alternatives to five paragraph essay

Creative Alternatives to the Traditional Essay

Tired of assigning (and grading) the same old essay unit after unit? This post will introduce you to 13 creative alternatives to the traditional essay that are sure to challenge and engage your students in a new way. Additionally, learn why it might be beneficial to stray from the five-paragraph essay every now and then.

Are your students stuck in the essay rut? Are they getting caught in a monotonous routine of read, discuss, write, repeat? Are you tired of reading crappy essays? (Yup. I said it.) It might be time to consider creative alternatives to the traditional essay.

I know, I know. Essays are a cornerstone of the secondary ELA classroom. But they aren’t the only way to assess student learning at the end of a novel or unit. Better yet, students who struggle to write traditional essays might thrive with an alternative assessment. Either way, it’s worth switching it up and allowing students to express their knowledge in different ways.

By this point, students have the foundation of analytical writing thanks to the five-paragraph essay. Now, it’s time to switch it up and expose them to new challenges. I’m excited to share 13 creative alternatives to the traditional essay you can try in your classroom.

1. Writing a Children’s Book

I love incorporating children’s literature in the secondary classroom whenever I can. So, why not challenge students to transform a novel into a children’s book, emphasizing a prominent theme from the text? Alternatively, you can ask students to rewrite the story, revising the characters and plot to be more kid-friendly. Both approaches require students to closely analyze the text, determine the most essential information, and transform it into an original piece. Imagine rewriting Jay Gatsby as a kid caught up in his desire for a particular toy? Or recreating the themes of Animal Farm at a petting zoo? I mean, the ideas are endless.

2. Story Rewrite (Satire, Parody, or Modernization)

Before students can offer any criticism or rewrites, they must first clearly identify and understand the various elements of the original text. After all, those elements will become the foundation of their updated piece. For example, adapting Lord of the Flies to be post-zombie-apocalypse is a great idea… as long as it reflects the tension between order and chaos! Therefore, creating an adaptation requires more than a deep understanding of the storyline. It also requires a strong sense of style, structure, and underlying message. While it can lead to fantastic results, this alternative is quite challenging for many students. Therefore, I recommend leaving this for more advanced students.

3. Student Curated Anthology

If you’re looking to have your students analyze a character or theme, consider having them create an anthology of poems, songs, artwork, or articles, to help them unpack their analysis. Not only does this alternative require students to dig deep into the assigned text, but it also encourages connections with other pieces. Choose between having your students annotate their selections or providing a small paragraph for each piece. Either way, these notes should help argue each piece’s meaning, connection, and significance. Therefore, students must be intentional about the pieces they include in their anthology as they consider how it all comes together to reflect their overall message and analysis.

4. Thematic Newspaper

A thematic newspaper is a two-birds-one-stone alternative perfect for analyzing themes and symbols. Not only is it an opportunity for students to express their textual analysis in a new way, but you get to teach them about the unique characteristics of journalism too. News stories might recap events from the plot, interview characters, or reflect the historical period, all coming together to analyze the chosen topic. Therefore, students must carefully plan each piece and how they will all work together to paint a picture. If you’re looking to make this a quicker assignment, simply have each student write one article for a collaborative newspaper.

5. Graphic Essay

Are your students super tech savvy? A graphic essay might just be the perfect creative alternative assignment. A graphic essay is a visual essay that incorporates traditional writing and pictures, graphics, videos, and emphasized text. Just like a more traditional essay, a graphic essay can be used to analyze and explore everything from characters to themes. However, this alternative allows for students to get more creative with technology and design. If tech isn’tyour thing, no worries. Your students can easily use the internet to help bring this assignment to life.

Creative Alternatives to the Traditional Essay: Shorter Writing Assignments

6. Quote-Round Up

I love this unique approach to a written assessment. Provide your students with a list of quotes. They must write a detailed paragraph connecting each quote to the novel, theme, or character. Alternatively, have students round up their own list of quotes to explain. Either way, students must exercise critical thinking, make meaningful connections, and display writing skills.

7. Annotations

If you’re looking for a quick way to assess student analysis of a text, an essay isn’t your only option. You can opt for annotations instead. This is a great way to evaluate students’ understanding of literary devices, diction, character development, etc. Consider requiring a mix of organic annotations, identifying literary elements, and analyzing themes, symbols, characters, and quotes. Of course, there’s not as much writing involved, but this assessment will provide tangible insight into students’ thought processes and comprehension as they read. Just be sure students understand how to annotate and be very clear about your expectations.

8. Essay Preview

If time is of the essence, skip the entire essay and have your students focus on writing a top-notch body paragraph. You can provide students with an introduction paragraph and have them apply their knowledge and skills in a body paragraph. Looking to add more autonomy? Give students a few thesis statements to choose from or have them create their own. Again, the main idea here is to have students focus on one body paragraph instead of the whole thing. Grading these will be a breeze yet allow you to provide constructive feedback for future growth.

9. Blog Posts

When assigning your students to write a blog post analysis, you can make it as similar or different to a traditional essay as you please. However, when it comes to essay writing, how many of your students get caught up in the “academic voice” and the rules of essay writing? They’re too busy trying to remember if they can use personal pronouns or not rather than focusing on their ideas. Having your students write a blog post gives them the freedom to express their thoughts about a novel or topic in a way that feels a little more natural and conversational. By giving students more freedom around how they write, they might just be able to focus more on what they write. Additionally, you can have students read each other’s posts and continue to dialogue in the comments. Assign a blog post after reading the novel or require them to write one every few chapters as they read!

More Creative Alternatives to the Traditional Essay

10. Board Games

After reading a novel, for example, have students recreate a traditional board game to reflect the text’s themes, symbols, plot, and characters. If they want to create their very own game, that works too! Regardless, this assignment is a creative way to get students to apply their understanding in a new way. The game might reflect a character’s development or address essential quotes and significant themes. There’s a lot of room for creativity here.

11. One-Pagers

As the name implies, this alternative assignment is limited to one page. Therefore, students must think deeply about the text before carefully choosing what they will include on their page. Talk about critical thinking! A one-pager might focus on a theme, essential question, or character. Students might include meaningful quotes, symbolic art or images, analysis, connections, and more. I like to think of these one-page-wonders as a highlight reel of a student’s analysis.

Psst… I have a whole post dedicated to using one-pagers in the ELA classroom .

12. Student Teaching

Teaching is hard work! It requires a deep understanding of the content and the ability to relay that understanding to others. For this alternative, let students be the teacher as they design and present an engaging mini-lesson to their peers. For example, let students take the reins instead of you pointing out all of the symbols of a novel! Additionally, they can teach lessons about a particular theme, historical context, or a character’s development. Unlike writing an essay, this alternative is highly interactive.

13. Sparknote-Inspired Infographic

I’m sure your students are familiar with Sparknotes or similar resources. They can be a great teaching tool or supplemental material, as long as they aren’t used as a reading replacement. One of the reasons why these resources are so great is because they do a great job at summarizing and synthesizing essential information. Infographics are an excellent way for students to do the same. Infographics require students to carefully select information to include while allowing them more creativity in presenting that information. Challenge your students to create an infographic that analyzes character development or theme and important symbols, for example. There are so many formats for infographics, and tools like Canva and Piktochart are great resources.

The Benefits of Creative Alternatives

Before you worry about standards and competencies, know that plenty of creative alternatives to the traditional essay require the same skill sets. Essays aren’t the only way to push your students to engage in critical thought and deep analysis. There are plenty of meaningful alternatives to consider and benefits to doing so.

Avoid essay burnout: Trust me, I love a good traditional essay now and then. However, if it’s all we ask students to do, year after year, literary piece after literary piece, it will get stale. Students might start to resent the traditional essay. (Maybe some of yours already have?) These creative writing alternatives are a great way to switch things up and increase student engagement.
Real-world application: There are many forms of writing and relaying information in the modern world. On the other hand, essays are very academic, meaning students will rarely need to write essays outside of a school requirement. Therefore, sprinkling in some creative alternatives to the traditional essay leaves room for a wider range of real-world writing.
Targeting different learning styles: Not everyone writes good essays, and that’s okay – or, at least, it should be. Written essays aren’t the only way to measure a student’s comprehension or critical analysis. There are various reasons why students might struggle to write an essay. By providing different opportunities for students to express their learning and analysis of an idea or text, you allow all different types of students an opportunity to thrive.

Even More Benefits of Creative Alternatives

New insights into student learning: Some students are strong essay writers, but that doesn’t mean they have strong analytical skills. A quick Google search can provide all sorts of support to help them write a decent essay, but that doesn’t mean they’re fully exercising their critical thinking skills. The truth is, they might just be good at the formula of, say, the five-paragraph essay. However, many of the alternatives mentioned in this post require students to express their learning in new ways, challenging them to think outside the box.
A different challenge: I can hear it now, “what about rigor?” Worry not. Rigor isn’t lost in these creative essay alternatives. In fact, some might argue these alternatives require more work and deeper thought than more traditional writing. The last thing we want to do is churn out robotic-like students. Rather than training students to follow a “formula” for writing, challenge them to stretch their brains to express information in a new way.

