Teaching Middle School Essay Writing
While elementary and middle school writing share a lot of the same key characteristics—proper conventions, grammar, organization, focus, and purpose—middle school is where we see a pretty big leap in our expectations, and students feel it.
When students begin writing essays in early elementary school, they are filled with simple sentences, mild repetition, and clearly opinionated language. Paragraphs are short, and as long as ideas are clear and focused, the expectations have been met.
Somewhere along the way, the bar rises.
Concise and independent introductions, bodies, and conclusions are expected. Evidence must be cited and elaborated on in your own words. You aren’t allowed to repeat yourself, and simple sentences alone aren’t adequate anymore.
(And you’re finally allowed to start a sentence with “because,” but that’s another post altogether.)
While these changes take place gradually between 3rd and 6th grades, it is still daunting to middle school students—and teachers—to have to refine and redirect old habits to this new level of writing.
As a 6th grade English teacher, I can tell the kids don’t feel ready for it. (When I start a new year, I’m just relieved to see capital letters at the beginning of sentences and a few commas close to the right places.)
So, how do you introduce and teach essay writing at a middle school level?
I use two things: structure and modeling.
Structure (The Graphic Organizers that Changed Everything)
I was a struggling first-year teacher trying to explain expectations to an audience that was disinterested at best. They understood the 5-paragraph concept (mostly), but consistency was elusive.
Paragraphs were all different lengths, sentences ran on, and meaning was murky. Student writing was off-topic, completely plagiarised, or somehow, both.
And then my coworker shared his graphic organizer with me that he used in his class.
And suddenly? I actually had something to teach. Students had a concrete, visual representation of a complete paragraph. They could put a name to the purpose of each section of the essay.
After using it for awhile, I revised it to fit my 6th graders and came up with this strategy:
Introduction paragraph:
- Hook
- Bridge
- Thesis statement
Body paragraphs (3)
- Topic sentence
- Intro to evidence
- Evidence
- Explanation
- Explanation
Conclusion:
- Restate thesis
- Summarize
- End with a Mic Drop
Each sentence builds on the last and has its own unique purpose.
Did I suddenly have perfect essays?
Absolutely not. I still had repetition, copying the text, and endless “I don’t know what to write.”
That’s when I started the second life-saving strategy: modeling.
Strategy: Modeling (Actually Teaching Students How to Write)
A graphic organizer is great, but kids have to know what to do with it.
Before I ever assign students to write an essay independently, I write it for them and they copy it down in their graphic organizer. We discuss each sentence and its purpose, then I write it on the board and they follow along, writing it on their own paper.
I do this with entire essays, multiple times.
This gives kids something to refer to and model when they’re writing on their own.
I like to think of it as the age-old “I do, we do, you do” strategy.
For the first essay, I write it and they simply copy it down. (I do!)
In the next essay (generally), we discuss what we need for each sentence and students give suggestions, and we craft an essay together. (we do!)
After practicing this *a lot,* I assign students their own essay, in which they are free to look back on everything we’ve done while they write. (you do!)
What Does This Look Like All Together? How to Introduce Middle School Essay Writing
Start With Body Paragraphs
The first part of the essay I introduce is body paragraphs. I do this for a few reasons:
- Body paragraphs contain the most sections and most important information!
- There are multiple body paragraphs (3) in a single essay, which means we can practice it 3 times without switching topics.
- Body paragraphs require students to practice everything we’ve learned about up to this point: staying on topic, organized ideas, and using our own words.
I always start the year with argumentative writing, because the task is clear and students easily become engaged in arguing for topics they’re interested in.
So, we read a set of paired passages, each one arguing for a different side of an issue (such as whether or not children should be on social media).
Then, I briefly help them choose 3 reasons to support each argument (we’ll cover that skill more in-depth later).
Now it’s time to model! Using the graphic organizer and the 3 reasons we already found as a group, I model how to write a body paragraph one sentence at a time. We do this 6 times: 3 for one side of the argument, 3 for the other.
Then, Work on Introduction Paragraphs
When students understand what a body paragraph is (and have written several alongside me), we shift the discussion to what an introduction paragraph is: the paragraph that grabs our reader’s attention and gives them an overview of what we’ll be writing about.
We write two introduction paragraphs together: one for each side of the argument we’ve already written body paragraphs for.
While I do introduce thesis statements at this time, I have a separate thesis statement lesson I do with them later to give them a clearer understanding of what it is and more independent practice. For now, we just discuss and model.
In Conclusion, We Write Conclusions
You guessed it—I model the conclusion paragraph of each essay, explaining and giving real-time examples of each section as students copy the model essay.
And that’s it! We now have two complete, solid essays, and students come away with a firm understanding of each section and a fair bit of practice.
From here, we would read a new set of argumentative paired passages, choose a side, and model a whole essay from start to finish, writing each paragraph in order.
Putting It All Together
- Introduce graphic organizers
- Read argumentative paired passages and model 3 strong body paragraphs for each side of the argument
- Model introduction paragraph for one side, then the other
- Model conclusion paragraphs. After this, you have two complete argumentative essays!
- Thesis statement lesson and practice! (optional but recommended)
- Read new paired passages and model a complete essay from start to finish.
- From there, it’s just repetition and gradual release of responsibility! 🙂
Want my favorite graphic organizers that be used with any essay? They’re here!
If you would like middle school paired argumentative passages to begin teaching argumentative essay writing, I have several to choose from here (or you can get them all bundled at a discount!:)
Happy Teaching!!