Teaching kids to write paragraphs

Many students struggle to put together one paragraph, let alone the multi-paragraph essays that common core requires them to do. Since they often lack the ability to put together a paragraph, writing often becomes a chore and they lack the motivation to do any form of writing.

So just how do we get out of this writing rut so that students can become engaged and learn to write a paragraph (and eventually the required multi-paragraphs)?

Ideas to Teach Writing a Paragraph

Start with the basics.
When teaching students about paragraphs, we talk about the hard and fast rules, such as indenting, having approximately 3-5 sentences, and the structure of it.

While I know paragraphs are not set in stone at 3-5 sentences, nor do they always have a main idea as the topic sentence, I like to give my students structure for the foundations and then as they progress expand a bit more with the “hard and fast” rules.

The Parts of a P