Let’s face it, my teacher friends. The game has changed when it comes to writing in the ELA classroom. That doesn’t mean there isn’t any room for more traditional writing, like essays. However, I urge you to add in a little variety. Spice it up! Give your students a little more room to exercise their creativity and thinking without the contractions of the classic essay structure. You might be surprised by what your students create.

It’s worth noting that literary essays aren’t the only writing assignments that might need a revamp. If you felt inspired by this post, check out my post about alternatives for research papers too! Here’s to changing the game of secondary ELA.

Moving Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay: Expand the Possibilities of the Genres You Teach

My Understanding of Essay, Then…

I did my student teaching in a classroom where all students were handed a hamburger graphic organizer and were taught to fill in all parts of the burger if they wanted to create a “good essay.” The kids seemed bored as they dutifully wrote sentences to fit inside of the graphic organizer. Their essays were lackluster, but they followed the formula, which was supposed to help them do better on “the test..”

When I began teaching personal essay in my own classroom, I was insistent that all of my fifth graders had three body paragraphs to support their thesis statement they wrote in the introductory paragraph because they were supposed to write five-paragraph essays (which I’ve now come to realize is an artificial construct). After a couple of years of teaching personal essay, I got better at helping students collect a variety of information (e.g., anecdotes, quotations, observations, statistics) to help them prove their thesis statements. Students would cull through their patches of thought folders for each of their “body paragraphs” on drafting day. They’d toss aside evidence that didn’t support their topic sentence. Then, they’d string all of their patches of thought together into one body paragraph. As a result, many students’ body paragraphs went on for a page or two since each paragraph contained a variety of information that proved their topic sentence (which was one of the three supports for their thesis).

As a New York City public school teacher, I attended Calendar Days hosted by the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. In November 2004, I attended a session preparing NYC teachers to teach personal and literary essays to students. While the personal essays were five paragraphs and the literary essays were four paragraphs, it was the first time I ever heard someone talk about essay in ways that made them seem — dare I say it — fun to write. I soaked up as much as I could from that day of professional learning and taught my students to embrace essay writing without the use of a hamburger chart. All of my students collected patches of thought to prove a claim, which helped them produce essays about topics that were meaningful to them as people. They may have still been formulaic, but my students were invested in their writing.

My Understanding of Essay, Now…

Through the years, I’ve come to understand that essay writing is writing to think ( Hoagland, 1976 ). Michel de Montaine was a philosopher who wrote in the countryside during the French Revolution. He called his attempts at writing essaying (or trying). In French, the word essais means trial. To write an essay is merely an attempt, or a trial, at exploring a topic.

It can be challenging to wrap our heads around essay being more than something that has a thesis statement one is trying to prove to someone. If we adopt the original meaning of essay in classrooms, then we are going to be able to teach kids to develop ideas on the paper that reflect their thinking about a topic.

Katherine Bomer offers a working definition of essay in her book, The Journey is Everything: Teaching Essays That Students Want to Write for People Who Want to Read Them (Heinemann, 2016):

Essay writing is writing to think.

Moving Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay Structure

It’s a big leap for a writer to shift from proving something using topic-centered paragraphs and concluding sentences to growing provocative ideas with complexity and depth.

If my 2020-self could provide some professional development to my early 2000s-self, I would encourage students to break from the five-paragraph structure. Just because two pieces of evidence are related doesn’t mean they should be in the same paragraph! Here’s a chart I’d share with my early-career self to help teach kids about reasons essayists use paragraphs.

Of course, like anything else, I’d tell my early-career self to make sure kids knew the rules before they broke them. That is, once a child understood paragraph structure, I’d encourage that child to get inventive with the way they used paragraphs in their essay writing.

So, how do we, as adults, move beyond the five-paragraph essay mindset?

I’ve come to believe it’s necessary that teachers immerse themselves in different kinds of essay writing. First, we have to find essays that move beyond the formulaic five-paragraph essays we’ve written and taught for years. Here are two places to look:

The afterword of The Journey is Everything by Katherine Bomer contains essays written by adults. Some of my favorite essays to study alongside teachers from the afterword of Bomer’s book are “What I Want to be…” by Randy Bomer, “Querencia” by Georgia Heard, and “Tattoos: Marked for Life” by Deb Kelt. In addition, Bomer introduces readers to “Joyas Voladoras” by Brian Doyle in her book. It’s also an exquisitely crafted essay to read and study alongside teachers.
Breakfast on Mars and 37 Other Delectable Essays: Your Favorite Authors Take A Stab at the Dreaded Essay Assignment edited by Rebecca Stern and Brad Wolfe contains a variety of personal, persuasive, and literary essays that can be used as mentor texts with students. The go-to essays I suggest for personal essay are “Raised by Wolves” by Sarah Prineas and “A Good Lie” by Laurel Snyder. For literary essay, I’m partial to “Princess Leia is an Awesome Role Model” by Cecil Castellucci and “When to Say No to Breakfast” by Brad Wolfe.

I advise immersing yourself in essay writing with the titles listed above prior to teaching an essay-writing unit to students so you can envision what the end product of a journey of thought essay looks like. As you’re reading, jot your favorite lines down. Note features you admire. Reread with different lenses. Then, talk with your colleagues — who also want to change the way they teach essay — so you can process essays you’re studying together.

Once you’re done immersing yourself in several essays, you can dive in and write one yourself. Or, if you’re studying with other teachers who want to move beyond the five-paragraph essay, then consider doing some shared writing with your colleagues. This will allow you to experience the way essay writers need to think (and write to explore) in terms of structure. In addition, it will give you a way to figure out how you might use shared writing as a launch point for doing writing-to-think work with your students. Once you’ve written a few shared pieces with colleagues, you can write your own essay, which you’ll be able to use as a mentor text with your students.

TIP: The first time you write an essay that reflects Bomer’s definition of essay (above), don’t think about standards, learning progressions, or the lessons you might teach. Pick a topic you wish to explore in your writing that holds meaning and value to you. Then, write about it, just as the authors of the above-mentioned essays did in their essays. It’s okay to try to do this kind of work and feel as though you’ve failed at it the first few times. That’s called being human. After years of being trained to write an essay in a formulaic way, it takes time to retrain ourselves to write differently. I promise you, as someone who has written a few non-formulaic essays, it is possible to retrain yourself to write an essay that is meaningful and provocative, but doesn’t necessarily win an argument in the end. I find I’m still doing things like making use of transitional phrases, but I’m no longer worried that every paragraph begins with a topic sentence, has three detail sentences, and ends with a concluding sentence.

There will be times in our students’ lives (e.g., standardized tests) when they will need to write formulaic essays that ask them to make a claim and prove it over the course of a few well-structured paragraphs. However, if we’re going to prepare students for those kinds of tasks, then it’s important to teach them how to essayer , or try, to grow new ideas and understandings in their writing. We have to push beyond the five-paragraph formula so kids aren’t doing formulaic writing. When we move beyond the five-paragraph essay, we free our students to “explore, explain, and express” (Bomer, 2016, 22). If we can teach students to think through an idea across several pages so as to come to a new understanding, then we’re teaching them a valuable life skill.

I’m curious…

What thinking have you done about moving beyond the five-paragraph essay? What are you planning to read to move help you move beyond the five-paragraph essay with your students? (Next on my to-be-read list is Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities by John Warner.) What will you do to take the next steps to change the way essay is viewed among your colleagues? Please share your reflections below.

Giveaway Information

This giveaway is for a copy of each of the following books: Craft and Process Studies: Units that Provide Writers with Choice of Genre by Matt Glover and Focus Lessons: How Photography Enhances the Teaching of Writing by Ralph Fletcher. Thanks to Heinemann for donating a copy for one reader. (You must have a U.S. mailing address to win a print copy of this book.)
For a chance to win this copy of Craft and Process Studies and Focus Lessons, please leave a comment about this or any blog post in this blog series by Sunday, February 9th at 6:00 p.m. EDT. Betsy Hubbard will use a random number generator to pick the winner’s commenter number. His/her name will be announced in the ICYMI blog post for this series on Monday, February 10th.
Please leave a valid e-mail address when you post your comment so Betsy can contact you to obtain your mailing address if you win. From there, our contact at Heinemann will ship the book to you. (NOTE: Your e-mail address will not be published online if you leave it in the e-mail field only.)
If you are the winner of the book, Betsy will email you with the subject line of TWO WRITING TEACHERS – EXPAND THE POSSIBILITIES. Please respond to her e-mail with your mailing address within five days of receipt. A new winner will be chosen if a response isn’t received within five days of the giveaway announcement.

