Our guest writer this week:

How to Help Your Child Write a Good Paragraph        

By Sarah Dugger       

I have taught writing skills more times than I can remember over the past 26 years. From public school classes to private school classes to homeschooling, the common thread among writers of all ages is the inability to write good, effective, concise paragraphs. What is a paragraph, anyway? A paragraph is simply a group of related sentences dealing with a single topic. I believe the main problem with students writing good paragraphs lies with students not being able to write good sentences. To help your child write a good paragraph, let's begin with its basic building blocks.

Before writing good paragraphs, children must understand the basics of sentence structure. Sentences are groups of words expressing a complete thought. Sentences must have a subject, who or what the sentence is about, and a predicate, what the subject is or does, at a bare minimum. The subject and predicate are essential to sentences and are not "negotiable" parts. The fun part of sentences is when students learn to enhance and expand them to make them more interesting. As students mature and learn more about the rules of grammar, they need to demonstrate this maturity in their sentence structure. Simple sentences containing only subject/verb patterns become repetitive and boring. Adding grammatical elements to sentences to create more interest shows a higher level of writing skills. Some elements that students may begin adding are prepositional phrases, infinitive phrases, independent clauses, direct objects, and predicate nominatives. Pronoun usage is another element of sentence structure that adds variety to both sentences and paragraphs. If students understand the basics of pronouns and antecedents, the use of nouns and the pronouns replacing those nouns can be very effective in sentences as well as in paragraphs. Once basic sentence skills are in place, students can move into paragraphing practice.   

To write a good paragraph, a student needs to know the topic for the paragraph. For practice, providing a prompt such as an object, a quotation, or a question is a great way to stimulate creative thinking. Once the topic has been established, encourage the student to write a sentence expressing the main idea he wants to communicate to his audience about his topic. This is called the topic sentence. Topic sentences give readers a snapshot of the paragraph's subject. They are the "attention-grabbers." Topic sentences may be any length. The key to a great topic sentence is that it gives the audience clues about what is to come in the paragraph.   

Moving beyond the topic sentence, a student will then "flesh out" the paragraph. In early paragraphing practice, I encourage students to write three sentences that explain or expound upon the topic sentence. These are the detail sentences. As students grow in their paragraphing experience, more sentences need to be included. Interestingly, the mark of a good paragraph is saying what needs to be said and nothing more. Concise paragraphs that use a variety of sentence styles and contain all of the details the audience needs are much more effective than robotic, cookie-cutter type, form paragraphs. There is no set pattern for the detail sentences in a paragraph. Common sense and logical order should dictate the detail sentences. Once all of the details have been expressed, a student should write a closing sentence. This will indicate to the audience that the paragraph is complete.   

Sentence structure and basic paragraph structure are both essential elements to writing a good paragraph. Once these elements are firmly in place, it is time to encourage students to use a variety of words in their paragraphs. Students frequently get in a rut with regard to their vocabulary. I often find the same words repeated multiple times in paragraphs. To help with this issue, I direct students to put away their writing for a day, then go back and read their paragraph as if they are the audience to whom the paragraph was written. I have them circle words that are repetitive. I also love some of the concepts taught in many writing courses in which students look for places in their paragraph where they can add interesting elements such as adjectives, prepositional phrases, and introductory independent clauses. Requiring students to incorporate some interesting vocabulary words in a paragraph can be a great tool, also. One word of caution about vocabulary words: Make sure students are using words correctly in sentences. It is actually quite amusing to read a paragraph in which a student has gone "thesaurus crazy." These are the paragraphs with big words substituted for smaller words, just to substitute. The words don't fit with the overall tone or style of the paragraph, but they have been inserted to help the writer appear to have a larger vocabulary.   

On the subject of tone and style, students need to understand that their writing should reflect their own style and personality. Every student will bring a different perspective to writing, and this uniqueness should be embraced. One element of style that I ban from my student's writing, however, is text lingo. Students must understand from the beginning that there is a time for text lingo and a time for formal writing. Paragraph writing is formal writing, and text lingo is unacceptable in their paragraphs unless it is being quoted as part of a conversation or a point.  

I have found many resources for paragraph writing over the years. Two of my all-time favorites are Winning With Writing and Institute for Excellence in Writing. I have had great success using Winning With Writing with younger students (grades 1-8). I feel it provides the necessary structure for sentence skills that move into paragraphing skills, and finally entire paper skills. IEW is excellent for enhancement skills. I love to use it with my older students to help them learn how to make their writing interesting. I know that Winning With Writing currently goes only through eighth grade. IEW has materials available for many grade levels, from elementary through high school. Both are excellent programs that give students a great foundation for paragraphing.   

Teaching writing to children is challenging because, let's face it, not all children like to write. We need to help our children realize that writing can be fun. Give your children opportunities to practice their paragraph skills creatively. How about writing letters to friends and relatives? Pretending to write a newspaper about your neighborhood? Or simply writing a story? If your child isn't old enough to write on his own, let him tell you a story and you write it down for him. Children love to see their words on paper. Writing is becoming such a dying art form. It is crucial for us, as parents, to instill in our children a love for putting words to paper. If we can foster this love from a young age, our children will have writing skills that flourish.

~Sarah   

Sarah Dugger is married to Andre' and lives in Tennessee with their six children. She is a homeschooling mom with too many irons in the fire to list them all here. She is an active blogger with the TOS Homeschool Crew. To contact Sarah, you may e-mail her at  sbdugger@aol.com. To read fun reviews and other blogerific items, you can visit her blog at www.myhomeschoolcrewreviews.blogspot.com