‘A sentence is a complex and powerful thing, the mastery of which is often overlooked.’
I think it is easy for us to forget sometimes just how cognitively demanding the task of writing a paragraph is. When writing a paragraph about about Shakespeare’s portrayal of Brutus in ‘Julius Caesar’, for example, students are grappling with:
Understanding the question they’ve been asked
Remembering character and plot details
Recalling relevant contextual details
Understanding Shakespeare’s language (reading age 18+ - let’s not forget that many of our students have reading ages far below this!)
Selecting a relevant quotation from the extract
Analysing language or structural choices made by Shakespeare
This is all before even thinking about how to structure their ideas into a paragraph.
In ‘Why Don’t Students Like School?’ Daniel Willingham explores the limitations of our working memory, suggesting that we can only grapple with three or four concepts at one time. It is no wonder therefore that students, wrestling with all of the challenges above, struggle to formulate their ideas into paragraphs, let alone essays. To help students with the cognitive demands of writing paragraphs, we need to break the process down into smaller steps, reduce the demand on working memory and create a body of knowledge in constructing analytical sentences that they can draw from when writing larger compositions.
In a search for practical tips, I turned to Hochman and Wexler’s ‘The Writing Revolution’ and Doug Lemov’s ‘Teach like a Champion’, both of which acknowledge that there is an art to writing a good sentence and that this art must be broken down and explicitly taught. ‘The Writing Revolution’ taught me that one of the key ingredients of a successful paragraph, which can be taught in isolation, is a topic sentence.
The Topic Sentence
Very simply, a topic sentence expresses the main idea in the paragraph. In other words, it tells what the rest of the paragraph will be about. In an analytical paragraph about Shakespeare’s portrayal of Romeo’s character, for example, the topic sentence might be:
At the Capulet ball, Shakespeare portrays Romeo’s impulsive nature.
The remainder of this paragraph must therefore explore Shakespeare’s portrayal of Romeo at the Capulet ball, as he falls instantly in love with Juliet, discarding his feelings, without hesitation, for Rosaline.
To develop students’ paragraph writing, I experimented with explicit teaching of the topic sentence. Teaching a topic sentence ensures students:
know how to start the paragraph, helping them overcome writer’s block
focus all of the paragraph’s contents on the main idea
write a stronger opening to the paragraph, which clearly addresses the question
How does this work in practice?
I followed these steps to teach students how to write topic sentences.
Look at examples and non-examples of topic sentences, comparing to a list of criteria and deciding: is this a good topic sentence?
Ask the students: what is clear to you about the character/theme? Have them jot down one or two of their own ideas (after we had discussed the extract together as a class)
Model live how to transform this idea into a topic sentence.
Label the topic sentence with its essential criteria.
Have students write their own topic sentence using their own idea from (2).
Here is an extract from one of my writing booklets. This lesson is about Utterson’s character in ‘Jekyll and Hyde’. These tasks would follow independent analysis and class discussion of the extract. The word ‘moral’ will already have been explicitly taught, as will the context of Victorian morality. The delivery of this would involve lots of live modelling from the teacher.
Extract from Jekyll and Hyde Writing Booklet
Question: How far does Stevenson present Utterson as a moral Victorian gentleman?
Task 1: Reminder. A good topic sentence:
Includes the writer’s name
Answers the question
Refers to the extract or somewhere in the novella as a whole
Makes a specific point about a character or theme
Task 1A: Which of these is a good topic sentence? Underline your answer with a ruler.
Stevenson presents Utterson as a moral character.
In the extract, Utterson reveals his moral nature.
In the extract, Stevenson makes clear Utterson is a moral character.
Utterson doesn’t drink because he thinks it’s an immoral thing to do.
Task 1B: Provide your reason here: ___________________________________________
Extension: choose one of the incorrect sentences and rewrite it so that it becomes a correct example of a good topic sentence.
NB: before moving onto Task 2, we would discuss the incorrect answers to Task 1A and discuss why these non-examples are not good examples of topic sentences in relation to our criteria. The other sentences are not necessarily incorrect, but they don’t fulfil the criteria that our English department agreed on when considering what makes a good analytical topic sentence.
Task 2: When trying to write a topic sentence, you must first ask yourself: What is clear to me, as a reader/audience member, about the character in the extract, or in the text as a whole?
For example, it would NOT be correct to say that it is clear that Utterson drinks freely.
It would NOT be correct to say that it is clear Utterson allows himself the freedom to behave in ways that would be considered immoral by Victorian standards.
What IS clear about Utterson in the extract? Write one or two ideas here:
………………………………...………………………...………………………...
………………………...………………………...………………………...
Task 3: Now, with your teacher, explore how to turn your idea into a topic sentence, planning it first using the questions provided.
NB: this would be modelled live, but I have included a pre-prepared model for reference. The word ‘represses’ will already have been taught.
When? extract
Who? Stevenson
(does) what? makes clear Utterson represses his desires
In the extract, Stevenson makes clear Utterson represses his desires.
(Notice here how the expanded sentence task explored in this blog post is being used to craft the topic sentence.)
Task 4: Label the topic sentence we have written with our essential criteria. Here is a reminder of what they are:
Includes the writer’s name
Answers the question
Refers to the extract or somewhere in the novella as a whole
Makes a specific point about a character or theme
Task 5: Using one of your own ideas, write your own topic sentence.
Task 6: Check - does your topic sentence include all the essential criteria? Label it. If it is missing anything in the essential criteria, rewrite it.
How does this work for students who can already write well?
Something we discussed in our department CPD was how to ensure these tasks worked not only for students who struggled to start their paragraphs but also for students who were already confident writers. We agreed that the best way to achieve this was for the teacher to adapt the live modelling stage to meet the needs of their own classes. For example, for students who struggle to start their paragraphs, the topic sentence modelled might be quite straight forward:
In the extract, Stevenson presents Utterson as a moral gentleman.
For students who are already confident writers, the topic sentence might develop a thesis statement or argument:
In the extract, Stevenson uses Utterson to critique the civilised veneer of the moral Victorian gentleman.
Both sentences contain the essential criteria, but demonstrate how the task can be adapted to ensure that students are stretched appropriately.
Teaching students, step-by-step, how to write a good topic sentence and building in lots of practice into their lessons resulted in them producing more focused paragraphs and more consistent arguments within their essays.
Key Takeaways:
Writing is a very demanding task.
Students need the chance to practise sentence-level tasks.
All students, no matter how well they write, can learn from sentence-level tasks.
Teaching topic sentences helps students know how to start, focus the contents of their paragraph and develop a more consistent argument.
You can find more examples of these types of writing tasks and others in this booklet:
This booklet was designed in a school in which students were assigned to sets, and was used with the lower set. You can find booklets for other sets in the resources section of my blog.