Published by Stacey Shubitz

I am a literacy consultant who focuses on writing workshop. I've been working with K-6 teachers and students since 2009. Prior to that, I was a fourth and fifth-grade teacher in New York City and Rhode Island. I'm the author of Craft Moves (Stenhouse Publishers, 2016) and the co-author of Jump Into Writing (Zaner-Bloser, 2021), Welcome to Writing Workshop (Stenhouse Publishers, 2019), and Day By Day (Stenhouse, 2010). I live in Central Pennsylvania with my husband and children. In my free time, I enjoy swimming, doing Pilates, cooking, baking, making ice cream, and reading novels. View all posts by Stacey Shubitz

33 thoughts on “ Moving Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay: Expand the Possibilities of the Genres You Teach ”

Looking for more essays to use as inspiration? I read this piece today and I think it would be great for use as an educator. It is NOT a mentor text to use with students due to the content (eg, infertility) of the essay.

Tacos Were Always My Greatest Comfort—But I Had to Give Them Up to Get Pregnant By Katie Gutierrez https://www.bonappetit.com/story/tacos-pregnancy

The five-paragraph essay debate has always been a heated one among my colleagues. Five-paragraph essays do exist “in the wild,” but they aren’t the only option; forcing our students to use them–just like any arbitrary writing rule–often does more harm than good. I’ve enjoyed this post very much!

How to teach essay is certainly a debate amongst educators. As you know, it is one worth having!

Delightful post. Essay. I, too, get caught in the tension between structure–the five paragraph essay somewhere in grades 4-6–and development of voice–breaking the five paragraph essay structure somewhere in grades 6-12. Fundamentally, something is wrong if we have to break what we teach. I suspect we teach what’s wrong because it’s easier to grade. To test. SBAC, SAT, and AP writing sections are perfectly designed to encourage five paragraph structures. Even my state licensure testing priviledged it. It’s killing student voice. But I see here I’m starting to go on. Sauntering. Essaying. Which is not the best structure for a comment box. 😉 Thank you for the inspiration!

Actually, Kris, I think the way you expressed yourself, in a sauntering way, was perfect for the comment section of this post! 🙂

Thank you for shedding light on this important topic. It’s true that school seems to be the only place that the 5-paragraph essay thrives. Thank you for all the helpful resources that will continue to help educators grow their understanding and stretch beyond the formula.

It’s my hope that this will push some thinking and get teachers to try moving beyond the formulaic responses we’re so accustomed to in schools.

Our district is just starting to adopt the Lucy Calkins Units of Study where the five paragraph essay abounds in grades 3-8. With this foundation, and all of the state testing requirements, the hope is that as students enter 7th-12th grade that five paragraph structure can be expanded and manipulated in ways you have mentioned in this post. We are starting a book study with the John Warner book and are hoping he can leave Charleston and pay us a visit (we are in the upper part of South Carolina)– his book left the staff with so many questions, yet inspired much needed conversations! Thank you for the wonderful visuals that I can share with the teachers!

Wow! I love this idea! What a better writer I would have been if this was the instruction. Excited to see how this generation of writers changes the world!

So powerful, Stacey, on so many counts. I think foremost is the sharing of your own progression as a teacher of writing- I remember those hamburger organizers! I think of how many students dutifully comply with such things … but what a world of difference there is between compliance/checklists and creativity/real communication. Being shown how to communicate your own thoughts, your own ideas, things that matter to you in a way that impacts others is immeasurable in the spectrum of learning AND LIFE. It’s both craft and creative freedom; parameters are removed vs. enforced. I could go on – just thank you for this labor-of-love post. I have Warner’s Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities and have used it in summer writing pd for teachers at all grade levels; this book is mighty, inspiring, and true. One of my favorites on how to revise the way writing is taught- and empowering tge writer.

As a literacy coach, I was just having this conversation with 5th and 6th grade teams. They were discussing whether or not to use “I” in an argumentative essay, and how they might break away from the formulaic style of writing. Great timing!

Really great! Essay writing is so powerful and asking students to plug in ideas from an organizer doesn’t let them explore what essays really could be.

Exactly. Graphic organizers have a time and a place, but are often overused, rather than used as a scaffold.

Like Liked by 1 person

Yes. They are incredibly powerful as a scaffold, but it’s so easy for essays to read like graphic organizers without the shapes! Getting students to write in prose is always a challenge.

I have tried to design my 7th grade writing class so that kids have choice in topics and genre. Unfortunately, because of curriculum restraints and lack of time to develop solid writing lessons/units, I end up giving up by November. I would happily move away from the 5 paragraph essay! And I love this post which has validated my thinking! Back to the drawing board…right after I finish the argument essay unit. [email protected]

Let me know how it goes once you go back to the drawing board after your next unit!

Thank you!! As a mentor teacher for first year colleagues, I too have seen many hamburger anchor charts, stop lights, structured outline scaffolds, and more. I appreciate the idea of learning about traditional five paragraph essays while giving students the “permission” to explore writing as a means of sharing thought. The chart showing reasons to change paragraphs is brilliantly compiled. I will be sharing your terrific insights!

I’m thrilled that you’ll be sharing this piece with your mentees.

Really like the “Reasons to Start a New Paragraph” chart. I’m in the middle of the Research Based Argument Essay Unit of Study, which somewhat implies the 5 paragraph essay structure. However, I always tell my writers that they are in charge of their writing and need to determine how many paragraphs they need to completely share their argument. I think this new chart will help immensely. Thank you!

We’ve done some posts on when to change paragraphs in narrative writing, but I think this is the first time we’ve done it for information writing so I’m delighted it’s been well-received.

Our district has the goal of moving away from formulaic writing, so I love the content of this article. I’m thinking about how to weave this into instruction with my first graders. We’ve never asked them to write 5 paragraph essay, but we seem to be giving them writing instruction that sets them up for that. The hamburger graphic organizer sounds so familiar! We want to support kids in their understanding of how to organize their writing and what makes a paragraph. Our kids are so busy making their ideas fit into our pre-made graphic organizers, that I’m afraid they’re losing the voice and genuineness in their writing.

Tomorrow our resident primary teacher, Kelsey, will have a post about K, 1, and 2 so be sure to check it out.

Thank you so much for the information and the chance to win new books. I have a lot to learn about teaching writing.

Focus Lesson is amazing!! Would love to add Craft & Process Studies to my teacher library. We’ve spent the first half of the school year deconstructing and dismantling the idea of the 5-paragraph essay. Students are all too eager to let go of that worn & tired structure too. Thank you for this post…so many writing gems to use!

They are eager to let it go. We have to be willing to let it go too.

I struggle with the monotony of teaching 5 paragraph essays, thank you for the great ideas!!!!!

My pleasure! You should check out Bomer’s book that I referenced. It is stellar!

These look like wonderful resources to enhance anyone’s teaching of writing. Thank you!

We do the five paragraph essay at my school just to give kids a structure. They always ask, “How many paragraphs do I need?” I tell them, “As many as you need to get the job done.” Which meets with groans. Thanks for the graphic, which has added a few new starts for me! Keep up the good work!

I adore the fact that you tell your kids to write as much as they need to to “get the job done.” That’s stellar!

We are currently writing literary essays so this article came at the perfect time.

I’m so glad!

Comments are closed.

Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Subscribe Subscribed
Copy shortlink
Report this content
View post in Reader
Manage subscriptions
Collapse this bar

moving writers

Move the writing. Move the writer.

Disclosure Policy
Our Beliefs & Our Mission
Allison & Rebekah
Go-To Mentor Text Sources
Mini Moves for Writers
Language Field Notes PLC
100 Days Of Summer Writing
The Moving Writers Community

“Teachable Alternatives” to the 5-Paragraph Essay

On Friday morning at the NCTE Annual Convention, I sat in a session that featured Tom Romano, Mariana Romano, and Linda Rief. My hands failed me that session. I simply could not get all the ideas down in my notebook fast enough. One after another, each teacher spoke to the importance of giving kids the space, time, and agency to write what matters to them.

Write What Matters . Too much of the writing students do in school doesn’t matter to them, at least not in any personally meaningful way. And by that, I mean that the writing doesn’t mean anything to students beyond the immediate, beyond the class they’re taking, beyond the teacher who is evaluating them, beyond the points they’re collecting. It’s because the writing doesn’t matter to them that I’ve seen and heard of students who simply drop their essays into the recycle bin as they walk out of class the moment they’ve gotten their grades.

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 here and here . 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.

Classical Arrangement

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.

In the Aristotelian model, I explained to students, there are five parts versus five paragraphs . I first came across this model in my own rhetoric courses, then again when I began teaching AP Lang & Comp. It wasn’t until last year when I came across Ray Salazar’s provocative post, “If You Teach the 5-Paragraph Essay, Stop It!” that I realized I could use the classical arrangement for literary analysis and response.

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.

But then something happened. I started to hear my students tell me things like, “This way make so much more sense to me” and “I could have written my social studies paper this way, too.”

Isn’t that the key? Transfer . Writing that matters is writing that can transfer across task and context. What I also appreciate about the 5- part essay is that the organization is driven by questions:

Introduction : What brought me to this piece of writing? What inspired me to write?
Narration : What needs to be clarified before I continue? What background or context does my reader need to know? What’s the backstory? How did we get here?
Confirmation : What supports my point-of-view? What evidence allowed me to arrive at this argument?
Refutation : What are other ways of seeing these ideas? How are they valid?
Conclusion : All that said, what are the benefits of seeing these ideas from my point-of-view?

Below are a few of the resources I used to help teach the difference between the 5- part, classical arrangement model and the traditional 5- paragraph essay:

An organizer that outlines the key differences between the two forms , including benefits of thinking in 5 parts v. 5 paragraphs
Two sample outlines using the 5-part model ( To Kill a Mockingbird , Romeo and Juliet )
A Sway tutorial that includes 10 different ways to write an introduction
A Sway tutorial that reviews the steps for writing the narration
A Sway tutorial that reviews how to write the confirmation (the heart) of the classical model (related: A document that asks student to use transition words to develop ideas in the confirmation)
A Sway tutorial that reviews how to write the refutation and conclusion

By the time my students wrote their third essay in this form, I could, for the first time, actually see their thinking on the page in a literary analysis. The funny thing about the 5-paragraph essay is that it’s actually not set up to be an argument (or, I might argue, for deep thinking). For years, I told students to make sure that their thesis statements were “arguable,” but what did that even mean?

More often, students’ thesis statements were expository in nature, and then students spent three paragraphs telling me how they were right this way, this way, and finally, this way. Making a statement and then explaining in three different ways how that statement is true is somewhat dishonest as far as argument is concerned. What true argument does, and does well, is consider multiple views, weighs and wonders, looks at things by stepping back and zooming in. For me, the most powerful part of my students’ essays was the refutation . Unless students could honestly articulate and explain how other points-of-view were valid, their arguments weren’t really arguments.

Real-World Text Structures

While the classical arrangement worked well last year, I’m so excited to add in real-world text structure models for my students. At another NCTE panel—a tribute to the work of Tom Newkirk—retired teacher and author Gretchen Bernabei shared how she was inspired by Newkirk’s challenge to find “teachable alternatives” to the 5-paragraph essay.

In her books, The Story of My Thinking and Text Structures from the Masters , Gretchen reveals and analyzes the varied, multiple, and rich text structures students can use to organize their own writing. To see the power of using text structures to inspire writing that matters, at her roundtable on Saturday, Gretchen asked us to write one sentence—one sentence about something we have learned about teaching or from our classrooms. Here was mine:

Sometimes students are the best teachers.

Gretchen then asked us to think about how that sentence could lead to an essay. Then she gave us various real-world text structures (she had them cut up on slips of paper) and asked us to choose 1 or 2 that would work for the sentence that we had just written. Here was one that stood out to me:

“Where would your sentence fit?” she asked us. It so happened that my sentence fit most naturally in the third box. Then she asked us to write one sentence that would fill in the other two boxes, or parts, of the text structure. Ultimately, here was mine:

I used to think that teachers had to have all the answers.
But over the years, my experiences with students have shown me time and again how much I don’t know, and that admitting how much I don’t know has been humbling and powerful.
So now I think that there are times that my students are the best teachers.

This is what Gretchen calls a “kernel essay.” It’s small writing, but writing that has so much room to grow and move.

Here are other text structures that might have also worked for my sentence:

I love the ways in which using these text structures can open up students’ writing and thinking. Every NCTE conference, though I come home with many takeaways, there are often one or two key moments that make my jaw drop and think, “ Of course . Why didn’t I think about that before?” Learning about these kernel essays was one of those moments.

I can imagine following these steps with my students:

Generate multiple sentences that describe a key observation (claim) they want to make about a topic (or piece of literature)
Narrow down to 1-2 most compelling sentences (the ones that are “itches needing scratching”).
Browse various text structures, with each text structure on a separate slip of paper. Students can play around with the possibilities, deciding where their sentence might best fit.
Fill in the other parts of the text structure. Afterwards, or simultaneously, students then study a real-world mentor text that uses this text structure (Gretchen’s book Text Structures from the Masters includes mentor texts for 50 different text structures).

Since my students are also completing an Article of the Week (a la Kelly Gallagher), I hope to have them go back and then identify (or create) new text structures based upon those readings. Gretchen, herself, shared that her students started to find new text structures the more they read and wrote. (And because Gretchen, like so many teachers I know, is so generous, you can find more about kernel essays and text structures on her website here ).

By collecting real-world models for organization, students can start to see the varied and rich ways that their ideas can be expressed—that their writing no longer needs to be tied down to 5 paragraphs. How do you use text structures in your own classroom? How do you get students to move beyond 1 or 2 templates to see the richness of writing in the real world?

15 Comments

Hello! This post is so rich! I have had this post saved for a while now, and I finally feel ready to implement these essay structures in my class. I’m allowing students to self select formats based on their ZPD, and these are perfect options. Unfortunately, none of the links to your examples are functioning. Is it possible to get those somehow? Thanks!

I am so incredibly excited to do some deep dives on this subject starting here. However, I cannot seem to dive into the links. Can anyone help me understand why the seven resource links do not work for me? WordPress and Sway don’t seem to like my account though I have tried what I know to get it to work. I am dying to get into this info but I seem to be hitting some major snags. Thanks for any help!

I found your writing by accident and I’m very glad I did. Thank you so much for your clarity and generosity!

Pingback: Persuasive Essays that Shine – Coach Jan Perry

We threw out all of our argument writing curricula for this and I am SO excited. THANK YOU for putting so much work into this and sharing it! I’m thrilled.

Pingback: Good Persuasive Essay Topics UK: Online Help for You | Paraphrase Service UK
Pingback: Kernel Writing Text Structure: in a Star Wars Force Arena Post about my two favorite game heroes! – Nice Gaming Advice
Pingback: Genius Hour for All Students: Building a Makerspace in an English Language Arts classroom | Michellaneous
Pingback: On the Power of Choice (Plus a Writing Center Update!) | Moving Writers

GREAT post, Tricia–thank you! The second half will require a bit of time to ponder and digest, but the first half resonates immediately. Quick favor: clicking on the link to your first resource (the organizer that compares 5-paragraph and 5-part essays) takes a reader to the MS Office 365 sign-in page. Is there a way you could liberate that organizer so that those of us who don’t use this platform might see it? Thanks in advance, hopefully!

Pingback: Helpful Websites – Ms. Ellis' Literature Lab

The title of this blog caught we instantly. I am a pre-service teacher who is currently learning this, to get away from the traditional 5-paragraph essay and find alternatives. I am in an Issues Teaching Writing course where the professor constantly has to remind us that, once in college, this form of writing is obsolete. However, she still has freshman in her W131 classes that only write this way, as this is the way they were taught and were told that they would have to write once they got into college. The thing is, the only time that this traditional method is used is during the standardized testing. Once in college, a five paragraph essay would not be enough to cover everything that a ‘good’ paper should cover.

I loved reading this blog because it reminds me that I will have to get my future students away from this method of writing. I liked how you introduced the 5-part essay. I can understand how it will probably confuse students at first, but in the end will benefit students so much more than having to relearn how to write once they enter college.

I also enjoyed the different text structures examples. I am always looking for activities that I will be able to use in my classroom, and this is one that I will definitely be borrowing. Thank you!

Pingback: “Teachable Alternatives” to the 5-Paragraph Essay | Tricia Ebarvia

Tricia, this is not only a wonderful reflection on your learning, but a great resource for those of us learning with you. I am doing a one day workshop on Teachers as Writers and I think I just found a writing activity I want to include. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you, Leigh Ann! I really loved hearing about Gretchen’s work, and I think it should be shared with all teachers!

Essay Papers Writing Online

Ultimate guide to writing a five paragraph essay.

Are you struggling with writing essays? Do you find yourself lost in a sea of ideas, unable to structure your thoughts cohesively? The five paragraph essay is a tried-and-true method that can guide you through the writing process with ease. By mastering this format, you can unlock the key to successful and organized writing.

In this article, we will break down the five paragraph essay into easy steps that anyone can follow. From crafting a strong thesis statement to effectively supporting your arguments, we will cover all the essential components of a well-written essay. Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned writer, these tips will help you hone your skills and express your ideas clearly.

Step-by-Step Guide to Mastering the Five Paragraph Essay

Writing a successful five paragraph essay can seem like a daunting task, but with the right approach and strategies, it can become much more manageable. Follow these steps to master the art of writing a powerful five paragraph essay:

Understand the structure: The five paragraph essay consists of an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Each paragraph serves a specific purpose in conveying your message effectively.
Brainstorm and plan: Before you start writing, take the time to brainstorm ideas and create an outline. This will help you organize your thoughts and ensure that your essay flows smoothly.
Write the introduction: Start your essay with a strong hook to grab the reader’s attention. Your introduction should also include a thesis statement, which is the main argument of your essay.
Develop the body paragraphs: Each body paragraph should focus on a single point that supports your thesis. Use evidence, examples, and analysis to strengthen your argument and make your points clear.
Conclude effectively: In your conclusion, summarize your main points and restate your thesis in a new way. Leave the reader with a thought-provoking statement or a call to action.

By following these steps and practicing regularly, you can become proficient in writing five paragraph essays that are clear, coherent, and impactful. Remember to revise and edit your work for grammar, punctuation, and clarity to ensure that your essay is polished and professional.

