The Anatomy of a Paragraph
By: Sarah Stratton If our students memorize an outline or formula instead of learning the anatomy of a paragraph, they will never graduate from the formulaic response that keeps their writing mediocre. Furthermore, if we want our students to continue liking to write (remember–we won them over in the narrative genre with idiom stories and an introduction to WOC techniques), we have to teach writing to the understanding level–not the outline level. (that’s not to say that outlines are not important–you’ll see that I still deem outlines/structure as paramount to learning to write informative essays.) We also have to continue teaching our students more WOC techniques that make their writing better. Simplified, body paragraphs are comprised of two components–yes, only two–EVIDENCE (information taken from the text in the form of quotes, summaries, or paraphrases) and COMMENTARY (the writer’s own words–connections, explanations, definitions, comments, etc.) That’s it. When we start...