Mastering the Power Paragraph

I attended an English department meeting recently when one of my colleagues asked if there was a perfect strategy for students to approach the kinds of writing that they'll encounter on the high-stakes, end-of-year ELA exam. I teach at a grades 7 through 12 school in California, so our students take the SBAC exam, which assesses grade-level proficiency based on our state's version of the Common Core standards. Students, among other things, have to respond to a writing prompt on the ELA exam.

There are three types of prompts, and students are randomly assigned one of them. The types of writing that are assessed are narrative/storytelling, expository/research-based essay writing, or argumentative essay writing. Curiously, a response-to-literature prompt is not included (I'm sure the testing gurus have their reasons for this). Most states, including Texas and Florida, have some version of these writing requirements, albeit based on different standard sets. Typically, these writing tasks are timed; students have about an hour to complete them.

Perfect strategy? Hmm… I raised my hand and suggested that a perfect strategy may not exist that works for every student, but that there is a method that I’ve used over the years that always seemed to help my students do consistently well on the writing portion of the exam. It's true, my students do tend to do very well on the end-of-year exam, particularly the writing sections, and I attribute this in large part to the amount of time I spend working with them on explicit writing instruction.

The strategy that I use to prepare them for the exam is actually a template or structure that I call the power paragraph. It's a paragraph/short essay structure that allows students to show off a number of skills and sophistication in a relatively short amount of time.

The power paragraph is essentially an extension of a much simpler paragraph type that is typically taught in elementary and middle school. You've probably seen it many times. The structure that I'm referring to begins with a topic, sentence, or claim, then moves on to present some evidence (usually text evidence), and concludes with the student providing their own explanation, analysis, or reasoning. I've heard it called CER (claim, evidence, reasoning), CEA (claim, evidence, analysis), TEA (topic sentence, evidence, analysis), and other acronyms as well.

Here’s an example of what this type of paragraph looks like, composed in essaypop:

And here’s how it appears converted into an MLA-formatted document in real-time.

While this three-paragraph is perfectly suitable for quick and simple responses, it generally falls short when it comes to addressing the types of prompts seen on end-of-year tests taken by middle and high schoolers. These types of writing require, in most cases, the integration of more than one piece of proof or text evidence into the essay. They're also looking to see if the student can thoroughly and coherently explain how the evidence presented relevantly supports a stated thesis or claim.

In many cases, the test expects students to begin their writing with a relevant lead-in or hook that provides essential background information for the audience. They also look for a strong conclusion that offers a clear sense of closure. Additionally, in argumentative writing, they want to see that students can effectively acknowledge and address counterclaims.

Essentially, they’re looking for depth of thinking and clarity, and they want this to be demonstrated in about 45 to 60 minutes, which is a lot to accomplish for young people who are under pressure and still emerging as writers. It’s a stressful situation. To prepare them for the pressure, I provide my students with a well-practiced game plan to bring with them to the exam. The plan involves practicing with writing templates that they understand and have worked with many times. I want them to be comfortable at the outset and be able to start writing quickly without having to think too much about how they're going to organize their thoughts, so having such templates is vital.

Going back for a second to the simple, three-component structure, I like to get my middle and high school students very comfortable with this basic template first, and we spend several weeks just knocking out simple paragraph after simple paragraph. After all, even in secondary school, students must master these fundamentals and build muscle memory around the components of claim, evidence, and analysis.

Once they're comfortable with the simple template, I introduce the concept of "stacking" the simple paragraph elements. This basic modification is simple. The topic sentence remains the same, but instead of bringing in just one piece of evidence, students include two. I also have them add another distinct section of explanation/analysis. At first, I have them deliberately sequence these parts in the following order: evidence > analysis > evidence > analysis.

The resulting paragraph looks something like this --

This simple exercise essentially forces students to elaborate and say more about the topic they are discussing. It requires them to go back to the text or their research and uncover more evidence to support their claim, and of course, once they've found it, they must think of something novel and relevant to say about it.

This back-and-forth approach (we jokingly call it the ping-pong approach) not only deepens the explanation, but it also feels natural. After all, when we talk or debate with others, we tend to provide a little bit of evidence and explain it, wait for feedback or a reaction, and then provide a little bit more evidence and explanation as we work through the conversation, hopefully burrowing deeper as we go.

What I have always found interesting is that the second incidence of analysis in this kind of communication always seems to be better and more well-thought-out than the first. It's as though the student's first round of reasoning summons up their most obvious insights, but the second attempt requires them to really think about what they're trying to say; as a result, the commentary is invariably better.

Here is the new paragraph construction in an MLA-formatted preview --

So the first stage of constructing the power paragraph simply requires integrating two simple paragraphs into a single, beefed-up paragraph. Of course, students can mix the sequencing up; they can stack two sections of evidence back-to-back and then provide the explanation/analysis piece, or they might lead the sequence with analysis and follow that with evidence. One thing I like about essaypop’s functionality is that students can move the frames around and experiment with different effects the relocation of rhetorical components has on the writing.

