Writing the Beginning Paragraph

Your beginning paragraph starts with a lead that gets your reader's attention, includes detail sentences that explain the cause-effect relationship, and ends with a focus statement that tells readers just what your essay will be about.

1. Ask a question.

   What did you eat for lunch today?

2. Relate the topic to your own experience.

   Last year, school lunches changed in a big way.

3. Start with a thought-provoking fact or statement.

   School districts are taking a closer look at school lunches.

Lead Sentence

Detail Sentences

Focus Statement

Prewriting for Topics

Cause-effect essays explain how one thing leads to another. To brainstorm cause-effect essay topics, think about changes to your school, community, or environment. Also consider important events in history.

1. What changed or is changing in my school or community?
2. What changed or is changing in the world?
3. What changed or is changing in the environment?
4. What is one event or invention that changed history?

Warm-Up for Cause-Effect Essays

Everything that is going on around you right now has one or more causes that came before. And everything that will happen in the future is the effect of something that is happening now, sometimes resulting from choices you make!

Assessing with an Explanatory Rubric

Test graders will use a rubric to judge the quality of your writing for assessment. By using the following rubric to judge your own writing, you can become aware of what testers are looking for and can improve your scores in the future.

Writing an Essay for Assessment

Some tests ask you to write an essay response to articles you have closely read. The following activity will help you practice.

1. Read the writing prompt.

Imagine that your teacher has assigned you to write an explanatory essay about the lives of monarch butterflies. You will be using the sources in this unit. Focus your thinking about monarch butterflies and create an essay. Include details from the sources to support your ideas.

2. Answer the PAST questions.

Purpose?

Audience?

Subject?

Type?

Writing a Paragraph for Assessment

Some tests ask you to write a paragraph in response to sources you have read or viewed. The following activity will help you practice responding.

1. Read the writing prompt.

You have just read three articles and watched a video about monarch butterflies. Write a paragraph that explains how the additional sources expand your understanding from Source 1. Include at least two examples, naming the title and author of each source that you use.

2. Answer the PAST questions.

Purpose?

Audience?

Subject?

Type?

Writing On-Demand Essays

A writing assessment gives you a short time to write a response to a prompt.

To do so, you should use a shortened form of the writing process:

Prewriting (5 Minutes)

Answer the PAST questions.

Purpose? Explain how it’s made

Audience? New person

Subject? A favorite food

Type? Essay

Write a focus statement.

Most Americans like tacos, but they haven’t had Mexican tacos.

List supporting details.

—Using cilantro, goat cheese, homemade white corn tortilla

—Making tortillas

—Cooking meat, cutting cilantro

—Putting taco together

Analyzing Writing Prompts

Often tests contain writing prompts that you must respond to. Your first step is to understand the writing prompt. You can use the PAST questions:

• Purpose? Why am I writing? (To explain? To demonstrate?)
• Audience? Who will read my writing? (Tester? Classmates?)
• Subject? What subject should I write about? (Games? Pizza?)
• Type? What type of writing should I create? (Essay? Letter?)

Sample Writing Prompt

Answers to PAST Questions

• Purpose?

  To explain the meaning of the sayings and give examples

• Audience?

  A person who is learning English

• Subject?

  Animal sayings

• Type?

  Essay

Warm-Up for Reading and Writing Assessments

© Thoughtful Learning 2016

Reading helps you learn any subject. Writing helps you share what you've learned. That's why these two skills are critical in all your classes. That's also why major assessments test your ability to read and write.

What Is Assessment?

Assessment is another word for test. Some assessments will test your ability to read and write. The reading and writing you do every day at school and home will help you get ready for these assessments. This unit will also help.

In the following activities, you’ll learn about close reading—reading to understand the focus statement, topic sentences, details, and vocabulary of the nonfiction texts you’re assigned. You’ll also learn about on-demand writing—writing to develop your own ideas during an assessment. Strong reading skills help you write and vice versa.

In this unit, you’ll learn the reading and writing skills that you need to succeed in nonfiction assessment. If you’d like to try out these skills, see the unit “Practice Test for Reading and Writing.”

Thinking About Close Reading

To read closely, you need to think about the ideas in a text. You can do this by asking and answering questions. For starters, use the 5 W’s and H.