How to write a well developed paragraph

Breaking the monotony of five sentence paragraphs can be challenging.  Students get in the habit of checking off their topic sentence, three supporting details, and conclusion sentence with a sigh.  Unfortunately, what these students do not realize is that as they age, their paragraphs should too! 


By encouraging students to use a variety of detail types in their writing, they will excel to new heights in their composition of a well-developed paragraph.  When practicing using these detail types, keep in mind that you may need to encourage students to make up believable statistics, quotations, etc.  The focus is NOT on research; the focus is on constructing paragraphs that are well-developed and break the elementary style of five sentences and being done.  This is a great lesson to use following the “Detail types to strengthen nonfiction writing” resource that is also available on edgalaxy.com.

Click here to download the resources and lesson plan.