Thankful Writing Using the Triple Gold Sentence

I don't know how it goes in your classroom, but sometimes getting my kids to write can be like pulling teeth.  So many of them have such trouble with idea generation, and actually putting their thoughts together in a coherent way is next to impossible.  Don't get me wrong, some of my kids are prolific writers with a true ability to communicate.  These children, however, are few and far between.  That brings me to another thing I learned from Mr. Biffle at the WBT workshop I attended.  It's called the Triple Gold Sentence.  The triple gold sentence simply asks students, in their introductory paragraph, to name three things they can make a point about in their writing.  Each of the next three subsequent paragraphs is based on one of those points.  They would then wrap it up with a closing paragraph.

It's really not much more than the old 5 paragraph essay, but it helped remind me that not everything students write has to have some original format.  At the beginning of each year, I use The Important Book as a model for their first piece of writing.  For some reason, once that first paper is written, I drop the idea of having a "frame" for the students to use.  When I heard about the triple gold, I realized that I could help my students see that writing can be simple if you have a plan.

This week we are writing with a Thanksgiving theme.  I'm allowing my students to choose between two Thanksgiving themed prompts:

Today I talked with them about the structure their paragraph would follow:

We also prepped for our writing by making a web, here's my example:

I think that this "frame" will allow for my students to quickly produce a quality expository piece of writing.  I can't wait to share a finished piece with you all.