Understanding the Structure of a Five Paragraph Essay

When writing a five paragraph essay, it is important to understand the basic structure that makes up this type of essay. The five paragraph essay consists of an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

Introduction: The introduction is the first paragraph of the essay and sets the tone for the rest of the piece. It should include a hook to grab the reader’s attention, a thesis statement that presents the main idea of the essay, and a brief overview of what will be discussed in the body paragraphs.

Body Paragraphs: The body paragraphs make up the core of the essay and each paragraph should focus on a single point that supports the thesis statement. These paragraphs should include a topic sentence that introduces the main idea, supporting details or evidence, and explanations or analysis of how the evidence supports the thesis.

Conclusion: The conclusion is the final paragraph of the essay and it should summarize the main points discussed in the body paragraphs. It should restate the thesis in different words, and provide a closing thought or reflection on the topic.

By understanding the structure of a five paragraph essay, writers can effectively organize their thoughts and present their ideas in a clear and coherent manner.

Choosing a Strong Thesis Statement

One of the most critical elements of a successful five-paragraph essay is a strong thesis statement. Your thesis statement should clearly and concisely present the main argument or point you will be making in your essay. It serves as the foundation for the entire essay, guiding the reader on what to expect and helping you stay focused throughout your writing.

When choosing a thesis statement, it’s important to make sure it is specific, debatable, and relevant to your topic. Avoid vague statements or generalizations, as they will weaken your argument and fail to provide a clear direction for your essay. Instead, choose a thesis statement that is narrow enough to be effectively supported within the confines of a five-paragraph essay, but broad enough to allow for meaningful discussion.

Tip 1:	Brainstorm several potential thesis statements before settling on one. Consider different angles or perspectives on your topic to find the most compelling argument.
Tip 2:	Make sure your thesis statement is arguable. You want to present a position that can be debated or challenged, as this will lead to a more engaging and persuasive essay.
Tip 3:	Ensure your thesis statement directly addresses the prompt or question you are responding to. It should be relevant to the assigned topic and provide a clear focus for your essay.

By choosing a strong thesis statement, you set yourself up for a successful essay that is well-organized, coherent, and persuasive. Take the time to carefully craft your thesis statement, as it will serve as the guiding force behind your entire essay.

Developing Supporting Arguments in Body Paragraphs

When crafting the body paragraphs of your five paragraph essay, it is crucial to develop strong and coherent supporting arguments that back up your thesis statement. Each body paragraph should focus on a single supporting argument that contributes to the overall discussion of your topic.

To effectively develop your supporting arguments, consider using a table to organize your ideas. Start by listing your main argument in the left column, and then provide evidence, examples, and analysis in the right column. This structured approach can help you ensure that each supporting argument is fully developed and logically presented.

Additionally, be sure to use transitional phrases to smoothly connect your supporting arguments within and between paragraphs. Words like “furthermore,” “in addition,” and “on the other hand” can help readers follow your train of thought and understand the progression of your ideas.

Remember, the body paragraphs are where you provide the meat of your argument, so take the time to develop each supporting argument thoroughly and clearly. By presenting compelling evidence and analysis, you can effectively persuade your readers and strengthen the overall impact of your essay.

Polishing Your Writing: Editing and Proofreading Tips

Editing and proofreading are crucial steps in the writing process that can make a significant difference in the clarity and effectiveness of your essay. Here are some tips to help you polish your writing:

1. Take a break before editing: After you finish writing your essay, take a break before starting the editing process. This will help you approach your work with fresh eyes and catch mistakes more easily.

2. Read your essay aloud: Reading your essay aloud can help you identify awkward phrasing, grammar errors, and inconsistencies. This technique can also help you evaluate the flow and coherence of your writing.

3. Use a spelling and grammar checker: Utilize spelling and grammar checkers available in word processing software to catch common errors. However, be mindful that these tools may not catch all mistakes, so it’s essential to manually review your essay as well.

4. Check for coherence and organization: Make sure your ideas flow logically and cohesively throughout your essay. Ensure that each paragraph connects smoothly to the next, and that your arguments are supported by relevant evidence.

5. Look for consistency: Check for consistency in your writing style, tone, and formatting. Ensure that you maintain a consistent voice and perspective throughout your essay to keep your argument coherent.

6. Seek feedback from others: Consider asking a peer, teacher, or tutor to review your essay and provide feedback. External perspectives can help you identify blind spots and areas for improvement in your writing.

7. Proofread carefully: Finally, proofread your essay carefully to catch any remaining errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and formatting. Pay attention to details and make any necessary revisions before submitting your final draft.

By following these editing and proofreading tips, you can refine your writing and ensure that your essay is polished and ready for submission.

Tips for Successful Writing: Practice and Feedback

Writing is a skill that improves with practice. The more you write, the better you will become. Set aside time each day to practice writing essays, paragraph by paragraph. This consistent practice will help you develop your writing skills and grow more confident in expressing your ideas.

Seek feedback from your teachers, peers, or mentors. Constructive criticism can help you identify areas for improvement and provide valuable insights into your writing. Take their suggestions into consideration and use them to refine your writing style and structure.

Set writing goals for yourself and track your progress. Whether it’s completing a certain number of essays in a week or improving your introductions, having specific goals will keep you motivated and focused on your writing development.
Read widely to expand your vocabulary and expose yourself to different writing styles. The more you read, the more you will learn about effective writing techniques and ways to engage your readers.
Revise and edit your essays carefully. Pay attention to sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, and spelling. A well-polished essay will demonstrate your attention to detail and dedication to producing high-quality work.

How to master the art of writing expository essays and captivate your audience, convenient and reliable source to purchase college essays online, step-by-step guide to crafting a powerful literary analysis essay, unlock success with a comprehensive business research paper example guide, unlock your writing potential with writers college – transform your passion into profession, “unlocking the secrets of academic success – navigating the world of research papers in college”, master the art of sociological expression – elevate your writing skills in sociology.

WordPress.org
Documentation
Learn WordPress
Members Newsfeed

Alternatives to the Five-paragraph Essay

Uncategorized

The five-paragraph essay is a common format for academic writing, but it is not the only option for students. Many alternatives can be just as effective, if not more so, for conveying information and making arguments. Here are some of the most popular alternatives to the five-paragraph essay:

• The Narrative Essay – A narrative essay is a story-based essay written in the first person and focuses on a personal experience. This format allows students to use their voices and share a personal story relevant to the topic.

• The Descriptive Essay – A descriptive essay describes a person, place, object, or experience in detail. This format allows students to use their creativity and descriptive language to paint a picture for their readers.

• The Compare and Contrast Essay – In this type of essay, students compare and contrast two or more subjects, examining their similarities and differences. This format can be a useful tool for making arguments and presenting information in a clear and organized manner.

• The Argumentative Essay – An argumentative essay is written to take a stance on a particular issue and argue for one side of the issue. This format is useful for presenting a well-supported argument and engaging the reader in a meaningful discussion.

• The Cause and Effect Essay – In this type of essay, students examine the causes and effects of a particular event or situation. This format is useful for explaining complex events and connecting causes and effects.

The five-paragraph essay is not the only format available to students, and many alternatives can be just as effective, if not more so, for conveying information and making arguments. By exploring these alternative formats, students can find the best approach for their writing style and the assignment.

ArticlesGiving to your Immortals Wonders Packages Once you have accomplished objective put…

ContentPlaying company Explore wilds to result in the newest jackpot game so…

Content¿Cómo se consiguen giros gratis en Lucky Larry´s Lobstermania dos? As with…

Pedagogue is a social media network where educators can learn and grow. It's a safe space where they can share advice, strategies, tools, hacks, resources, etc., and work together to improve their teaching skills and the academic performance of the students in their charge.

If you want to collaborate with educators from around the globe, facilitate remote learning, etc., sign up for a free account today and start making connections.

Pedagogue is Free Now, and Free Forever!

New? Start Here
Frequently Asked Questions
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service
Registration

Don't you have an account? Register Now! it's really simple and you can start enjoying all the benefits!

We just sent you an Email. Please Open it up to activate your account.

I allow this website to collect and store submitted data.

Module: Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay

Why it matters: beyond the five-paragraph essay.

Why learn writing strategies that move beyond the five paragraph essay?

College writing is different from high school writing. College professors view you as independent junior scholars and imagine you writing with a genuine, driving interest in tackling a complex question. They envision you approaching an assignment without a pre-existing thesis. They expect you to look deep into the evidence, consider several alternative explanations, and work out an original, insightful argument that you actually care about. This kind of scholarly approach usually entails writing a rough draft, through which you work out an ambitious thesis and the scope of your argument, and then starting over with a wholly rewritten second draft containing a more complete argument anchored by a refined thesis.

