5 Steps to Better Paragraph Writing in Upper Elementary

Hey, there, thanks so much for tuning in to this week’s episode. Today, I am going to answer a listener’s question. And first of all, I love getting questions from y’all. Because your questions usually inspire me for a podcast episode. And this question actually came up from a teacher survey that we sent out earlier in the year. And as soon as I read this question, I was like, Oh, I know exactly what she’s talking about.

Her question was, how do I get my students to write a meaty paragraph? And like I said, I love this question, because I knew exactly what it was she was talking about. You know, how do we get our students to write a cohesive paragraph that is well organized? And on topic? How do we get our students to write a paragraph that includes more than just short and simple sentences? How do we get students to include relevant and important details in their paragraph? How do we get them to include descriptive details and really specific words?

And you know, this is a really big question, how do we get students to write a meaty paragraph? But I have five tips that I can share with you that will really help your students learn how to write strong paragraphs.

But before I get to those steps, I think it really is important to recognize that there is no such thing as a quick fix for writing. You know, helping your students become strong writers, helping them learn how to write strong paragraphs is going to take time. So even if you put these five things in place, it’s not going to quickly fix everything, it might take four to six weeks, before you start to notice any sort of big improvement.

And of course, you guys have heard me talk about sentence writing on this podcast in the past. Before we can get our students to be able to write strong paragraphs, we have to ensure that they are able to write strong sentences. So that is kind of a prerequisite for their ability to do these five things. But I know that you guys are already working on sentences. So let’s jump in and talk about five things that you can do to really level up your paragraph writing this next year.

The first thing is to give your students a framework for paragraph writing. And this is a really simple thing that you can do. And that simply means that we want our students to understand that their paragraph is going to include a topic sentence that’s going to state the main idea or the main focus of the paragraph. Their paragraph is going to include three to five sentences that discuss supporting details that are related to the topic, and that their paragraph is going to have a concluding sentence, it’s going to have a final sentence that restates the main idea.

And we want again, like I said, students to have this structure or framework because it really helps them understand how to get started with their writing. And it also helps them know the types of sentences to include.

I think one of the hardest things for students when it comes to writing is the organization of it. And we’re basically telling them, this is how you’re going to organize your paragraph. And then they just need to actually go in and fill in the actual sentences.

And then of course, as students become more comfortable, because I’m sure as you’re listening to this, like that, that’s a very basic framework. And it is a topic sentence three to five supporting details and a concluding sentence. But as your students become more advanced writers, you can give them more complex outlines.

You can show them how to write a compare and contrast paragraph, or how to write a problem and solution paragraph, you know how to write a sequential paragraph. There’s all sorts of different structures, that they can include how to write an argumentative paragraph, all of those things. But in order for them to get good at the more advanced structures, we need to make sure that they have a framework for a solid paragraph. So topic sentence three to five detail sentences, concluding sentence.

So the next thing we want to do and this might sound similar, but it is very much different. We want to teach students how to create an outline. And an outline is different than teaching them the structure right, understanding that there’s a topic sentence is different than actually outlining your topic sentence.

And I think that creating an outline is probably one of the most important parts of the writing process. And honestly, this is something that we tend to skip over or really we just forget to teach it. And I think that’s probably because if you think about the writing process that so many of us used or use in our classroom is brainstorm, draft, revise, edit and publish. And outlining is maybe part of brainstorming, maybe it’s part of drafting, but we don’t really explicitly teach it.

But when students are creating an outline, they are making a decision on the specific types of details that they want to include and the order they want to share them. And so this is really helpful, because later when they are drafting, they’re going to come back and write the sentences for the details.

But since we’ve already given them a framework, topic sentence, supporting details, concluding details, it’s going to be even easier for them to actually create their outline. So we’re providing a lot of nice scaffolding here for our students.

So one of the things that we’ve tried to do with the teachers inside the Stellar Literacy Collective is give them resources that will naturally help them scaffold and support their students so they don’t even need to think about it. And this is one of the things that we do with our paragraph writing resource, which is exclusive to the teachers inside our membership.

And we include lessons that help students understand you know how to effectively outline their paragraph, one thing we encourage them to do is to use symbols, words, and short phrases to list out the details that they want to include. And that’s really helpful because students can, like I said, make a plan without having to write all have their sentences.

And then of course, later in the week, they come back to their outline, and then they begin to draft but it is so easy for them because they can look at the symbols or the words, and then be like, Okay, I just had to come up with a sentence for this detail. So let me give you an example here, visualize what I’m explaining.

