Writing a Strong Body Paragraph

6th Grade ELA

Sentence Order

Topic sentence Explain the topic sentence (1-2

sentences) Evidence Explain the evidence (1-2 sentenes) Concluding sentence

Topic Sentence

The first sentence should be the topic sentence. It describes what reason you are presenting to support your claim. It should be 1 sentence long.

Ex: One reason that plastic bottles should be banned is because they harm the environment.

Explain Your Topic Sentence

Using 1-2 sentences, explain what you wrote as your topic sentence.

Ex: Plastic bottles harm the environment because it takes a lot of oil and fossil fuels to produce the bottle itself.

Evidence

Provide a piece of evidence to support your topic sentence and make it stronger.

According to National Geographic Kids, “Americans buy more bottled water than any other nation in the world, adding 29 billion water bottles a year to the problem. In order to make all these bottles, manufacturers use 17 million barrels of crude oil.”

Explain the Evidence

Using 1-2 sentences, explain the importance of the evidence provided.

Example: As you can see, it takes a lot of oil to

produce these bottles of water that Americans buy. Oil is also a natural resource that is becoming limited, and we need to be careful to preserve it.

Concluding Sentence

Sum up why your topic sentence helps support your claim using a transitional phrase.

“All in all, In summary, In short, In conclusion…”

Ex: In summary, plastic water bottles are harmful to the environment because of all of the oil it takes to produce them.

So What Do I Need?

At least 1 piece of evidence per paragraph that is cited properly

5-6 sentences per paragraph total