By Tom
White
I was asked to switch from third grade to fourth grade this year.
I'm enjoying the change, but one of the realities I'm facing is the increased
emphasis on writing instruction. Third graders learn how to write paragraphs,
while fourth graders learn how to write with paragraphs.
Consequently, I've turned to the five paragraph essay: an effective, flexible starting
point for young writers.
Like it or not, the five paragraph format is effective. There's something
appealing about introducing a topic, expanding on it in three, detailed
paragraphs and finishing with a succinct conclusion. If you can give three good
reasons for holding an opinion, then you’ve got something. If you can’t, then
you don’t. As there was no way I could come up with three good reasons why my
mom should let me play with the lawn darts after my trip to the emergency room,
the darts stayed hidden. Understanding the five-paragraph format is a useful
tool for anyone with an opinion or an agenda.
It’s flexible.
Not only does it work as an essay, but it also comes in handy when writing
short stories. You introduce the characters and setting in the first paragraph,
throw in a beginning, middle and end and wrap up the story with a fifth
paragraph and boom: you’ve got yourself a story. Other uses come quickly to
mind: fairy tales, pourquoi tales, even the standard three-part joke can trace
its roots to the five-paragraph format. Once you’ve mastered the five paragraph
essay, the sky’s the limit.
Although
teachers and assessors may tire of the five-part, formulaic pablum put forth by
fourth graders, working with young writers is a challenging endeavor. Good
teachers know how to use scaffolds; and the five-part format is just that.
Think of it as a literary algorithm. Or better yet, imagine John Coltrane or
Andre Previn in their youth, banging out “Hot Cross Buns” and “Ode to Joy”
while their parents patiently endured those tough times, knowing their future
virtuosos had to master the basics before they could conquer the world. Like it
or not, kids are not born knowing how to write.
There’s no
shame in teaching the five paragraph essay. Not for me, anyway. Writing is
easily the most complicated thing we teach. Students need a place to start;
something they can grasp and understand and then improvise on. It's time to give the time-honored five-parter it's due.
On voice:
First of all, 99% of what adults write shouldn’t have voice. I’m talking emails, memos and reports. Things of that ilk.
Secondly, there’s nothing about a 5P that prevents writers using their voice. If you look back at my post – a classic five paragaph essay – you’ll several examples in which you get a “sense of the writer behind the words.”
That said, I agree with Mark, voice is over-rated. Structure, on the other hand, is under-rated.
In response to Nathan–I don’t think it is the five paragraph essay that makes a student lose voice. Voice is dependent on many things, not the least of which being a broad and diverse vocabulary and the capacity to draw upon that vocabulary with nuance and precision. Perhaps a formula holds a handful of kids back from personal expression, but I’ve worked with many kids for whom the concreteness of the 5p, or the Schaeffer (sp?) paragraph, or other formulas is actually empowering and freeing, enabling them to understand the expected parameters and then flourish within them to be effective in what is otherwise too often an abstract endeavor. Ideally, these formulas are but one step in the student’s progress as a writer, and if the voice is within them, they transcend the 5p model eventually.
The more I work with struggling writers, the less I emphasize voice. For one, the reason many writers struggle is because they do not have the same intuition about writing that their English teacher might–the intuition that manifests as voice. Just as some athletes, artists, or musicians may have a natural inclination or predisposition, the same is true for writers. Take two individuals and offer the same training and the with the disposition toward the task will be the one who becomes exceptional, while the other may simply become effective or efficient. All of us can run, but not all of us can run a sub-five mile. All of us can draw, but some of us are limited to stick-figure-theater. We can all write–some of us can write with confidence and communicate in a voice that carries “a sense of the writer behind the words” as so many rubrics characterize “voice.” To write with voice (as an adolescent, or perhaps ever) requires either a natural inclination or the maturity that comes with experience and reflection. It is about what is teachable: idea development, organization, and conventions are teachable; Voice is not (and if I’m incorrect, please direct me toward resources for teaching voice that don’t rely on the premise of telling the student to “write what he feels” since not all students even want to do that). That’s a really long winded way of defending the 5p essay against the claim that it is guilty of stifling voice. 🙂
Nathan-
First of all, as a fourth grade teacher, I can only dream that my young writers will need to be deprogrammed by an AP writing teacher. That they do only proves my point.
Secondly, vertical alignment! If fourth graders master the 5P, they can then start working off of it in fifth grade, and so on. Teachers need to remember that we play a long game. We don’t need Faulkners in grade school.
In response to Tom White’s in defense of the 5-paragraph essay, his point is valid that in elementary school it is a good template to teach academic writing to kids. However, with the push for stream-ligned standards like the Common Core and the huge expectations for kids to perform well on standardized tests, the 5-paragraph has become what writing is for kids. The consequence of this is they completely lose their sense of voice in their writing. As an AP Language and Composition teacher, I need to deprogram them from their default, cookie-cutter 5-paragraph essay. We need teach the kids how to write as a craft again. The modes of writing: narrative, persuasive, expository, descriptive. How to establish voice as an author: weaving themes, descriptive and figurative language, the authoritative I. There is nothing wrong with teaching the 5-paragraph essay, unless we are teaching it as the only essay kids need to write.
Absolutely. All writers should BEGIN with the five paragraph essay. I have found, in a decade of trying to teach writing to 14-year-olds, that the more concrete we can make it, the better. Concrete = foundation. Foundation = that upon which we build…you have to have the foundation before you can add the flourishes and play with convention. Some people will never move past the concrete, and that’s just fine, they’ll still have a solid piece of work, even if it isn’t a Frank Lloyd Wright.
There is no shame at all in teaching the five paragraph essay. Keep doing it. I’d say to leave the other exercises about different lengths of essays (4p, 6+p) to subsequent grades, once the kids have mastered the foundation.
David-
In keeping with the music analogy, The FP is akin to the 12-bar blues. It’s simply a framework that, once learned, can be squeezed, expanded or morphed into whatever works.
In the right hands it becomes a legal brief, a speech or, god forbid, a blog post.
Like Travis said, we have to take the mystery out of writing and help kids understand that there’s an accessible process whereby anyone can put ideas onto a page.
Your comment reminds me yet a gain of the need for coherent vertical alignment within our education system. Writing in fourth grade should progress into what you and Travis see in high school, but it should be a transparent progression that students understand. Like with music.
Yes. Yes! There is nothing wrong with the 5-paragraph essay. It is just that: a starting point. What I tire of is educators that say they don’t teach the 5-paragraph essay because it is to rigid. These teachers miss the point. It is a starting point. Once a student understands the structure, which strengthens the student’s knowledge of concepts, then the student goes beyond and adds style.
I did not learn how to write well until my last semester of high school when I had a teacher who noticed that I lacked a foundation, and he gave it to me. Until that moment, I figured only “artsy” students could write. I did not understand that there was a system. Then I learned. I will forever thank Mr. Blair.
I totally understand your point, and in the hands of a great teacher like you, and a great school, we can avoid problems later. (Do you sense a “but” coming?)
But, I do wish we could come up with some other term, and be more flexible about the number. Students arrive at high school thinking the 5-paragraph essay is a genre, somehow distinct from the 4 and 6-paragraph essays, which they imagine they never learned or will learn later!
Okay, that’s a bit tongue in cheek, but let’s not endow the form or the number with any magical qualities. The 5-p format only makes sense for some situation. Form must follow function. I hope you can include some exercises in thinking about how many body paragraphs it takes to do the job. Sometimes 2, sometimes 3, or 4, or more.