Thanks, that's a great idea!

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Thanks, that's a great idea!
By New 5th Grade teacher

I love this!!! I have been having the exact same problem with my 5th graders. Every writing assignment that I have given them since the beginning of the year results in probably 75% asking repeatedly, "How many sentences
do we need? What's a paragraph? Should we indent?" I feel like the proverbial broken record. We have been using the "Hamburger" graphic organizer and I do write down explicitly on the board that each paragraph requires a topic sentence, 3-4 supporting, related details in complete sentences and a summarizer sentence, but even that seldom produces the expected result from most of the

students. It's as if they have never seen, heard, or been taught how to write a coherent paragraph, let alone put together more than one paragraph on the same topic. AAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

I'm going to try your suggestion and see if it works more successfully. We are about to go into two weeks of the Iowa Testing but then we will be going at full throttle for the following 6 weeks or so leading up to our state tests in May where they will be expected to answer open-ended response questions in a cohesive, concise manner. Boy, do I have my work cut out for me!!!