Before you take essaypop out “into the wild”, we would urge you first guide your students through these four lessons that will allow everybody to try out many of the features that essaypop has to offer.

If you have not yet created your classes or onboarded your students, it would be best to take care of this now. Here's a link to an article that shows you how.

And if you ever need help or want to dig deeper, our Help Center and YouTube channel are at your fingertips.

We start things simple with a simple quickwrite, then move into a structured, but simple, paragraphing writing activity. We then move to a second quickwrite (this one will be a timed writing), then culminate the set with a slightly more complex paragraph. Please carefully follow the instructions for each lesson so that you and your students don’t miss out on the opportunity to use all of the cool features that essaypop has to offer. Each lesson is also accompanied by useful resources that you can peruse and even share with your students.

This is a very enjoyable set of activities that you and your students will find compelling. Let's jump right in!

In this lesson, students will describe and defend an animal that they think makes the perfect pet. Students will compose their thoughts in a single frame They will then interact in the collaborative Hive environment. Using the assessment tool, the teacher will assign a holistic, rubric-based score for each student. The rubric categories are the use of evidence, the quality of analysis, organization, and/or grammar and mechanics.

Take a minute to watch this video with your students as it provides a great overview of how the Hive works.

In this lesson, students will compose a short paragraph in which they argue whether dogs or cats make better pets. When students are ready to write, they will first complete a simple prewriting activity using our Post-it-style brainstorming tool. They will then write their simple paragraphs by composing a claim, presenting evidence, and then commenting on or analyzing the evidence presented. Using the assessment tool, the teacher will select and score two elements of the paragraph, thesis, and analysis, based on rubric descriptors.

Here's a great article about how to teach elementary students how to use frame writing to compose simple paragraphs that work.

Take a minute to watch this video with your students as it provides a great overview of how frame writing works.

In this lesson, students will write a short, narrative response based on the unique scenario provided. This is a creative writing task that students will write in a single frame. This is also a timed-writing activity, and the timer will be set by the teacher in the essay dashboard. You may decide how long the students need, but we recommend that you put 15-20 minutes on the clock.

In this lesson, will read and analyze Sandra Cisneros's short vignette, "Hairs". Feel free to read, present, and discuss the literature with your students as you normally would. When students are ready to write, they will first complete a prewriting activity and answer several guiding questions using the Post-it-style brainstorming tool. They will then write their elaborated or power paragraphs by composing an engaging hook, a clear claim, by presenting evidence from the story itself, and then commenting on or analyzing the evidence presented. They will conclude the writing with a closer. Using the assessment feature, the teacher will select and score two elements of the paragraph based on rubric descriptors.

Here's a solid article you can share with your students about tackling what we call a "power paragraph"

This writing will be challenging for students and it's what the standards require. Some students will actually be ready for more complexity, and if they are, here's a great video that shows them how to take their paragraph to the next level.

Now that you have finished the training set, you should have some solid familiarity with the essaypop system. If you enjoyed and your students enjoyed this set, there are others in our library that you can choose from. To take a deeper dive into the essaypop writing platform here's a great article to peruse called The Essaypop Essentials.