The Perfect Paragraph

Let’s talk about the building blocks of writing.

You need words. Yay, we knew that. Luckily for most teachers, students come to us knowing words. Do they always know how to use those words? No. But, they have the basic necessity for writing.

After words, you need sentences. Students don’t always know how to craft a sentence in writing. Lucky for me in the secondary world of teaching, they usually know what a sentence is by the time they come to me.

A sentence is a complete thought; a noun has to act. (Subject + Verb = Sentence). A thing has to do something.

They practice and practice writing sentences only to be bewildered and overwhelmed by the next building block: the paragraph.

Paragraphs are a block of sentences. That’s intimidating. And, often, asking students to write a paragraph gets a handful of groans and complaints and questions about how many sentences it needs to be. (To which my answer is always the same: long enough to get the job done, short enough to keep things interesting.)

Don’t even get started on essays.

In the secondary world, I sometimes see building blocks being skipped. We ask students to write essays — giant blocks of paragraphs — before they even know how to build a paragraph.

You can’t build an essay without building paragraphs.

You can’t build a paragraph without sentences.

You can’t build sentences without words.

Ah, English.

Let’s get back to the focal point of this post: paragraphs.

Writing is about having ideas and being able to support and explain those ideas. Paragraphs are the very base of this concept.

Essays are expansions of ideas.

So, before students can expand their ideas, they have to have the ability to have and defend an idea.

Hence, we have the perfect paragraph — a simple breakdown of the essentials needed in a paragraph.

Learn it. Practice it. Fix it. Practice it more.

Here’s the outline I use to teach it:

Claim, Data, Warrant taken from the Toulmin Model of Argumentative writing.

Let’s break this down.

Claim: An arguable and universal statement about your topic.

Arguable meaning it has more than one answer.

Universal meaning it can apply to different scenarios and have different answers with different supports.

In English classes, claims are often thematic statements about books. (Theme = Main Idea + Lesson)

Here’s an example: Happiness comes from the ability to make your own choices.

Is their more than one answer? Yes.

Can this apply to different scenarios/books? Yes.

Is it thematic? Yes. (Happiness = Main idea; ability to make your own choices = lesson)

Rules of a claim:

Never mention the source material; if you do, it is no longer universal. (Example: Harry Potter makes choices to ensure his happiness. Your claim now only applies to Harry Potter, instead of every possible novel or article.)
It should be general and make people want to keep reading.
Claims can apply to different sources. I can prove that “Happiness comes from the ability to make choices” with lots of different books. Not just one.

Data: The evidence or support from your source material you use to argue your claim.

Evidence comes as a quotation or paraphrase from the source material. (And needs a proper citation.)

Assuming our claim remains the same, here is an example of data:

In Harry Potter, Harry is happiest when he has the ability to choose where he lives when he discovers he has a godfather in Sirius Black.

Does it support my claim? Yes, it supports how Harry chooses to be happy.

Is it from my source material? Yes, since my assumed source material is Harry Potter.

Rules of Data:

Be specific.
Be relevant; don’t use data talking about anger if your claim is about happiness.

Warrant: How does your data connect to you claim? Or why does your data matter?

You’ve probably heard this also referred to as “So what?” That works, too; it’s just never made sense to me that way.

This is the most important part of the paragraph. It is also, unfortunately, the most challenging one to write and to think about.

The connection should be clear; the same words should be used.

Here is an example (Yes, still with Harry Potter.): This data proves my claim because Harry’s happiness came as a result of the choice he had to live with his Godfather.

The italicized words come from our data.

The unbolded words come from our claim.

The warrant puts them together — connects them.

Rules of a warrant:

It may sound redundant. That’s okay.
Use the sentence stem “This data proves my claim because…” on your first draft. It gets the ideas flowing. You can change the language later.

Each paragraph should have two pieces of data and two pieces of warrant.

One just isn’t enough to prove your point.

You can’t put a nail into a board with one swing of a hammer. It takes at least two.

Usually.

Conclusions: The final thought of a paragraph, the last sentence, the final way to get your reader’s to think about your ideas and appreciate them.

Conclusions are super important and super impactful if done right.

Think about conclusions as “dropping the mic” on an argument.

If you were giving a speech, you wouldn’t end it with something like, “In conclusion, that’s what I think.” (Something I see far too often.)

That’s boring, and you will get lackluster applause.

You want to end your paragraph in a big way, with a thought that leaves your reader thinking and excited about your fantastic thoughts.

Something like… Since the choices we make truly impact our ability to feel happy, the choices we make everyday matter.

Boom. Mic drop.

Paragraph wrapped up.

Cue the applause.

Once individual paragraphs are mastered with this format, you can put more together into an essay.

And the building blocks are completed.

Paragraphs before essays.