HOW TO WRITE AN INFORMATIONAL ESSAY Middle School

hi everyone welcome to little base Mari I'm so glad you're here if you are new here make sure you press the subscribe button also that you can stick around and see more videos from me so today we're going to be talking about informational writing this week my students were given an assignment where they had to read an anchor text titled glory over everything and they had essay to do in information one essay and wanted to remind some of them how to format their informational essays remember with an informational essay you are giving information you're giving the facts your job is to inform the reader of something of topic of person of place whatever it is your job is to inform and give information and facts so first things first make sure you truly understand the essay topic that your teacher is giving you would rather you ask lot of questions in the beginning than to write five paragraph essay and it's off topic and you don't end up getting great grade right so make sure you ask the teacher questions or for clarification if you are struggling to understand that's topic or what you could do is complete duet chart where you basically break down the writing prompt you extract the verb and the noun and I'll make it more clear for you alright so can please tell my students that good essay is around four paragraphs with that being said quality is more important than quantity if you can write three to four paragraph essay that is amazing that is way better than writing an eight paragraph essay where you basically don't talk about anything and your ideas aren't very clear whatsoever so remember quality over quantity more is not always the best all right so let's get into our essay outline so paragraph number one is always your introduction the way described the introductory paragraph of an essay it's basically like preview to movie the movie producers don't give away too much they give you just enough information that would make you want to go to the movie in theaters right same thing to for an introductory paragraph in your essays all right you want to give enough information but not everything the first thing is your hook the hook is the very first sentence of your introductory paragraph the purpose of hook is to hook the reader in and basically grab their attention so that they will continue reading your essay there are many different types of hooks one that typically see often in my class is the rhetorical question hook where you ask thought-provoking question another type is quote hook or interesting fact took also you can use descriptive where you begin describing something or someone or situation and bowel eat into your essay after you have hook which is the first sentence of your essay comes the bridge the bridge is just general information about the topic basically to help readers understand where you're going with your hook the bridge is supposed to connect the hook to your thesis statement it's very important that you make your thesis statement clear and concise typically you're going to make statement and you're going to use details from the given text to support that statement in my students case their essay topic is explain the importance of freedom to Harriet Tubman so their job is to explain why freedom was so important to Harriet throughout the text that we read this week in way your thesis statement should sort of kind of restate what the original prompt was so for example possible thesis statement that should see in my students essays for this week is freedom was extremely important to Harriet Tubman based on the text of glory over everything period and then their job for the rest of the essay is to prove that statement to be true by grabbing evidence from the actual text all right so after introductory paragraph comes your body paragraphs purpose of body paragraphs is to support your thesis statement you're trying to prove your thesis statement to be true three things you want to remember reasons evidence explanation when you give reason the reason needs to not be your own opinion but it needs to be based on the text you will support that reason with textual evidence when you're writing textual evidence to make sure you give credit to the source so for example should see statements like according to the text based on what read people author states those let me know that you're getting the information from the author of the text or the source last thing make sure you explain your ideas and how to connect back to your thesis statement it's not very good to just give me whole bunch of textual evidence and reasons from the text but not elaborate on them further explain how this evidence supports your thesis statement or how your reasons you've included in your body paragraph support your thesis statement make sure you explain that so the reader can understand how your ideas are connected so after you give about two or three body paragraphs the last paragraphs of your informational essay is your conclusion paragraph make sure you use transitional phrase such as all in all to sum it up in conclusion when you are writing your conclusion paragraph to let readers know that your outfit in your essay into some of your ideas write the purpose of your conclusion paragraph is to remind readers of all the points you mentioned in your essay and also to drive your piece of statement home all right it needs to be extremely clear like to tell my students that sometimes in your conclusion paragraph you can even restate your thesis statement in different way just to remind readers of the point that you're trying to make and last but not least before go before you press the submit button or you turn in your paper make sure you proofread your work sometimes when we're rushing and we're super excited to write and say we make some spelling mistakes or even punctuation mistakes or capitalization mistakes make sure you proofread your own work before you turn it in mistakes that you may have made in the writing process you'll be able to catch those mistakes and revise them and make corrections alright guys well hope this video was super helpful for you just for review purposes let's talk about the parts of your essay paragraph one introduction paragraphs two and three or maybe four body paragraphs and in the last paragraph of your informational essay or any essay for that matter is your conclusion paragraph all right guys you safe