Helpful Acronyms for Essay Writing in Middle School
Have you ever been a good ten minutes into writing time when you look up and see papers as blank as their authors’ faces?
Even when our students pay attention to the writing tips we give them, they don’t have super brains. They can forget things.
It is so important to give our students mnemonic devices to help them remember what they need to include in their essays. Here are just a few!
Acronym for Writing Essay Hooks
Q.U.A.C.K. - This acronym helps students remember different ways they can begin their essays. They can start with a quote, an unexpected fact, an anecdote, a controversial statement, or by kidding around with some humor. I wrote more about this acronym in this blog post.
Acronym for Supporting Claims
B.A.G.E.L.S. - This acronym helps students remember the many ways they can support their claims throughout an essay. They should support their claims with background information, analogies, groundbreaking experiments, expert opinions, logical reasoning, and statistics or facts. Read more examples in this blog post about B.A.G.E.L.S. evidence.
Acronym for Writing Body Paragraphs
T.R.E.E.S. - This acronym helps students remember how to structure their body paragraphs. They should start with a topic sentence, followed by a reason, and then continue with evidence, an explanation, and a summary.
Acronym for Introducing Outside Sources
T.R.A.P. - This acronym helps students remember how to embed quotes as evidence. They can introduce their quote with a “that” clause, with a reporting verb, with “according to . . . ,” or with part of their own sentence. This blog post has examples of how your students can use each one!
If you really want to push the mnemonic devices to the next level, you could put the acronyms together by asking your students to imagine a duck quacking in a forest full of trees. It sees some yummy bagels and waddles over to take a bite, but it’s a trap! (Or you could have your students come up with their own way to put the acronyms together in a quick story.)
