Explanatory Essay

By Anonymous (not verified), 12 March, 2026

Prewriting for Essays

Prewriting is your first step in writing an essay. This prewriting activity will help you select a topic to write about and gather important details about the topic before you begin a first draft.

Prewriting to Plan Your Own Essay

Review the results.

Study the answers to another question. This will be the topic for your own essay.

Peer Response Sheet

Teaching Tip

You can also have students write an essay about the answers to another question from the "Thinking About Polls" warm-up activity.

By Anonymous (not verified), 12 March, 2026

Reading an Informational Paragraph and Essay

Before you write your essay, you'll want to see how others did so. This lesson shows you an informational paragraph and an informational essay, explaining each part. As you read them, think about how the writers put ideas together and how you could describe the results of a classroom poll in your own essay.

Reading an Informational Paragraph

An informational paragraph has three main parts. The topic sentence names the topic. The body sentences explain the topic. The ending sentence gives a final idea about the topic. This paragraph explains the results of the poll about students’ favorite seasons.

Sample Paragraph

Listen to “Summer Wins”

Your browser does not support the audio tag.

Hide audio

Summer Wins

Topic Sentence Most third graders at Parkview Elementary picked summer as the best season. There are 32 third graders at Parkview, and 20 of them picked summer. Most of these students liked it because of the warm weather and no school. Body Sentences Winter came next with eight third graders voting for it. Playing in the snow and Christmas were the main reasons. Three students picked fall because of Halloween and fall colors. Only one third grader picked spring because of the flowers. Ending Sentence The seasons are all fun, but every third grader has a favorite.

By Anonymous (not verified), 12 March, 2026

Warm-Up for Writing Essays

Writing a Personal Narrative
(c) Thoughtful Learning 2016

An essay explores a topic in great detail using multiple paragraphs. This lesson will show you one special way to gather information for your own essay.

What Is an Essay?

You first learn how to write sentences. Then you learn how to write paragraphs. Next, you learn how to write essays. Each new form builds on what you learned before: A group of related sentences forms a paragraph. A group of related paragraphs forms an essay.

An essay gives information about a single topic. The beginning paragraph introduces the topic, the middle paragraphs explain the topic, and the ending paragraph summarizes the main points. Essays explain, describe, or persuade.

In this unit, you will write an essay that explains how a group of third graders answered an interesting question.

Watch the video "Building Essays"

Hide video

Thinking About Polls

Big companies and organizations take polls to find out what people are thinking. For example, when there is an election, voters will be asked who they are going to vote for and why. Asking these questions helps candidates know how they are doing during their campaign.

Consumers are asked what they like such as thin or thick crust on their pizza. Young TV viewers like you may be asked about their favorite shows. Even principals and teachers use polls to ask their students different questions.