‘Athletes, architects, artists, playwrights, chefs, physicians, lawyers, and members of countless other professions rely on plans to accomplish their objectives. Yet when we teach our students to write in lengthier forms such as paragraphs and compositions, we rarely help them come up with the kind of plan they need to produce an effective piece of writing.’ (Hochman and Wexler, ‘The Writing Revolution’)
As teachers, we are already expert writers. We have mastered and internalised so many of the processes involved in writing that we struggle to empathise with novice writers. Our expert blindness can prevent us from understanding the mountain that many students have to climb. Writing places huge demands on the brain. To help students tackle these demands, we must teach them how to plan paragraphs and compositions effectively - step-by-step.
Before embarking on paragraph writing, students should be able to construct sentences well. In my previous posts on expanded sentences and fragments into sentences, I have explored sentence-level tasks from ‘The Writing Revolution'. Once students have mastered sentence-level writing, paragraphs can be tackled with much greater ease.
The importance of planning
‘If you’re about to embark on a road trip, try a new recipe, put together an Ikea table, develop a football play, build a Lego model - or engage in just about any complex, multi step task - you need to have a plan.’ (Hochman and Wexler, ‘The Writing Revolution’)
When approaching paragraph writing, planning is just as important as writing. In the past, I used frames such as PEE/PEEL/PEELAC to help students plan. Although these frames helped to some degree, I found that they had limitations: students’ writing became formulaic and they were tempted to make comments about context or audience within every paragraph, simply because they felt they must include these items - not because they were necessarily relevant or insightful. When I came across the Single Paragraph Outline in ‘The Writing Revolution’, my approach to teaching paragraph planning and writing changed.
The Single Paragraph Outline
The Single Paragraph Outline provides students with a roadmap they can follow to plan the beginning, middle and end of a coherent paragraph. Its advantages are:
It’s simple and linear
It’s a template that they can easily duplicate themselves in lots of settings
It provides structure to the paragraph (beginning, middle and end)
It improves focus on a topic
It promotes analytical thinking
Similar to PEE/PEEL/PEELAC, the SPO gives students a framework. In contrast to PEE/PEEL/PEELAC, the framework is less formulaic and doesn’t create a straitjacket.
The SPO has three core components:
Topic sentence
Supporting details
Concluding sentence
In my previous blog post, I explored the topic sentence. Before embarking upon the SPO, it can be helpful to dedicate time to practising writing topic and concluding sentences. Once students have become familiar with topic and concluding sentences, they are ready to tackle the SPO.
When tackling the SPO, it’s important to take the process step-by-step and provide lots of opportunities for modelling and whole-class work before students tackle it by themselves. These are the steps I might follow when approaching the SPO with a class:
Identify the topic, purpose and audience. (In an analytical essay, this will include identifying the focus of the question.)
Brainstorm ideas in relation to the topic. (This may have already taken place in class discussion at an earlier point in the lesson.)
Look at a good example of an SPO. Annotate it, referring to success criteria.
Generate a complete topic sentence.
Select and sequence supporting details, writing them on the dotted lines.
Generate a complete concluding sentence.
Here is a blank SPO template (with some prompts):
Below are two examples of a completed SPO using the template above. Some classes would not need the topic sentence prompts. Others may benefit.
The teachers in our department found the ‘supporting details’ aspect of the plan more freeing than PEE/PEEL/PEELAC as students are free to generate ideas relevant to the topic sentence and the selected quotation, without feeling that the same ingredients must be included in every single paragraph. Students are also free to use multiple quotations in one paragraph, if this develops their argument. With lots of modelling and whole-class planning of SPOs, all students can be supported to write better paragraphs using the SPO framework.
Having the ‘why’ prompt next to the concluding sentence encourages students to consider the writer’s intention, drawing upon their knowledge of context and audience where relevant.
The before and after example below demonstrates the difference that our TWR approach made to a student with SEN who struggled to construct sentences and paragraphs. Prior to introducing TWR, he'd only practised writing using PEE at paragraph or multi-paragraph level. Throughout Year 10, through exposure to TWR strategies, he had lots of practise writing at sentence level and started building these into full paragraphs, with lots of help planning using the SPO. While there were still improvements to be made to his writing and vocabulary, it is clear to see that, through exposure to TWR strategies, he gained the knowledge and the confidence to write more effectively.
Before TWR at end of Y9:
How Priestley present Sheila by the way he writes like he shows that Sheila is more upper class and has no respect for the lower class also she uses her dad’s place of work for a reason to get away with things. For example when Eva Smith was putting on a dress and Sheila saw how pretty she was so she got her fired from her dad’s name. At the same time she didn’t know it was the same girl that the inspector was walking about and when she found out she was so sorry and regretful for her actions. Also she felt responsible for it. Sheila said to the inspector “no not really, it was my own fault.”
After TWR at the start of Y11:
In this extract, Stevenson creates mystery and tension. In lines 8-12, Stevenson is describing Soho where Hyde lives, for example when Stevenson writes ‘the dismal quarter of Soho’. This gives the impression that it is dark, smoky and dirty and not a nice sight to see. This would suit Hyde’s personality because Hyde is also dark and not a nice sight to see. Stevenson also uses the words ‘muddy ways’ and ‘mournful reinvasion of darkness’. This comes across that Soho is a neglected place to be in London. You get this impression because it is dirty and has no light, which shows that no money has been put into it. Stevenson creates mystery because why would Jekyll who is a higher class person be letting someone like Hyde who lives in Soho into his house?
Key Takeaways:
Writing places huge demands on the brain. We need to teach students how to write step-by-step.
Planning a paragraph is just as important as writing one.
The SPO provides a roadmap but not a straitjacket.
Teachers need to model the SPO step-by-step before students can tackle it on their own.
Below is a link to the Act One writing booklet I created for Romeo and Juliet, which contains other examples of TWR activities. This was designed for a mid-set class.
Other booklets can be found on the resources section of my blog.
If you've got this far, thank you very much for taking the time to read this!