So is the power paragraph finished? Not quite. To consistently do well on the kinds of writing required on end-of-year exams, students need to demonstrate a little more. I tell my students that by accomplishing the stacking that we've described, they've already done most of the hard work; they've shown that they can express themselves coherently and think critically about a focused idea. They've demonstrated that they can find relevant evidence and incorporate it into their writing. However, to give the piece of writing a more finished and sophisticated feel, they should attach what we call an intro and an outro to the writing. So what are these components?

The intro (sometimes called the hook) is simply a section of writing that leads into the main idea of the paragraph in a conversational manner that contextualizes the topic. The hook prepares the reader to consider what is coming. Sometimes it's designed to engage or provoke a reaction; sometimes it provides the reader with critical background information so that the rest of the writing will make sense. The hook also shows that the writer is comfortable and confident with the subject matter, and even eager to grapple with the prompt.

I tell my students that it's almost impolite not to include some sort of engaging lead-in before beginning the business of proving things. It's like jumping into an important conversation with a person at a social gathering or business event without first providing some friendly context for the discussion. There are many ways that writers can create effective hooks, and the essaypop help cards in the sidebar provide several models. Take a look at the intro/hook we’ve added to our sample paragraph –

We refer to the power paragraph outro as the closer—it delivers final thoughts, provides a sense of completion, and prevents the piece from feeling unfinished. A strong closer offers the reader something to reflect on or act upon, seamlessly tying the writing together.

A well-crafted closer demonstrates a writer’s confidence and control as they guide the work to a natural conclusion. To support this, students can consult help card models for different closing strategies or quickly access sentence starters to begin their closer with clarity and purpose.

Here's a view of the system’s sentence starters –

And here is the final MLA-formatted document. We've gone from approximately 150 words to just over 400 words.

Arguments proceed much in the same way that I've described so far. To do well here, students still compose a strong topic sentence; they strategically stack various pieces of evidence and analysis, and include an intro and an outro – all the rules still apply. The difference, however, is that prompts requiring students to construct an argument invariably want counterclaims to be introduced, addressed, and rebutted.

To address counterarguments, I have my students add a counterargument and rebuttal frame immediately after their evidence and analysis, and before the closer. While counterclaims can be placed elsewhere, I’ve found that positioning them here, right after their core reasoning, creates a natural transition. This, again, mirrors real-world debates and conversations, where a person typically presents their evidence and analysis before addressing opposing views or objections. I also explain to my students that placing the counterargument and rebuttal before the conclusion gives them the advantage of having the final word in the discussion.

The last thing I teach my students (and often we do this during the writing process) is strategic paragraphing. Once the power paragraph starts to grow and build, it's natural to add paragraph breaks for clarity and ease of reading. Kids will often bring it up before I do, saying things like, "This isn't a paragraph anymore, it's an essay!" or "This is getting long; I feel like I need to break this up." Precisely!

I explain to them that they have essentially written a multiple-paragraph essay without knowing it, and then we discuss the natural places where paragraph transitions could occur. The hook and thesis statement seem to form an introduction - let's drop a break there. The first evidence/analysis section seems to belong together; let's lasso them together with the next paragraph break. The next evidence/analysis cluster gets the treatment, and, as you can see below, we've added a quick transition frame to keep things flowing. Counterargument and rebuttal are a good match; let's group them up, too. And that leaves us with our closing statement to act as the conclusion paragraph.

I have always felt that paragraphing needs to happen organically, and this exercise allows this to happen in a natural way. It also satisfies something that many standardized tests require, and that is that students compose a multiple-paragraph piece of writing.

Note that essaypop converts everything into an MLA-formatted document in real time, and this can be uploaded to any file format (Word, Google Doc, PDF, etc).

I firmly believe that students who go into high-stakes writing exams with a set of solid templates and structures in their tool belt have a distinct advantage over those who don't. Sure, highly proficient writers with natural ability can probably wing it and do reasonably well in these environments, but most students benefit from approaching these tasks with a strategic and preconceived plan.

One of the greatest sources of stress for students is the perceived pressure of time constraints. While it’s theoretically possible for students to outline and write a complete multi-paragraph essay, including an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion, most find it difficult to do this comfortably within a 60-minute window. In many cases, requiring a full essay is unnecessary and can become a barrier to effective assessment of essential skills.

With the power paragraph, students can efficiently incorporate sufficient text evidence, demonstrate critical reasoning, and achieve a level of sophistication and organizational clarity. Importantly, they can do all this in a short amount of time. To reinforce these skills, I have students write a timed power paragraph every few weeks, using the essaypop timer feature to simulate test environment time constraints. While there are various approaches for preparing students for end-of-year assessments, my experience shows the power paragraph is a highly effective and reliable strategy. I encourage you to incorporate it into your regular practice.

Final Note: When you select or design a lesson in essaypop, you can dial up a power paragraph template directly. When you do, all of the writing frames we've discussed will be pre-populated for your students.