Expository paragraph
Body building for the essay midsection

When people talk about an expository paragraph, they are really talking about kinds of paragraphs most often found in the body paragraphs of persuasive essays. Such paragraphs could stand alone — the so-called paragraph essay — or be one of the body paragraphs in an essay.

I tend to use the term body paragraph because body is a shorter word than expository and makes more sense to students.

Also, there are several types of exposition that do not use expository paragraphs. (The English language arts curriculum is full of such linguistic snares.)

Whatever you call it, the paragraph has a distinctive organization.

Distinctive organization

Every body (expository) paragraph has the same basic structure. Each has a beginning, middle, and end — relatively little beginning and end, but a big chunk of middle.

These expository paragraph proportions mimic the proportions of the standard expository essay. Students need to master the basic paragraph organization of the paragraph in order to write longer works such as three- or five-paragraph essays.

(Elementary school writers tend to have a beginning but no middle. That's why teachers say their work isn't developed.)

Show organization visually first

Since writing is a verbal activity that non-verbal learners find difficult, I like to start by showing some purely visual representations of how a persuasive paragraph is organized. Graphics make the more visual learners think they might possibly be able to understand this writing stuff.

Begin by telling students this is a diagram or map of how a body paragraph is put together. For this presentation, I use a basic informal outline that I'm going to use for dozens of other essay-writing activities.

I don’t use the word outline. That’s too scary. Depending on the students, I use picture, map, diagram, graphic, or icon.

The verbal folks will see the numbers. They may see nothing else. They won't have a clue what the numbers represent.

The non-verbal people see that in addition to having numbers, the graphic elements include shapes, sizes, and colors. They will intuit that things that are the same color belong together, that identical shapes probably mean identical procedures. They may not be able to explain that, but they will get it.

Next I show a more detailed graphic.

The first thing that students should see is that the first graphic has been expanded.

Everyone should see that the diagram now has three main sections.

Each section has the same elements in the same order. The new icons are a little hard to read on screen. They are

• Paper clip chain
• Megaphone
• “Information” symbol
• Magnifying glass

Kids raised with computers will intuit that the bars represent procedures. They may guess that items with the same appearance represent the same procedure. They may not be able to enunciate those concepts clearly, but they will see it.

This visual examination of an expository paragraph is very much like the structural reading technique (a.k.a. surveying or previewing) you use in teaching reading comprehension.