Teaching How to Write an Essay in Middle School

When I first moved from teaching high school to middle school, I had no idea what I was in for. Sure, the kids would be younger and a little more energetic, but teaching how to write an essay in middle school? They should have an entire course in college dedicated to teaching us how to do this! And they don’t.

But don’t worry!

I finally figured out how to make essay-writing fun and manageable for my students without sacrificing my time or my sanity.

Here’s what you’ll want to do when teaching your middle school students how to write an essay:

1️⃣ Break essays down into the tiniest little pieces possible. I’m not talking “assign one paragraph at a time.” I’m saying these children need essays broken down SENTENCE BY SENTENCE in the beginning. Yes, they’ll eventually need to learn how to sit down and write an entire essay in one sitting, but I learned not to rush this process. My students’ essays improved big-time when I started breaking down essays and teaching the parts in this order: thesis statement, topic sentences, reasoning, evidence & explanation, hook, bridge, and conclusion.

2️⃣ Give your students plenty of good AND bad examples to analyze. A lot of times, my middle school students thought they understood what I was telling them, but they didn’t. They didn’t know that they didn’t get it, so they didn’t know to ask questions, so I didn’t know to re-teach until after they had written their assignments the wrong way. Not helpful! So I started doing Write Bites mini lessons during class with ONE very specific part of an essay and 3 examples (a mix of good and bad). Instead of telling my students off the bat whether the example is good or not, I had them “vote” so I could quickly assess whether I needed to reteach or not. Of course, this could get boring day after day, so instead of having my students give a basic thumbs-up or thumbs-down, I had them vote in silly ways like making whale sounds if the example is correct, doing jumping jacks if the example is incorrect, etc. I can’t count how many times I heard kids say this was actually their favorite part of class!

3️⃣ Provide your students with feedback after they write each piece of the essay instead of waiting to grade the entire rough draft. Remember when I said I taught the essay in tiny little pieces? What a difference it made when I started grading those little pieces as they came in instead of waiting to grade a whole essay. For example, I can easily provide feedback on a thesis statement in under 30 seconds, and then my students know what to fix before they build their entire essays on the flawed framework! (I explain my 30-second grading process in more detail in this blog post/video.) Ta da!

4️⃣ After your students have written each piece of their essays, show them how to put the pieces in order:

• Hook

• Bridge

• Thesis Statement

• Topic Sentence #1

• Reasoning #1

• Evidence & Explanation #1

• Topic Sentence #2

• Reasoning #2

• Evidence & Explanation #2

• Topic Sentence #3

• Reasoning #3

• Evidence & Explanation #3

• Conclusion
  

5️⃣ Repeat this essay-teaching method for the first couple of essays of the year, at least. Once your students show that they understand the structure of an essay and the purpose of its parts, they can start to plan and write more independently, but holding their hands in the beginning makes such a difference later on.

Still have questions? My virtual workshop, UPBEAT Essays, will walk you through every step of the essay-assigning/teaching/grading process, making essays FUN for your students and EASY for you. Learn more here!