My seventh and eighth grade middle school students used to have trouble writing short essays even though their English teachers taught them how to write them using a standard, five paragraph format. To help them out, I gave them the following template to use. All they had to do was to replace each sentence with one of their own.\n\nThe Five Paragraph Essay\n\nby\n\nAL Rachels
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1 Introduction
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We start the introductory, three sentence paragraph of our essay with a sentence in which we try to grab the attention of our reader by making it as exciting as we can. We follow that first sentence with a thesis\nsentence which tells the reader what will be written in paragraph 1, what will be written in paragraph 2, and what will be written in paragraph 3. We then close the introductory paragraph by using a transition sentence\nthat leads the reader into our first body paragraph.
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2 Introductory Paragraph
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This is our first body paragraph and it should contain five sentences. We should make sure that as long as we are writing in this first paragraph, that we stick to the first thesis subject. In this case, our first thesis\nsubject, is what we plan to write in the first body one paragraph. We should try to make each sentence of the paragraph interesting while making sure that we stick to the correct subject. The fifth sentence of the body one paragraph in one way or another, should finish, or wrap up the subject of the paragraph.
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3 First body paragraph
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Now, we are in the third paragraph of our essay. We have agreed that we will call this paragraph body two. Just like the previous paragraph it should contain five sentences. The subject of this paragraph should be whatever we\nwrote as the second subject of our thesis sentence. Again, the fifth sentence of the body two paragraph, should finish or wrap up the subject of the paragraph.
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4 Second body paragraph
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Continuing on as before, we are now in the fourth paragraph of our essay. Just as we've mentioned previously, we have agreed to call this, paragraph body three. Sticking to the format of the previous two paragraphs, in this one we will only talk about our third thesis subject. We will also make sure that we use five or more sentences in this paragraph. As usual, we will try to make sure that we totally finish the third thesis subject by the end of the last sentence of the paragraph.
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5 Third body paragraph
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Now we are finally in the first of three sentences in our concluding paragraph, where we want to wrap things up. Following our wrap up sentence, our second sentence restates our thesis by reminding everyone that this essay was about what would be written in body paragraph one, what would be written in body paragraph two, and what would be written in body paragraph three. As a final thought, we use a clincher sentence, that ends the essay with a though provoking final message about the content of our essay, and in this case, let me say I think we managed to write about what we said we were going to, didn't we?
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6 Concluding paragrah
