Expository Essays
The Oxford Hills sixth grade writing curriculum moves the focus from narrative writing (personal narratives, fiction, etc.) toward writing expository essays. In this genre, students write about ideas. Usually these essays are about serious ideas such as qualities of a good friend or my favorite season.
In class we have discussed the steps for writing essays. Except for the first two steps, the order that you do them in isn’t really important.
- Unless a topic is assigned, you must first choose a topic. Here are a couple of ways we have practiced.
- List people, places, or things that are important to you and then list some of the ideas these make you think of. For example, you may think of your best friend and then ideas about what makes a good friend.
- Think of an idea that is important to you and choose that as your topic. For example, you may choose patriotism, animal cruelty, or poverty.
- The next step is to decide on a thesis. This is the time to decide what you believe about the topic and write that. Here are a couple of examples.
- Adults should take kids seriously.
- Winter is my favorite season.
- Sometimes it is OK to lie.
- What are the reasons or evidence that this is true.? It is important to come up with several reasons to support your thesis.
- For each reason it is important to have supporting details and/or examples.
- Plan an introduction for your essay. It helps to try several different ways to introduce your essay. The introduction should contain your thesis statement and often briefly mentions the evidence or reasons that show the thesis is true. Some start with stories that illustrate the thesis. Try to plan an introduction that will capture the reader’s interest.
- Plan a conclusion. Often this restates the thesis and evidence in a different way. Sometimes the conclusion speaks to some of the ways that acting on the thesis will make things better. This is another step where it is helpful to plan a couple of different ways to write this and then choose your favorite.
- Plan how to transition from one idea to the next. It is important to have smooth connections between ideas so the essay doesn’t become a list of ideas.
- Plan a title. A good title will show what the essay is about while capturing the reader’s interest.
- Start writing!
Remember that writing an essay should be something you enjoy. Finding a topic that interests you or that you care a lot about is the key. Sometimes essays lend themselves to humor. The book, The Truth about Poop in our classroom library is one example. David Barry has several collections of funny essays as does David Sedaris.
As a parent, there are several things you can do to help your child become a good essay writer. Ask your child to bring home their writing so you can read it. Have your child give evidence for their beliefs. Perhaps the best thing you can do is to talk about ideas with your child.
