Teaching Your Child to Write Paragraphs

Paragraphs are the building blocks of essays and papers so it's important that kids learn how to write unified, coherent and well developed paragraphs.

Here are some resources to help you teach kids how to write great paragraphs.

Lessons/Tutorials

• Teach Your Child How to Write a Good Paragraph - HomeschoolWithLove Blog
• Growing with Grammar - this is a sampler that has a 5 day lesson on paragraphs.
• How to Write a Paragraph - for older students; a 23 page PDF 
• Time4Writing Paragraph Writing - this is just a unit outline of their writing class but I think it's a great outline to use for writing lessons.
• Paragraphs - Writing Center UNC - Great for older students.This handout will help you understand how paragraphs are formed, how to develop stronger paragraphs, and how to completely and clearly express your ideas.">

Graphic Organizers

Hamburger Organizers
A popular method to teach younger students how to write paragraphs is to have them write down their ideas in a hamburger shape. The top bun is the topic sentence; the burger, lettuce and tomatoes are the details, and the bottom bun is the concluding sentence.

• Reading Rockets Hamburger Graphic Organizer page - this page includes tips on using the graphic organizer and has two graphic organizers you can download.
• Timandevail.com's Hamburger Paragraph Graphic Organizer - this is a black and white version of one of the ones that are linked above at Reading Rockets. This is nice for slightly older elementary students  as the topic sentence, details, and concluding sentence is not in the actual hamburger but lines are provided off to the side; as older students may be using more detail or complex sentences, I think this gives better space.