5 Paragraph Essay Benefits of Exercise


Further, as outlined in this Edutopia article by Brian Sztabnik, teachers might consider supplementing the traditional five-paragraph essay with such as, “blogs, multigenre research papers, infographics, debates, or parodies/satire,” in order to broaden the scope of how students view professional and collegiate writing. There are a multitude of ways to teach writing in a way that offers the praxis dignity and depth. By moving beyond the five-paragraph essay within the English language arts classrooms, teachers acknowledge that students need to know a variety of writing methods and that there are multiple valid ways to write that diverge from the status quo. It is imperative that ELA teachers move away from the current ubiquitous five-paragraph essay methodology so that our students may begin to conceptualize in a way that is both broad and helpful to them in their journeys as writers.


So let’s free ourselves from the 5-paragraph essay. Yes, the aftermath may be a little messy and the testing companies will have to think of something else – a feature, not a bug as far as I’m concerned – but we might just realize that good writing requires a lot of curiosity, and at least a little bit of freedom.

It is far past time to address the mythical methodology surrounding the five-paragraph essay in English classrooms across America. Overwhelmingly, students all over the country struggle to write—and it’s not their fault. As it stands, standardized writing instruction is more inhibitive of producing high-quality writers than it is successful at facilitating student growth. To begin to dismantle these harmful educational structures, we need to start thinking about the teaching of writing as synonymous with the teaching of thinking; then, we need to broaden the ways we invite students to think and write.

5 Paragraph Essay on Technology

See, first, for different ways of getting your reader involved in your essay. The introductory paragraph should also include the thesis statement, a kind of mini-outline for the paper: it tells the reader what the essay is about. The last sentence of this paragraph must also contain a transitional "hook" which moves the reader to the first paragraph of the body of the paper.

The steady encroachment of standardized assessment on education and learning has only exacerbated the damage of the 5-paragraph essay. If the 5-paragraph essay was only one genre among many, we could safely contain the contagion, but as it is the easiest form to assess, it is now the monolith at the center of the English classroom.

With your thesis and list of three main points, you can quickly draw a basic outline of the paragraphs of your essay. You’ll then see why this is often called the 1-3-1 essay.

In this activity, provide your students with a list of essay topics and challenge them to write four different opening paragraphs for their essay, one each for The Surprising Fact, The Quotation, The Joke, and The Anecdote as listed above.


5 Paragraph Essay on Cell Phones in School

Students should instead be asked to write other forms, such as journal entries, blog posts, reviews of goods or services, multi-paragraph research papers, and freeform expository writing around a central theme. Although five-paragraph essays are the golden rule when writing for standardized tests, experimentation with expression should be encouraged throughout primary schooling to bolster students' abilities to utilize the English language fully.

5 Paragraph Essay on Climate Change

While we are focused on the 5 paragraph essay here, longer essays will usually be constructed in exactly the same manner, they’ll just include more body paragraphs to cover the extra level of detail.

Here are some common and trending topics for 5-paragraph essays:

Part of the reason writing doesn’t matter to most students is because they know, as we do, that the assignments we give are contrived, and that there is no assignment more contrived than the 5-paragraph essay. I’ve written about the tyranny of the form on Moving Writers and . And while I’ve committed myself to freeing myself (and my students) from under the form’s weight, I continue to struggle with the how.

I. Tips on how to write a five-paragraph essayA. Research topic:

This is just one way to write an essay, in this case one with 5 paragraphs, and there’s no rule set in stone for the correct amount of paragraphs to use in an essay. This newfound knowledge will help me as I move forward with my studies and I’m required to write better and clearer. I hope it helps you too.

How to Write an Essay Outline in 5 Simple Steps

Students—especially my 9th graders—still need a framework for organizing their ideas. So last year I taught them the Aristotelian structure, which is the classical arrangment of argument. My 9th graders came in from middle school with an understanding of the 5-paragraph essay; my job was to move them beyond it.

Learn How to Write an Essay Hook, With Examples

So I took Salazar’s advice and stopped teaching the 5-paragraph essay for literary analysis (and in general). Instead, last year, my students wrote three 5-part essays for the following texts: Much Ado About Nothing, Lord of the Flies, and Things Fall Apart. The result? Well, they were about as good as I expected them to be, especially at first—which is to say, they were not very good at all. I could tell that students were confused. I couldn’t blame them, though. After all, it was my first time teaching this new form, and my own inexperience was clearly reflected in their writing.