We had spent some time going over how to brainstorm and organize an expository essay. We consistently used the same graphic organizer, came up with ideas for responding to prompts together as a class, and reviewed examples of well written and poorly written essays, but I was drawing a blank on how to help the kids get really, actively involved in the pre-writing process.
Expository Essay Group Activity
2. Giving the students the prompt, the Thesis led the class in coming up with a thesis statement and the Topic Sentences worked together to come up with topics for the body paragraphs that were incorporated into the thesis.
4. As students and groups finished filling out their cards, they placed them on the appropriate place on the class graphic organizer.
For something that I came up with while falling asleep, I was surprised and delighted with how well this went! It's a great way to write a class paper before having students try their hand on on their own.