The 5 Paragraph Essay

I found the articles to be very interesting and very much an awakening to the responsibilities and the thought that is going to have to go into my future English class. The five paragraph essay was always taught at my high school and I learned how to perfect the formula without really ever putting any critical thought and work into the essay. After reading some of the articles on this subject I realized that I myself was forced into the limitations of the five paragraph essay because that is what I knew and what was expected from me by my teachers. Now looking at how I will guide my students to write I realize that if I want them to be able to express their thoughts and think critically then I will have to move outside of the five paragraph essay. By gaining ideas from some of the articles, I hope to give my students the freedom to be able to choose the amount of paragraphs and the style of the essay. But I still think that their needs to be structure and a way to be able to assess my students so that I can grade them fairly with their classmates. I agree with the article by Noskin that expresses how important the prewriting process is and how teachers should not limit this to 20 minutes inside of the classroom. For students to fully form ideas and be able to think critically about a given topic I feel that they need a more open amount of time or space. I also agree with setting up both open ended and close ended writing prompts so that students of all writing and thinking styles can find a topic that intersts them. Overall, I know that my opinion on the five paragraphy essay will change whenever I have control over my own classroom, but for now I feel that it is neccessary to have structure and guide lines when teaching writing but there needs to be more room for creativity and critical thinking.

The Five-Paragraph Essay: Good or Bad???

Many high schools teach the five-paragraph essay. There are voices pro and contra this instructional method of composition. The following links might help you when you are composing your own opinion:

1) This link just explains what the five-paragraph essay is.

2) This link is a pro-5-paragraph-essay research article from the English Journal entitled, "To the Defense of the Five-Paragraph Essay" by Kerri Smith. Here's another pro-article: "Breaking the Five-Paragraph-Theme Barrier" by Thomas Nunnaly.

3) This link is a contra-5-paragraph-essay research article from the English Journal entitled, "The Ill Effects of the Five Paragraph Theme" by Kimberly Wesley.

As a comment to this thread, please post a short statement (ca. 500 words) about what you think with regard to the five-paragraph essay -- have you learned it, will/do you teach it, is it beneficial, does it harm students...???

Welcome and Introductions

Dear all,

Welcome to English 485a, Teaching Writing!!!

This is our first assignment:

As a comment to this post, write a short (approx. 500 words) introduction about yourself (your student teaching experience, your strengths/weaknesses, your expectations of your K-12 students, your personality as a teacher, your interests/hobbies, your aspirations for your future, something personal (websites, etc.).

I will use these introductions when we start our exchange with a writing class from a local high school, to tell our cooperating teacher a little bit about you. So keep in mind that a K 9-12 teacher will share your introduction with his students ;-)