Teaching Informational Writing: The Thesis Statement Centered Approach

The goal of thesis-centered writing is to keep the entire essay relevant to the points expressed in the thesis.

One of the toughest aspects of teaching essay writing is getting students to write cohesively. Often their writing lacks relevant information, yet is overflowing with unrelated filler. If you’ve graded any number of student essays, you’ve seen it: words with no purpose which are solely intended to make the teacher happy by fulfilling the required number of words on a page. (This is one reason I don’t assign a specific number of words; but, that’s another topic.) The most effective way to combat this problem and teach focused, relevant writing, is to use a thesis-centered approach. In short, this requires that you teach paragraph elements and specifically how to relate each of these elements to the thesis statement. Every element? Yes! EVERY element from hook to conclusion!

But, isn’t this the dreaded formulaic writing? Absolutely not!

Thesis centered writingis NOT formulaic. Formulaic writing is a rigid method that requires students to fill in pieces exactly as the formula dictates, without learning how to developa sense of style, expand thinking, or to write in a natural, cohesive way. Formulaic writing sounds weird and contrived, and usually cementsbadhabits that are very difficult for students to unlearn.

Thesis-centered writing, on the other hand, allows students to expand their thinking and creativity by asking them to examine the themes and big ideas of the thesis statement, and to develop their essays on these deeper concepts.

Sidenote: A big perk of using the thesis-centered approach is that grading becomes so much easier! You will have concrete elements to evaluate, and this alleviates a great amount of the subjectivity that makes our teacher brains go crazy. You will be able to effectively use a simple rubric that students can understand and actually use to make revisions!

Below are some photos showing how this approach works, and links to resources:

View resource here: