English Teaching Tools


The Five Paragraph Essay
Using The Formula Method


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For many students, the five paragraph essay is a mystery. What is it? Why do I have to learn how to do it? The five paragraph essay is a way to learn how to join thoughts together as a stepping stone for writing research papers and other projects. It is a way to organize ideas to help with learning the overall writing process. It is also used to show if students know how to communicate in the written form.

The formula method for writing a five paragraph essay can help students who are struggling with the concept of how to link together the concepts or for students who just think it is too hard to do it, so they just don’t try. It is important to teach this method as a new and easy way to write essays. Even telling the students that it is a cheater method of writing essays can entice the students to want to participate.

Use The Framework Worksheet found at the bottom of this page. Come up with a topic for the essay. It helps if everyone is working on the same topic for the first time through the process. What do you like or don’t like about school is usually an easy topic for students to get ideas for their essays. Everyone has an opinion to express and giving the freedom to write whatever they want (minus fowl language) can often get students to be more involved with the assignment.

Keep in mind the introduction paragraph is not actually written until the entire worksheet is completed, so the student knows what to write about in the introduction when it is time to write the actual essay. Once the ideas are on the page, the first paragraph flows much more easily. It is often difficult for a student to start an essay with the introduction paragraph before they have thought through what they want to say.

The formula method follows the concept of Say what you’re going to say. Say it. Say what you said. The say what you’re going to say part is the introduction paragraph. The say it section represents the three body or middle paragraphs. The say what you said section is the conclusion paragraph.

If a group is doing the assignment together, then the teacher, parent or tutor needs to read the directions out loud or have students take turns reading them out loud. Discuss the directions step by step before asking the students to fill in each section of the worksheet. Allow for questions.

    Steps To Complete The Framework Worksheet
  1. Fill in the topic of the essay at the top of the page above the first paragraph box.
  2. Write three ideas about the topic using the lines in the intro paragraph box.
  3. Rewrite each of the ideas at the top of each middle or body paragraph box.
  4. Write three or four concepts about each idea, using the lines provided in each middle or body paragraph.
  5. Write a summary of what was said in the three body paragraphs, using the lines in the summary paragraph box.
  6. Take out a fresh piece of paper and write the actual essay using The Framework Worksheet as a guide. It is okay to reuse some of the same wording used on the worksheet. This is part of the cheater method.
  7. Rewrite the essay as needed.


Intro Paragraph - Topic:
Idea 1:
Idea 2:
Idea 3:


Idea 1:


Idea 2:


Idea 3:


Summary Paragraph
A reproducable packet of this content with the worksheet can be purchased at the Online Store.

Home Page last updated 07/28/09