PLANNING AN ESSAY

Breaking a Main Topic into Three Supporting Ideas

Teaching Objective:

Writers will learn how to identify three supporting ideas to elaborate their answer to an essay question.

Materials Needed:

• Plain paper or writer’s notebook
• Pencil
• Three Buckets game PDF (sample pages from Essay Course workbook)

Overview:

In this quick-thinking activity, writers will practice choosing three ideas to support their main topic. While this video may be used as a stand alone mini-lesson, it was developed as part of our course, Writing Personal Essays: Tap Into Your Unique Voice. To learn more about the full course, or to purchase access for your classroom, visit this link. (You will want to choose the “Independent Study” option.)