The First Essay of the Year
Every year when I announce it’s time to write our first essay, students act like it’s the longest, hardest thing they’ve ever done—and every year I laugh, because they have no idea just how many they’re about to write.
In all seriousness, the first essay of the school year isn’t just foreshadowing, it’s exciting. It’s the starting point—like meeting characters at the beginning of a book and knowing they’ll feel like old friends by the end.
Because things don’t change as the year goes forward—we practice the same writing strategies again and again.
And each time, we get a little better at it, mastering the writing process along the way.
And that’s exciting! (To me.)
But if you’re feeling as daunted by teaching (and grading) essays as my students are about writing them, I feel you! But actually, essays are simple to teach if you have two things: a formula and a strategy.
How I Teach Argumentative Essay Writing
The Formula: Paired Passages & Graphic Organizers.
Don’t come for me, but beginning from our first essay of the year, I start teaching to the test.
All I really mean by that is we write using paired passages, or two texts about the same topic.
I always start with teaching argumentative essay writing, so we read two passages that take a different stance on the same issue (such as whether or not school start time should be later).
Step 1: Read paired passages. I always start with a topic students are interested in, with clearly organized reasons to make finding evidence easier. A few example topics would include sports, social media use, and homework.
Step 2: Discuss the purpose. It’s our job to choose a side and argue for it: we are trying to persuade the reader of our opinion using the facts found in one passage or the other.
Note: Prior to teaching my first full argumentative essay, we have broken down each paragraph individually (introduction, body, and conclusion) and discussed the components of each. Additionally, we’ve already been over important middle school writing expectations, such as:
- We have 5 paragraphs (introduction, 3 bodies, and conclusion)
- No personal pronouns! (I think…I believe… etc.)
- Organization: one reason = one body paragraph
- Using evidence to support claims
Step 3: Choose an argument and 3 reasons to support it. After reading the passages and discussing the purpose of the essay, it’s time to prewrite. I don’t do anything major here; I simply have students choose an argument and find 3 reasons to support that argument (one for each body paragraph) based on the reasons presented in the passages. I remind them that they have to have evidence to support each reason!
And just like that, we have an argument, 3 reasons to support that argument, and clear evidence (the passages!) to support our argument. We’re ready to write.
However, I don’t turn my new middle school students loose with their own half-baked, misspelled ideas yet.
The Strategy: Modeling
Students can conceptually understand the purpose of each paragraph and know how to use their graphic organizer, but without structured guidance, they struggle to write anything worth reading.
So, while independent practice is valuable, I start out by modeling the expectation and allowing students to write it along with me.
When I do this, I have a model 10-point essay (according to the rubric for my state) that follows the structure of our graphic organizer. I talk a little bit more about those in this post, and you can get them for free here. (I also have a version with student binder examples and checklists, which you can get here!)
We discuss every single sentence and its purpose. For example, when beginning our first body paragraph, I would say:
“Based on our thesis statement, which reason are we writing about in this paragraph? Are we allowed to write about any of our other reasons in this paragraph?”
Students would name the first reason we chose to support our argument, and reiterate that we can only use one reason per body paragraph.
I would then ask what we need first in a body paragraph. Because they have the graphic organizers in front of them, the answer is easy to come by: Topic sentence.
I would then ask a student the purpose of a topic sentence. Students are free to give me the answer in their own words or read it from the graphic organizer!
Once we determined the purpose of a topic sentence, I would write down the example topic sentence from my model essay (the “answer key”). A topic sentence in my classroom would look something like this:
“The first reason students shouldn’t take work home is the time it takes away from other aspects of life.“
I would write it on the board, while students would write it in the “topic sentence” section of their graphic organizer.
Then I would ask, “What comes next in this paragraph?” To which students would respond, “Intro to evidence.” We would discuss what this means, then I would write an example of an effective intro to evidence on the board while students copied it in the appropriate section of their graphic organizer.
We repeat this process for the whole essay from start to finish. At the beginning of the year, it takes us between 3-4 class days to model a whole essay.
When the modeling is done, students are almost finished with the essay—but not quite.
The last step of the process is to type the completed essay in 5-paragraph form with proper spaces, indentions, spelling, and punctuation. They do this in a Google Doc, then “share” the document with me via email when we’re finished.
This has three major benefits:
- Builds typing skills for the state test. Typing isn’t just a life skill, it’s something they will do on the state test. When they come to me, most students have very little experience typing essays on a keyboard, so I look at this as preparing them to succeed on the test (and in life!) from the very beginning.
- Helps students see the full essay come together. When students type the essay, they have the benefit of seeing it come together in one piece, not broken up by the discussion and writing we do while modeling. It reinforces how strong words, sentences, and paragraphs sound.
- Makes grading easier! Having students submit essays in a document makes it simple and easy for them to turn it in and for me to grade it. Since we all wrote the same thing, I simply check the submission briefly to ensure they included all the sections and had proper conventions. The stress of reading 100 student essays every-other week is gone.
Every classroom is different, but I model like this several times before I ask students to write independently. I want them to have a firm foundation of knowledge and lots of guided practice before independent work begins, so they can feel confident when it’s time for them to craft their own argument into an essay.
One more note: Don’t Forget the “We Do”!
I’m a big fan of the I Do, We Do, You Do structure of teaching, and modeling essay writing really allows me to apply that to my English classroom.
But what about the “we do?” What is the step between a completely modeled essay and a completely independent one?
The answer: Sentence starters and guided questioning!
After we’ve written a couple argumentative essays together and students are comfortable with the expectation of each sentence, I begin allowing students to write more of the essay on their own. For example, I might say:
“We know this paragraph is about how social media sets unrealistic expectations for teens. Write the topic sentence for this paragraph on your own.”
I would then give students time to fill in that section of their graphic organizer with their own topic sentence. This is a great formative assessment for me and great guided practice for students.
I allow volunteers to share their responses, and I give feedback in real time.
A few more examples of how I might incorporate “We Do” into essay writing:
- “We know the topic of this paragraph, and we’ve made a statement about it. Now, everyone find your own evidence from the passage to support the statement we just made.”
- “What does this evidence mean in your own words? Write that down in your first explanation box.”
- “Why do you think that evidence matters to us? Why should the reader care? Write that down in your second explanation box.”
Students write these sections independently, share aloud, and we discuss them.
This way, when it’s finally time to write an essay all on their own, they’ve already practiced every part of the essay.
If you want ready-to-use paired passages and model essays that follow this exact process, you can grab them here and start using them right away!
The graphic organizers are included in each resource, but if you just want those you can get them for free here. 🙂
Happy Teaching!!