MAIN POINT. Here's what I mean, students are writing about something but they also need to make a clear and focused point about that something. Here is what I mean....

Your topic is watching TV and the point you are making in this paragraph is that violence negatively influences behavior. 

When students are just beginning to write a topic sentence, it might be ok for them to write "watching too much TV is harmful." But, as they become better writers, if students just wrote "watching too much TV is harmful," it really doesn't provide the reader with enough information about the paragraph. What about watching too much TV is harmful? What else is the writer going to write about harmful TV watching?  

Teaching students the TOPIC + MAIN POINT technique helps students make sure their topic sentence is specific and focused, which allows them to further expand on the topic in an effective way. 

Some activity suggestions: 

Two activities I have liked to do to help them understand topic sentences are using sentence stripes and writing topic sentences for already written paragraphs. You could easily write a paragraph with a good quality topic sentence, mix up the sentences, and have the students put them paragraph back in order identifying the topic sentence and other parts of the paragraph if you want. The other activity I like to do is to pre-write some paragraphs that are missing a topic sentence. The students should then write a topic sentence that goes with that paragraph. Then, have the students share their topic sentences and they will see that while not everyone's is the exact same, they are fairly similar. 

If you would like to download the activities suggested above please CLICK HERE. I also have a whole group PowerPoint lesson available to you. 

Paragraph Structure

Teaching the proper structure of a paragraph was so much fun using the hamburger method.

The reason I LOVED using this is because it really stuck with some of my struggling writers. I taught fifth grade, but about 40% of my class read below the fifth grade level. However, I didn't want them to write below the fifth grade level. And don't think the rest of the class didn't love this, because they did! Some students picked up right away how to write a well structured paragraph so they didn't need it for long. The rest, well they still asked to use it for a few weeks.

You can get my complete hamburger paragraph PowerPoint with lessons by clicking HERE for free! I used this powerpoint over the course of a week. We started the week by discussing what a paragraph is and WHY we write with the paragraph structure. Next, I showed some "good" and "bad" examples of paragraphs. Everyone could clearly see why it was important to write in paragraph form.

Next, we reviewed the parts of a paragraph where they took notes in their writers notebooks.

Note* I personally used composition books so the students could take their own notes about writing. This becomes a fantastic resources for them to use throughout the year.

From there, we practiced everyday for 1-2 weeks. I kept many, many copies of the blank hamburger in the room and students could take them as needed. We started by writing a paragraph together, then they tried with a partner,  and finally on their own. After each time we practiced, we shared as a class our writing and analyzed it using a rubric. Let me just say,  I. Love. Rubrics. when it comes to writing. It helped my students so much when I taught them how to use the rubric themselves.

Click the link to get my FREE PowerPoint off TeacherPayTeachers! Please leave some feedback if you download the link! Thanks :)