Yeah, I’m looking at that Cal State thing again (more carefully/with more sleep) and realizing it’s not what I thought it was at first. It’s definitely one of the better how-to-write-a-5isP-essay pieces out there, but it’s not going to help move students beyond this kind of writing.

Maybe I’m fighting an impossible revolution here. I keep thinking that it’d be much easier for me and my students and my colleagues, who I harangue on a regular basis, if I’d just admit that the 5ishP essay is the best way to teach kids how to write effective and organized essays.

What if I grant that and then move on to the position that essays themselves might not be worth teaching? Because who ever has to write an essay once they’re out of school? I wonder, sometimes, if we’re teaching the English/Social Studies equivalent of pinch pots.

This looks awfully similar to what I’ve been teaching my youngsters, but I still consider it to be in the 5P/3-Topic vein because, well, it’s almost the same, except I tell my kids not to lock themselves into 5 paragraphs (see my first comment re: teaching the “general concept”).

Maybe we’re saying the same thing in different ways (separated by a common language?). At any rate, thanks for posting the additional info. While the Cal State handout didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know, it did give me some ideas for how I can present the information differently.

PS – Unrelated note re: the “On Notice” board – Totally, totally with you on “that’s so gay” – fries me every time I hear it, and fries me even more when kids don’t get why it’s hurtful, even after I explain it to them calmly. We actually devote a fair amount of time talking about the use of “gay” as a pejorative in my Multicultural Studies class; happily, I see a lot of kids get it in that context.

The thing is, I like the idea of it all, but I never could figure out how to get it to transfer to my precious bumpkins, so it could send them too. Which is probably why they never got the highest possible score on the NC writing test…

Eh. I’m a Spanish teacher now. )

Seriously. Read anything written by a “real” writer–an essayist, a reviewer, a columnist–and tell me if they follow The Structure: Thesis statement is the last sentence of the introductory paragraph; each of the three or four body paragraphs has a main point with three supporting details, some supported by quotes; the conclusion restates the thesis and leaves the reader with a question.

Come on. Find me some. Did E.B. White do it? How about Thoreau? Does Rick Reilly? Maureen Dowd? Dave Barry?

Now, of course our students aren’t E. B. White. But what in tarnation (that’s for you, Laura) are we teaching them to do? Fill in forms or write? I don’t buy that student-determined structures will make 10th graders do poorly on state exams. I think if they’re started on that path now, by the time the exams roll around they’ll be comfortable enough to knock it out. Also, students who can come up with their own appropriate writing structures will a) be able to switch to whichever structures their less enlightened other teachers/state institutions insist on and b) will better understand the strengths and weaknesses of the various options they have.

Of course, I could be entirely wrong. But I’m continuing the experiment.

Mind you, I’m not familiar with Pirie, but I do like these ideas. However, I too am a little shy of these rebellious notions. I’m just afraid that the students I had when I WAS an English teacher would A) never have gotten around to asking the right questions that would lead them to discover the literary tricks and their beauty and B) would never be able to explain themselves clearly without the “training wheels.”

Perhaps if I joined the club and read Pirie’s book I’d get how it worked, or perhaps he overestimates Tobaccoland kiddos who have to take the 10th grade writing test.

Defenders of the five-paragraph formula sometimes draw an analogy with the training wheels on a child’s bicycle…Thomas Nunnally says, “A fledgling biker…relies on [training wheels] for security while learning to balance”. But is “learning to balance” really what that child is doing? Or is the child rather avoiding the challenge of balance, by doing something that looks like balancing? Many parents come to realize that their children have spent too long depending on training wheels, and, in reality, they have delayed the learning of balance, which can be mastered in a couple of afternoon’s with a parent’s supporting hand and an insistence that the challenge not be shirked. (77)

He goes on to discuss paint-by-numbers pictures as well.
Look, I’m not sure how to teach structure, or if it’s even possible to do so without the 5P template (or something similar), but I do know that there’s very little to the 5P-esque assignment that strikes me as the kind of writing that anyone would want to read. It’s artificial, it rarely fits what we’re really asking students to do, and by the time I get 10th graders they’re often so used to everything following the rules of three (three body paragraphs, three supporting details in each, etc) that when they have four ideas, or two, or more or less than that, they don’t know what to do.
I like the idea of telling students they can’t use that structure, but they still have to find a way to make their essays make sense. I’ve given assignments that have students come up with genuine questions that they can’t definitively answer, and try to answer that question in two or three or four different ways. It makes for interesting reading.
Students struggle when we don’t give them set structures, but I’d be a lousy former undergrad marxist if I didn’t say that out of struggle comes clarity.