You know, let’s say your students are going to respond to the prompt, what are the benefits and challenges of being in fourth grade? So their outline, which is not complete sentences, it’s just short notes, their outline might look something like this: topic sentence is going to be fourth grade equals fun plus challenges. Detail number two would be learn new things. And then maybe in parentheses, they would say hard math concepts. Or maybe they would even put the symbol for like division and multiplication.

Detail number two, they would have a heart next to the phrase make new friends. For detail number three, they would have exclamation point activities equals field trip and science fair. And then their concluding sentence would be more benefits than challenges.

So obviously, these are not complete sentences, but they have the ideas for what they want to include, for each part of the paragraph. They’re deciding ahead of time on what it is that they want to include. And the fact that we’re not asking them to write complete sentences makes it so much easier for them to focus on the quality of their idea. And then later, they’ll just come back and include more details, expand it, and actually turn them into complete sentences.

So an outline is a really supportive step that helps students gradually go from their brainstorm into drafting. And if we really want to help students write strong paragraphs, it is definitely something that we want to make sure that we’re doing.

So the third thing that you can do to really help your students with their paragraph writing is to give them mentor or model sentences that they can use as examples for how to write their topic and concluding sentences. The topic and concluding sentence are very important sentences in the paragraph, because it’s usually the first and the last sentence, and they really kind of set the tone for the paragraph.

You know, so without a really strong topic sentence, it’s going to be hard for students to write a clear, coherent and detailed paragraph. So we want to make sure that students understand how to write a topic sentence. But we also want to make sure that they have the tools that really help them incorporate a variety of sentence structures and sentence types in their paragraph.

You know, as students move their way through upper elementary, we want to make sure that they’re not just writing short, simple sentences in their paragraphs, but they actually understand how they can create more interest by having a variety of sentence types, you know, compound sentences, complex sentences, and things like that.

So one thing that can be helpful is to get students in the habit of writing three different versions of their topic sentence, and then get them to select the best one. It’s also really good to just like, let students know that our first idea is not always our best. And in writing, we want to go through the process and test out some different ideas before we decide on the final one.

So one thing that you can do is rather than leaving it open ended and saying just write three sentences, because the three sentences all might end up sounding very much the same. You want to give them either prompts or examples that let them write different sentence types and also sort of encourage them to write different sentence structures.

So let’s go back to the prompt that I used previously, of what are the benefits and challenges of being in fourth grade. So one of the options that you could give your students is to have them write one of the four sentence types so they could write a statement, a question, and exclamation, or command so they kind of have some options with that.

So for this example, or their topic sentence might be: Fourth grade is a lot of fun, but it requires a lot of hard work to keep up. And then of course, their paragraph would talk about the fun part and the not so fun part of fourth grade.

The second framework that you could give them is to tell them to write a sentence with an appositive. And an appositive is a noun or noun phrase that follows another noun to give more additional information or details. And you’ve probably seen them in a variety of sentences. And they’re actually really fun for students to learn how to write, because it’s an easy way to help their writing become a lot more sophisticated. So for this example a topic sentence, students might write fourth grade, comma, an exciting time, comma, that’s your appositive right there, can be a lot of fun, but also requires hard work.

The third framework that you can give your students is to tell them to write a sentence that starts with a subordinating conjunction. So your students might write, although being in fourth grade can be a lot of fun, which began with our subordinating conjunction, comma, it can also come with some challenges.

So these topic sentences all communicate the same idea, right, that fourth grade is fun, but there are some challenges. But they also give students options for how to structure their sentences. And I think that’s really important, because like I said, students are probably going to default to writing simple sentences. And so we need to give them examples and frameworks and you know, prompts that encourage them to write something other than a simple sentence.

So if every time a student writes a paragraph, they get in the habit of writing these three different topic sentences, then they’re just going to become so much more comfortable with using different sentence structures and writing outside of paragraph writing in general. So it’s just going to become kind of a part of a way that they write.

So the fourth thing that you can do, and I’m not gonna lie, this took me a long time to figure out myself, but teach students specific revision skills one at a time. You know, if we want our students to be able to write really strong paragraphs, then developing revision skills is going to be a really important part of that.

Revision is one of the hardest parts of the writing process. And it is, I think, something that is a challenge for students. And I also think it’s something that as teachers we tend to avoid, because it is so hard and challenging. But I think part of the reason why it is hard and challenging is because we try to tackle revision as if it is a single skill.

I remember when I was in the classroom, I introduced my students to the idea of revision in a single lesson, right? I’m like, Okay, we’re going to learn how to revise our writing today. And I taught them the ARMS acronym, and I showed them how to add, remove, move and substitute and I gave them a checklist. And I was like, Okay, go forth, revise your at your essay. But that’s so much for students to understand and to do at one time.

So what we really need to do is we really need to be in the habit of slowing down and teaching revision skills one at a time. So instead of telling our students we’re revising for a lot of things, we’re just going to revise for one thing, and we’re going to practice revising for that one thing anytime we write for a few weeks, maybe a month, and then we’ll learn another revision skill.

So two revision skills that are relatively easy to start with are one teaching your students to revise for word choice. And this is simply where students identify one or two words in their writing and then they look up synonyms for those words, and they see if they can replace them with more specific or interesting words. So teaching our students to use much more precise and specific language.

And then another thing that you can do is to teach your students to add in transition words. So you could give your students a list of specific transition words that can be used either in the beginning or at the end of their paragraph. And then encourage students to maybe add in one transition word or phrase to their writing. And that’s just a really easy way to get started. And like I said, practice those two skills for a while and then add in some additional ones.

But we definitely want to make sure that we are teaching our students to revise because the only way that they’re going to get better at writing is if they are able to self recognize ways that they can improve their own writing.

And then the final thing that we can do to really help our students improve their paragraph writing skills is this might come as a surprise to you probably not though, is to help them focus on their sentence writing skills. And like I said at the beginning, paragraphs are composed of sentences. So even if we’re giving them really good support with understanding the structure of a paragraph, learning how to outline a paragraph, knowing how to write a topic sentence knowing how to revise.

If students still struggle with sentence writing, then they are going to struggle with paragraph writing. So we need to make sure that we are continuously all throughout the year, in third, fourth and fifth grade working on sentence writing. And a really easy way to do that is to incorporate sentence writing as part of your daily routine. I’ve done several different podcast episodes on sentence writing, we’ll link to some of those in the shownotes.

But if you are looking for a really easy routine that you can put in place, we have a freebie. If you go to stellarteacher.com/sentences, you can get our sentence writing routine. It shares five different sentence writing activities you can do throughout the week, that definitely have an impact on your students writing skills, because like I said, if we want students to write strong paragraphs, we have to focus on sentence writing.

Okay, let me recap the five things that you can do to really help your students improve their paragraph writing. First, give students a framework for how to write a paragraph. The second is teach students how to outline their paragraph. The third is to show students multiple options and really get them in the habit of writing multiple topic and concluding sentences.

Then the fourth one is teaching students specific revision skills, just one at a time. And then the last thing is, even though you’re focusing on paragraph writing, don’t forget about sentence writing, that is something that we still want to continue doing all throughout the year.

And then of course, remember that this does not happen overnight, right improvement does not happen overnight. We can’t expect that after one or two weeks of doing these five things to really see immediate growth. However, if we consistently do these things all year long, you really will be amazed at what your students can do.

Now, of course, I always love sharing ideas on the podcast, and teachers often say Okay, but how do I make this happen in my classroom. So if you are wanting to hit the easy button, and you really want to help your students become stronger writers this next year, and you’re looking for the resources to help you do that, let me invite you to join us inside the Stellar Literacy Collective and doors are actually opening up today.

This week, we are enrolling teachers for this upcoming school year. And one of the things that we love sharing with our members is our membership exclusive paragraph writing routine. It is a low prep, high impact resource that will help you easily implement all of the steps that I shared in this episode. We’ve created the scripted lessons, the student writing templates, the examples for you to model, so you don’t have to come up with a sample paragraph. Really everything you need to put these five things in place.

And we love it when we get to support teachers in their reading and writing instruction. And so if you are interested in like I said, getting access to the resources that really will help your students become stronger writers this next year. And readers because we support all literacy skills, you can learn more or enroll at stellarteacher.com/join.

But doors close on Friday, so they’re only open for this week. Go check it out. If you’ve got questions, reach out to us on Instagram or you can always email us. I hope you have a great week.

Just a reminder, this is our last week for our stellar teacher science of reading summer series. We have one more episode that comes out on Thursday. I know that you guys have been enjoying these bonus episodes. So I hope you tune in for this final episode. I will see you then and until then have a stellar week.