1. Teach students to recognise a main idea and a discussion point in a topic
Generally, essay topics contain a main idea – a focal point of examples which have to be discussed – and a discussion point – a part of the essay topic which invites interpretation or qualification. It’s important for students to identify these two aspects of a topic so they know:
*The examples they have to include and discuss
*What they need to interpret
We can teach students to split a topic into these two parts by giving them some examples and then getting them to do it on their own. See how this topic below can be split into a main idea and discussion point:
Main idea |
Discussion point |
The characters who succeed | show strength and courage. |
You must identify and discuss the characters who succeed (or don’t) | You need to interpret whether characters succeed because of strength or courage or because of other things. |
When you do this task with students, there will be different interpretation about what is the main idea or the discussion point in a topic. This doesn’t really matter, because the main game here is getting students to split topics into parts.
2. Teach students to brainstorm key vocabulary
For students to identify and be able to discuss examples effectively, they need to understand the key terms in the essay topic. Since discussing an essay topic means looking at it from different angles, guiding students to consider both synonyms and antonyms for key words will help them:
Similar meaning | Opposite meaning | |
succeed | find happiness
overcome fall victim to |
fail
unable to |
show | demonstrate | |
strength | resilience
persistence |
weakness |
courage | bravery | cowardice |
3. Teach students to use thinking routines to structure their brainstorming
Students need to access a range or examples to discuss a topic well. Using thinking routines like the chart below will help train students to go beyond just the protagonists in a text during their brainstorming:
Main idea |
Discussion point |
|
The characters who succeed | show strength and courage. | |
Main characters who show/don’t this | ||
Minor characters who show/don’t this | ||
Symbols or techniques which show/don’t this |
4. Teach students to brainstorm in complete ideas
Typically when students brainstorm, they’ll do it in individual words. But the more detailed students are in the brainstorming stage, the better the discussion in their essays will be. In the brainstorming stage, students can detailed but succinct in their brainstorming by:
- Using a specific noun group in a short sentence describing an example: Character A’s refusal to back down to threats shows courage.
- Using a specific verb in a short sentence describing an example: Character B achieves contentment with life at the end of the text and this shows success.
5. Teach students to organise ideas:
Once students have brainstormed examples, they need to organise them into groups which will become their body paragraphs. Below are a range of way students could do this. Get students to work in groups to brainstorm and organise examples in different ways and discuss the pros and cons of each as a class:
A) By grouping examples around different sub ideas generated from a main idea
Students can divide a main idea in a topic into further sub ideas which create categories for their examples:
The characters who succeed show strength and courage.
For this topic, students could divide the main idea of ‘strength and courage’ into further sub ideas:
- Moral strength and courage
- Physical strength and courage
- Success without strength and courage
- Failure from lack of strength and courage
B) By grouping examples around different characters and text elements who demonstrate an idea
Students can brainstorm different characters, minor characters or textual elements such as symbols which demonstrate the idea in an essay topic:
The characters who succeed show strength and courage.
For this topic, students could classify examples around character groups:
- Those characters who show strength
- Those characters who show courage
- Those characters who don’t show strength or courage
C) By grouping examples around different phases of a text which demonstrate an idea
Students can brainstorm examples from the different phases of a text (the beginning, middle and end):
The characters who succeed show strength and courage.
For this topic, students could brainstorm these groups of examples from the beginning, middle and end:
- The way weakness and cowardice prevents characters from success at the start
- The way characters grow in strength and courage during the text
- The way characters achieve success at the end of the text through strength and courage