In that second round, you’ll discover holes in the argument that should be remedied, counterarguments that should be acknowledged and addressed, and important implications that should be noted. That means further reading and research, more revision, and more drafting. When the paper is substantially complete, you’ll go through it again to tighten up the writing and ensure clarity, cohesion, and coherence. Writing a paper isn’t about getting the “right answer” and adhering to basic conventions; it’s about joining an academic conversation with something original to say, borne of rigorous thought. That’s why, as a college writer, you’ll need to move beyond the five-paragraph essay. This module will introduce you to strategies for doing just that as a writer.

Why It Matters: Writing Process. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Really? Writing? Again?.. Authored by : Amy Guptill.. Provided by : The College at Brockport, SUNY.. Located at : http://textbooks.opensuny.org/writing-in-college-from-competence-to-excellence/ . Project : Writing in College: From Competence to Excellence. . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Hiker on Dune Ridges at Sunset. Authored by : Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. Located at : https://www.flickr.com/photos/greatsanddunesnpp/35474169820/ . License : CC BY: Attribution

Is the Five-Paragraph Essay History?

Has the five-paragraph essay, long a staple in school writing curricula, outlived its usefulness?

The venerable writing tool has largely fallen out of favor among influential English/language arts researchers and professional associations. “Rigid” and “constraining” are the two words critics often use to describe the format.

There’s no denying that a five-paragraph essay—comprising an introduction with a thesis, three paragraphs each with a topic sentence and supporting details, and a conclusion—is highly structured, even artificial, in format. Yet many teachers still rely on it at least to some degree. Supporters of the method argue that, used judiciously, it can be a helpful step on the road to better writing for emerging writers.

“You can’t break the rules until you know the rules. That’s why for me, we definitely teach it and we teach it pretty strongly,” said Mark Anderson, a teacher at the Jonas Bronck Academy in New York City, who recently helped devise a framework for grading student writing based on the five-paragraph form.

Classical Origins

Long before “graphic organizers” and other writing tools entered teachers’ toolkits, students whittled away at five-paragraph essays.

Just where the form originated seems to be something of a mystery, with some scholars pointing to origins as far back as classical rhetoric. Today, the debate about the form is intertwined with broader arguments about literacy instruction: Should it be based on a formally taught set of skills and strategies? Should it be based on a somewhat looser approach, as in free-writing “workshop” models, which are sometimes oriented around student choice of topics and less around matters of grammar and form?

Surprisingly, not much research on writing instruction compares the five-paragraph essay with other tools for teaching writing, said Steve Graham, a professor of educational leadership and innovation at Arizona State University, who has studied writing instruction for more than 30 years.

Instead, meta-analyses seem to point out general features of effective writing instruction. Among other things, they include supportive classroom environments in which students can work together as they learn how to draft, revise, and edit their work; some specific teaching of skills, such as learning to combine sentences; and finally, connecting reading and content acquisition to writing, he said.

As a result, the five-paragraph essay remains a point of passionate debate.

A quick Google search turns up hundreds of articles, both academic and personal, pro and con, with titles like “If You Teach or Write the 5-Paragraph Essay—Stop It!” duking it out with “In Defense of the Five-Paragraph Essay.”

Structure or Straitjacket?

One basic reason why the form lives on is that writing instruction does not appear to be widely or systematically taught in teacher-preparation programs, Graham said, citing surveys of writing teachers he’s conducted.

“It’s used a lot because it provides a structure teachers are familiar with,” he said. “They were introduced to it as students and they didn’t get a lot of preparation on how to teach writing.”

The advent of standardized accountability assessments also seems to have contributed, as teachers sought ways of helping students respond to time-limited prompts, said Catherine Snow, a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

“It simplified the tasks in the classroom and it gives you structures across students that are comparable and gradable, because you have real expectations for structure,” she said.

It’s not clear whether the Common Core State Standards’ new emphases in writing expectations have impacted the five-paragraph essay’s popularity one way or another.

“I don’t connect the two in my mind,” Anderson said. “There is more informational writing and analytical writing, but I haven’t got a sense that the five paragraph format is necessarily the best way to teach it.”

Still, Anderson argues that structure matters a great deal when teaching writing, and the five-paragraph essay has that in spades.

At a prior school, Anderson found that a more free-form workshop model in use tended to fall short for students with disabilities and those who came without a strong foundation in spelling and grammar. The format of a five-paragraph essay provided them with useful scaffolds.

“The structure guides them to organizing their ideas in a way that is very clear, and even if they’re very much at a literal level, they’re at least clearly stating what their ideas are,” he said. “Yes, it is very formulaic. But that’s not to say you can’t have a really good question, with really rich text, and engage students in that question.”

On the other hand, scholars who harbor reservations about the five-paragraph essay argue that it can quickly morph from support to straitjacket. The five-paragraph essay lends itself to persuasive or argumentative writing, but many other types of writing aren’t well served by it, Snow pointed out. You would not use a five-paragraph essay to structure a book review or a work memorandum.

“To teach it extensively I think undermines the whole point of writing,” she said. “You write to communicate something, and that means you have to adapt the form to the function.”

A Balanced Approach

Melissa Mazzaferro, a middle school writing teacher in East Hartford, Conn., tries to draw from the potential strengths of the five-paragraph essay when she teaches writing, without adhering slavishly to it.

A former high school teacher, Mazzaferro heard a lot of complaints from her peers about the weak writing skills of entering high school students and ultimately moved to middle school to look into the problem herself.

Her take on the debate: It’s worth walking students through some of the classic five-paragraph-essay strategies—compare and contrast, cause and effect—but not worth insisting that students limit themselves to three points, if they can extend an idea through multiple scenarios.

“Middle school especially is where they start to learn those building blocks: how you come up with a controlling idea for a writing piece and how you support it with details and examples,” she said. “You want to draw your reader in, to have supportive details, whether it’s five paragraphs or 20. That is where it’s a great starting point.”

But, she adds, it shouldn’t be an ending point. By the time students enter 9th grade, Mazzaferro says that students should be developing more sophisticated arguments.

“I used to help a lot of kids write their college essays, and whenever I saw a five-paragraph essay, I’d make them throw it out and start over,” she said. “At that point, you should be able to break the rules.”

Coverage of the implementation of college- and career-ready standards and the use of personalized learning is supported in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage.

Sign Up for EdWeek Update

Edweek top school jobs.

Third graders listen at the start of Lindsey Wuest's Science As Art class, at A.D. Henderson School in Boca Raton, Fla., on April 16, 2024.

Sign Up & Sign In

Our Mission

Getting Out of the Essay Rut

Alternative writing assignments can be just as rigorous as the traditional essay and can spark young writers’ creativity.

A high school student writing in a journal in class

Think about all the forms of writing that exist—letters, news articles, video scripts, infographics, press releases, etc. Why are we so hung up on using essays as the primary structure for students to demonstrate writing prowess? There can be little doubt, it seems to me, that we overuse essay writing in schools.

And one result for our student writers is burnout. When the first-year teachers who I support explain to me that their kids are sick of writing essays—by February usually, if not sooner—we brainstorm together about alternatives they might consider.

These teachers will often report back that when they defected from the essay and assigned an alternative writing project for a particular lesson or unit, their students got excited and became inspired in ways the teachers hadn’t seen before.

Before I highlight a few essay alternatives, I want to say that I do believe the ability to write an essay is a critical skill all students need to acquire. Teaching the five-paragraph structure provides kids with the necessary “training wheels” to begin figuring out how to outline their thoughts and information. Once most of them have pretty much got that, it’s worthwhile for teachers to occasionally offer alternatives.

The alternatives can be just as rigorous and demanding as the traditional essay, building the same skills and applications while also aligning to standards.

Alternatives to the Traditional Essay

Craft a convincing letter (argumentative writing): After discussing and researching a hot button issue or a problem of concern in their school or community, students write a letter to an editor, to the principal of the school, or to a community member. They should utilize ethos, pathos, logos, counterclaim, and a call to action—just as they would in an argumentative essay.

Design a pamphlet (informational writing): This alternative gives students a break from writing a research essay while still requiring them to engage in research. The format allows for some creativity in the layout and the messaging. Students should be required to include important information and facts, with sources.

Change the ending of a book or short story (narrative writing): Narrative writing techniques will need to be deployed—dialogue, figurative language, and use of imagery. If a student’s book or story ended on a tragic note, they might choose to create a happier ending, or have a character make a different choice that pivots the ending. Whatever they decide to change, they should stay true to the characters, the setting—all aspects of the story, including the author’s tone and style.

Rewrite an article (informational writing): Using the facts and information presented in an article, students write a new article on the same topic. By rearranging how facts are presented, using a different title, and even bringing in additional facts and quotations from further research, they’ll see how this reworking can significantly change the tone and give readers a different perspective on the same topic.

Script a TV or radio commercial (informational and argumentative writing): I’ve seen this assignment awaken the most dormant of young writers in a classroom as they try to sell a product to each other. First, watch and listen to a few highly effective commercials or ad campaigns together as a class and then discuss what makes them good. This works best if you provide students with some writing guidelines and requirements (length of text and use of rhetorical devices they’ve learned, for example).

After any writing assignment—an essay or an alternative—it’s important that students engage in a bit of reflective writing and discussion about why they chose a specific topic, approach, and tone, or why they chose to organize their work the way that they did.

