Teaching, The Teaching of Writing Stephanie Hampton Teaching, The Teaching of Writing Stephanie Hampton

A Guide to Teaching Any Middle School Academic Essay

Whenever I sat down with my middle school English team, met with a colleague for curriculum planning, or chatted with teachers across departments, one question always surfaced: “How do you teach the essay?” or “What parts need to be taught to students?”

As I continue working with more and more teachers, I’ve noticed that the academic essay is often assigned based on a teacher’s own learning experiences, their mentor’s approach, or a set of commonly accepted skills that are rarely questioned. I’m not claiming that my method of teaching essays is better than anyone else’s. Instead, this post serves as a starting point for a larger conversation about how the academic essay is implemented across grade levels. The goal, ultimately, should be consistency.

In this post, I’ll use the Six Traits of Writing as a shared language for teaching writing in the classroom. I’ll also outline the essential components of an academic essay—what I refer to as the building blocks.

Just like physical building blocks, these parts can be removed, rearranged, or used differently depending on the purpose of the assignment. The same concept applies here: consider each part as an area where you can choose to emphasize, adapt, or even skip depending on what your students need. I like the Six Traits of Writing because they provide flexible, universal terminology that applies across genres and writing types.

The academic essay can feel overwhelming to teach because it’s often viewed as a rigid form. But in reality, there’s quite a bit of flexibility, depending on the teacher’s experience, the grade level, and the writing genre. In my experience, success in teaching essay writing comes from two things: using a consistent structure and adopting a shared language. When teachers have a common understanding of these areas, it leads to better conversations about writing—and more clarity, purpose, and structure for students.

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The Teaching of Writing, Teaching Stephanie Hampton The Teaching of Writing, Teaching Stephanie Hampton

Essay Series Part 5: Giving Feedback

In part 5 of the Compare/Contrast Essay Series, we explore the beauty of rough draft feedback.

Time for the handing back of rough drafts! Students have put together their introduction rough drafts, body paragraph rough drafts, and conclusion rough drafts to form a first draft of their Compare/Contrast Essay about the topic:

Is our modern American society more similar to or different from the Uglies Dystopian Society/World?

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The Teaching of Writing, Teaching Stephanie Hampton The Teaching of Writing, Teaching Stephanie Hampton

Essay Series Part 3 and 4: Conclusion Workshop and Using Padlet to Teach Students Peer Review

My love-hate relationship with technology in the classroom continues as I reflect on the use of Padlet for conducting a peer review. I like visual feedback. I like looking at how different people respond to writing, and I like seeing how different teachers use feedback to help their writers improve. Students created their first rough draft of their Dystopian Compare/Contrast Essays for a peer review after they participated in a Conclusion Workshop.

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