.css-1sk4066:hover{background:#d1ecfa;} Alternatives to the 5 Paragraph Essay

The benefits of essay alternatives.

Having students write in a format other than the essay can provide a real context, one that opens up an audience beyond just the teacher. Other benefits of detouring from essay writing? Doing so allows young writers to:

Be more creative and take more chances—and how else can a writer develop a writing style and voice?
Practice a larger range of the types of writing the real world demands.
Have more choice in what they write, how they write it, and the message it conveys—a huge motivator for students who are struggling or reluctant, or who are feeling burned out.

Variety is the spice of life, as the saying goes, so taking a break from the essay and offering alternatives can add zest for young writers. And doing so gives more of an opportunity to experiment with writing style and voice. Since style and voice play key roles in determining if a piece of writing is effective, convincing, moving, or entertaining, it’s worthwhile to give students a chance to experiment with them.

The Ultimate Guide to the 5-Paragraph Essay

PeopleImages / Getty Images

M.Ed., Education Administration, University of Georgia
B.A., History, Armstrong State University

A five-paragraph essay is a prose composition that follows a prescribed format of an introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph, and is typically taught during primary English education and applied on standardized testing throughout schooling.

Learning to write a high-quality five-paragraph essay is an essential skill for students in early English classes as it allows them to express certain ideas, claims, or concepts in an organized manner, complete with evidence that supports each of these notions. Later, though, students may decide to stray from the standard five-paragraph format and venture into writing an exploratory essay instead.

Still, teaching students to organize essays into the five-paragraph format is an easy way to introduce them to writing literary criticism, which will be tested time and again throughout their primary, secondary, and further education.

Writing a Good Introduction

The introduction is the first paragraph in your essay, and it should accomplish a few specific goals: capture the reader's interest, introduce the topic, and make a claim or express an opinion in a thesis statement.

It's a good idea to start your essay with a hook (fascinating statement) to pique the reader's interest, though this can also be accomplished by using descriptive words, an anecdote, an intriguing question, or an interesting fact. Students can practice with creative writing prompts to get some ideas for interesting ways to start an essay.

The next few sentences should explain your first statement, and prepare the reader for your thesis statement, which is typically the last sentence in the introduction. Your thesis sentence should provide your specific assertion and convey a clear point of view, which is typically divided into three distinct arguments that support this assertation, which will each serve as central themes for the body paragraphs.

Writing Body Paragraphs

The body of the essay will include three body paragraphs in a five-paragraph essay format, each limited to one main idea that supports your thesis.

To correctly write each of these three body paragraphs, you should state your supporting idea, your topic sentence, then back it up with two or three sentences of evidence. Use examples that validate the claim before concluding the paragraph and using transition words to lead to the paragraph that follows — meaning that all of your body paragraphs should follow the pattern of "statement, supporting ideas, transition statement."

Words to use as you transition from one paragraph to another include: moreover, in fact, on the whole, furthermore, as a result, simply put, for this reason, similarly, likewise, it follows that, naturally, by comparison, surely, and yet.

Writing a Conclusion

The final paragraph will summarize your main points and re-assert your main claim (from your thesis sentence). It should point out your main points, but should not repeat specific examples, and should, as always, leave a lasting impression on the reader.

The first sentence of the conclusion, therefore, should be used to restate the supporting claims argued in the body paragraphs as they relate to the thesis statement, then the next few sentences should be used to explain how the essay's main points can lead outward, perhaps to further thought on the topic. Ending the conclusion with a question, anecdote, or final pondering is a great way to leave a lasting impact.

Once you complete the first draft of your essay, it's a good idea to re-visit the thesis statement in your first paragraph. Read your essay to see if it flows well, and you might find that the supporting paragraphs are strong, but they don't address the exact focus of your thesis. Simply re-write your thesis sentence to fit your body and summary more exactly, and adjust the conclusion to wrap it all up nicely.

Practice Writing a Five-Paragraph Essay

Students can use the following steps to write a standard essay on any given topic. First, choose a topic, or ask your students to choose their topic, then allow them to form a basic five-paragraph by following these steps:

Decide on your basic thesis , your idea of a topic to discuss.
Decide on three pieces of supporting evidence you will use to prove your thesis.
Write an introductory paragraph, including your thesis and evidence (in order of strength).
Write your first body paragraph, starting with restating your thesis and focusing on your first piece of supporting evidence.
End your first paragraph with a transitional sentence that leads to the next body paragraph.
Write paragraph two of the body focussing on your second piece of evidence. Once again make the connection between your thesis and this piece of evidence.
End your second paragraph with a transitional sentence that leads to paragraph number three.
Repeat step 6 using your third piece of evidence.
Begin your concluding paragraph by restating your thesis. Include the three points you've used to prove your thesis.
End with a punch, a question, an anecdote, or an entertaining thought that will stay with the reader.

Once a student can master these 10 simple steps, writing a basic five-paragraph essay will be a piece of cake, so long as the student does so correctly and includes enough supporting information in each paragraph that all relate to the same centralized main idea, the thesis of the essay.

Limitations of the Five-Paragraph Essay

The five-paragraph essay is merely a starting point for students hoping to express their ideas in academic writing; there are some other forms and styles of writing that students should use to express their vocabulary in the written form.

According to Tory Young's "Studying English Literature: A Practical Guide":

"Although school students in the U.S. are examined on their ability to write a five-paragraph essay , its raison d'être is purportedly to give practice in basic writing skills that will lead to future success in more varied forms. Detractors feel, however, that writing to rule in this way is more likely to discourage imaginative writing and thinking than enable it. . . . The five-paragraph essay is less aware of its audience and sets out only to present information, an account or a kind of story rather than explicitly to persuade the reader."

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.

Practice in Making a Simple Outline for a Cause & Effect Paragraph
Write an Attention-Grabbing Opening Sentence for an Essay
An Essay Revision Checklist
Examples of Great Introductory Paragraphs
Make Your Paragraphs Flow to Improve Writing
How to Write a Narrative Essay or Speech (With Topic Ideas)
What Is Expository Writing?
Practice in Supporting a Topic Sentence with Specific Details
Tips on How to Write an Argumentative Essay
100 Persuasive Essay Topics
Writing an Opinion Essay
How to Write a Good Thesis Statement
501 Topic Suggestions for Writing Essays and Speeches
Venn Diagrams to Plan Essays and More
Write a Compare and Contrast Essay
Writing a Descriptive Essay

Breadcrumbs Section. Click here to navigate to respective pages.

Beyond the Five Paragraph Essay

DOI link for Beyond the Five Paragraph Essay

Get Citation

Love it or hate it, the five-paragraph essay is perhaps the most frequently taught form of writing in classrooms of yesterday and today. But have you ever actually seen five-paragraph essays outside of school walls? Have you ever found it in business writing, journalism, nonfiction, or any other genres that exist in the real world? Kimberly Hill Campbell and Kristi Latimer reviewed the research on the effectiveness of the form as a teaching tool and discovered that the research does not support the five-paragraph formula. In fact, research shows that the formula restricts creativity, emphasizes structure rather than content, does not improve standardized test scores, inadequately prepares students for college writing, and results in vapid writing. In Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay, Kimberly and Kristi show you how to reclaim the literary essay and create a program that encourages thoughtful writing in response to literature. They provide numerous strategies that stimulate student thinking, value unique insight, and encourage lively, personal writing, including the following: Close reading (which is the basis for writing about literature) Low-stakes writing options that support students' thinking as they read Collaboration in support of discussion, debate, and organizational structures that support writing as exploration A focus on students' writing process as foundational to content development and structure The use of model texts to write in the form of the literature students are reading and analyzingThe goal of reading and writing about literature is to push and challenge our students' thinking. We want students to know that their writing can convey something important: a unique view to share, defend, prove, delight, discover, and inspire. If we want our students to be more engaged, skilled writers, we need to move beyond the five-paragraph essay.

Chapter chapter 1 | 9 pages, combating formulaic writing, chapter chapter 2 | 12 pages, establishing a routine of thoughtful reading and writing, chapter chapter 3 | 34 pages, reading like a writer, chapter chapter 4 | 18 pages, writing and discussion in support of thinking, chapter chapter 5 | 13 pages, writing to explore, chapter chapter 6 | 20 pages, writing as an authority, chapter chapter 7 | 28 pages, writing with mentors.

Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
Cookie Policy
Taylor & Francis Online
Taylor & Francis Group
Students/Researchers
Librarians/Institutions

Connect with us

DigitalCommons@WayneState

< Previous

Home > Irvin D. Reid Honors College > Honors Theses > 42

Honors College Theses

The five-paragraph essay: an in-depth exploration of the genre and its limitations in writing pedagogy.

Sarah N. Nafees , Wayne State University Follow

Date of Award

Winter 5-1-2018

Thesis Access

Open Access Honors Thesis

Thesis Location

Honors College Thesis

Degree Name

English Education

Faculty Advisor

Dr. Christopher Crowley

An ongoing debate in education-specifically the language arts discipline-is regarding the five-paragraph essay and its role in writing instruction. The five-paragraph essay is considered a staple in school writing curricula, but has recently been under great scrutiny due to its perceived lack of effectiveness. Everyone from secondary educators to curriculum experts to university professors has an opinion on this writing genre. Is it an effective tool in teaching writing and honing important writing skills? More importantly, is it effective in enabling students to be successful writers in the real world? This paper is an effort to answer these questions through an exploration of the current literature available on the five-paragraph essay. To better understand the genre and its intended purposes, this paper begins by examining the origins and evolution of the five-paragraph essay and two theories of writing behind it- transparent transmission theory and traditional formalism. Both sides of the ongoing debate are also explored, in addition to why the five-paragraph essay is so commonly and persistently used in classrooms today. Surprisingly, teachers’ own experiences as students play a major role in perpetuating the usage of this genre. This paper also attempts to establish common ground in this debate by examining alternatives to this formulaic style of writing. While the five-paragraph essay has its merits in writing instruction, it has its limitations as well. As educators, we need to be able to see beyond these limitations and renew our writing pedagogy to meet the demands of 21 st century communication.

Recommended Citation

Nafees, Sarah N., "The Five-Paragraph Essay: An In-Depth Exploration of the Genre and its Limitations in Writing Pedagogy" (2018). Honors College Theses . 42. https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/honorstheses/42

Since May 14, 2018

Included in

Curriculum and Instruction Commons , Educational Methods Commons , Secondary Education and Teaching Commons

Advanced Search

Notify me via email or RSS
WSU Libraries
Honors College
Collections
Disciplines

Author Corner

Submission Guidelines
Submit Research

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | DigitalCommons@WayneState ISSN 2572-8601

Accessibility Statement | Privacy Policy

Get the Reddit app

IMAGES

Teaching the 5-Paragraph Essay: Tips to Make It Easier
Five Paragraph Essay Templates PDF. download Fill and print for free
Five Paragraph Alternatives by Bookfox
5 Alternatives to the Traditional Essay for Writing Teachers
My Anti-Five-Paragraph-Essay Five-Paragraph Essay
Five alternatives to the five paragraph essay

COMMENTS

Alternatives to the 5 Paragraph Essay
Alternatives to the 5 Paragraph Essay. While the standard essay format is a useful scaffold, it's important to teach students other, more authentic kinds of writing as well. ... But the five-paragraph essay isn't the be-all, end-all of student writing. It's often reduced to formulas and templates, stifling creativity and originality. ...
Creative Alternatives to the Traditional Essay
Creative Alternatives to the Traditional Essay. By this point, students have the foundation of analytical writing thanks to the five-paragraph essay. Now, it's time to switch it up and expose them to new challenges. I'm excited to share 13 creative alternatives to the traditional essay you can try in your classroom. 1. Writing a Children ...
5 Alternatives to the Traditional Essay
Check out these FIVE alternatives to the traditional essay to challenge your students in new ways while also assessing the same important skills. An oral essay is when students present their essays out loud to the class in a presentation format. Instead of turning in a five-paragraph paper, students present their analysis to the class.
Moving Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay: Expand the Possibilities of the
I, too, get caught in the tension between structure-the five paragraph essay somewhere in grades 4-6-and development of voice-breaking the five paragraph essay structure somewhere in grades 6-12. Fundamentally, something is wrong if we have to break what we teach. I suspect we teach what's wrong because it's easier to grade. To test.
"Teachable Alternatives" to the 5-Paragraph Essay
At another NCTE panel—a tribute to the work of Tom Newkirk—retired teacher and author Gretchen Bernabei shared how she was inspired by Newkirk's challenge to find "teachable alternatives" to the 5-paragraph essay. In her books, The Story of My Thinking and Text Structures from the Masters, Gretchen reveals and analyzes the varied ...
PDF Moving Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay
The five-paragraph essay follows the standard format: one paragraph for the introduction (usually ending with a three-part thesis), followed by three body paragraphs (each tackling one part of the thesis), and ending with one paragraph for the conclusion (equaling five total). While this format is useful for essay exams, grad-level tests, and ...
PDF Beyond High School Writing: Rethinking the 5-Paragraph Essay
Assume that each paragraph will take up roughly ¾ of a page, and make sure that the number of paragraphs you have will result in the assigned page length of your paper, if there is one Several potential purposes for a paragraph, see which of these fit and how many are necessary: • to define terms, to review the literature,
Beyond the Five-paragraph Essay
1. Your thesis may be longer than a sen tence or two and may not be at the end of the introduction. 2. 3. 4. Your introduction may be longer than one paragraph Your essay may not have topic sen tences that explicitly state what each paragraph is about Your essay may not be organized by paragraphs; it may be organized by sections.
Ultimate Guide to Writing a Five Paragraph Essay
The five paragraph essay consists of an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Introduction: The introduction is the first paragraph of the essay and sets the tone for the rest of the piece. It should include a hook to grab the reader's attention, a thesis statement that presents the main idea of the essay, and a brief ...
Alternatives to the Five-paragraph Essay
The five-paragraph essay is a common format for academic writing, but it is not the only option for students. Many alternatives can be just as effective, if
How to Write a Five-Paragraph Essay, With Examples
The five-paragraph essay format is a guide that helps writers structure an essay. It consists of one introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs for support, and one concluding paragraph. Because of this structure, it has been nicknamed the "hamburger essay," the "one-three-one essay," and the "three-tier essay.".
Why It Matters: Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay
That's why, as a college writer, you'll need to move beyond the five-paragraph essay. In this learning module, you'll discover how simplistic forms like the five paragraph essay lack depth and should be remedied. When you write organically you (1) diversify your language choices, (2) use a unique style, and (3) craft ideas using an ...
I Don't Hate the Five-Paragraph Essay
I need to tell you where this post idea starts from originally. The five-paragraph form does not sit right with me because it views students as lacking. Ruby Payne's Deficit Model helps explicate this by pointing to a rationale of viewing students as lacking in knowledge, ability, socioeconomic status, income, and race.
Why It Matters: Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay
Writing a paper isn't about getting the "right answer" and adhering to basic conventions; it's about joining an academic conversation with something original to say, borne of rigorous thought. That's why, as a college writer, you'll need to move beyond the five-paragraph essay. This module will introduce you to strategies for doing ...
Is the Five-Paragraph Essay History?
The five-paragraph essay, a staple in school writing curricula, has become a source of debate for educators, with critics charging the format is too rigid and constraining.
Getting Out of the Essay Rut
Before I highlight a few essay alternatives, I want to say that I do believe the ability to write an essay is a critical skill all students need to acquire. Teaching the five-paragraph structure provides kids with the necessary "training wheels" to begin figuring out how to outline their thoughts and information.
How to Write a Five-Paragraph Essay (with Examples)
Writing a five-paragraph essay. Write the hook and thesis statement in the first paragraph. Write the conflict of the essay in the second paragraph. Write the supporting details of the conflict in the third paragraph. Write the weakest arguments in the fourth paragraph. Write the summary and call-to-action prompt in the fifth paragraph.
The Ultimate Guide to the 5-Paragraph Essay
Students can use the following steps to write a standard essay on any given topic. First, choose a topic, or ask your students to choose their topic, then allow them to form a basic five-paragraph by following these steps: Decide on your basic thesis, your idea of a topic to discuss. Decide on three pieces of supporting evidence you will use to ...
How to Write a Five-Paragraph Essay
Example of a Five-Paragraph Essay. The following is a breakdown of an example of a five-paragraph essay. It discusses commonly held wrong ideas about e-cigarettes. Paragraph 1: Introduction. The topic of the essay is introduced, providing context and background. "Nowadays, the dangers of nicotine are widely understood.
How to Craft a Stellar 5-Paragraph Essay: A Step-by-Step Guide
Write the Introduction. Start the essay with a " hook "—an attention-grabbing statement that will get the reader's interest. This could be an interesting fact, a quote, or a question. After the hook, introduce your topic and end the introduction with a clear thesis statement that presents your main argument or point.
Beyond the Five Paragraph Essay
In Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay, Kimberly and Kristi show you how to reclaim the literary essay and create a program that encourages thoughtful writing in response to literature. They provide numerous strategies that stimulate student thinking, value unique insight, and encourage lively, personal writing, including the following: ...
The Five-Paragraph Essay: An In-Depth Exploration of the Genre and its
An ongoing debate in education-specifically the language arts discipline-is regarding the five-paragraph essay and its role in writing instruction. The five-paragraph essay is considered a staple in school writing curricula, but has recently been under great scrutiny due to its perceived lack of effectiveness. Everyone from secondary educators to curriculum experts to university professors has ...
Please give me alternative formats to the 5-paragraph essay
A lot. 3. Embarrassed-Ad-6817 • 1 yr. ago. I think a 5 paragraph essay is a really good place to start for certain grade levels/performance levels. I teach 5th and it's a great foundation. If your writers struggle I would teach 5 paragraph essay - there is still a lot of content creativity that goes along with it. 4.