Five paragraph essay planning
Ripple strategy finds evidence sources

Five paragraph essay writers can use a strategic planning process I call ripple strategy to decide what evidence to use in support of the topic sentence of each body paragraph.

Just as water ripples are increasingly distant from a pebble's entry point, ripple strategy examines information sources in ever-widening rings.

Rippling is focused brainstorming

Ripple strategy uses a kind of focused brainstorming to activate knowledge. In other words, ripple strategy calls to conscious thought information the writers have already learned on their writing topics.

Then the strategy calls for examining other information sources seeking evidence increasingly distant from the writer.

Ripple through 1 paragraph at a time

For efficiency, the five paragraph essay writer applies the ripple strategy to the first point of his/her writing skeleton™, then moves on to repeat the process with the second point of the skeleton.

Since each point of a writing skeleton™ is the topic sentence of a body paragraph of a five paragraph essay, ripple strategy systematically identifies potential support material for each of the writer's body paragraphs.

Ripple writing strategy is built in to the 35 Talk It Out questions writers can ask each other to provide mutual aid in planning a thesis and support essay.

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Personal experience

In the first ring, the ring of personal experience, writers look first at whether they have personally experience with the topic of the topic sentence they are examining.

Even the writing situation makes personal evidence undesirable as support material, the material might be useful in an introduction paragraph.

Personal network

The next ring is the student's personal network. Besides thinking about things that happened to them, students should consider the experiences of people they know personally: family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers.

Perhaps students' acquaintances include people with relevant expertise or experience. Those may be people the writers could interview or survey.

Wider network

Sometimes a person's network includes people who can provide a reference to someone else who has the kind of information the writer needs. For example, perhaps a student's father knows a guy at work whose wife has relevant expertise.

Although schools sometimes make students think the only acceptable information sources are published sources, in many out-of-school situations people depend on their informal networks for a great proportion of their information.

Also, sometimes the quickest way to get information is by asking someone in person, by phone, or in an email.

Secondhand information

Students have a stock of information absorbed from TV, radio, books, magazines, and even from classroom instruction.

Often the knowledge students have from these impersonal, secondhand means is fragmentary or incorrect. They may have missed the first part of a broadcast, or perhaps they cannot recall the name of the book.

Students should write down what they recall even if it is incomplete. What they do recall may be enough to jump start research for a five paragraph essay or a research paper. And sometimes the act of writing something down helps the writer remember more related data later.

Published information

Although students should have some information to jump-start their research if their teachers are giving them authentic class-related writing prompts, sometimes they don't have any evidence to start with. In those cases, they can:

• Consult books and other printed sources.

• Search the Internet.

As part of thinking about where to find evidence, students must be taught to think about how long it will take to get the information. Sometimes the best information source is the one students can access most quickly.

The Internet is so widely used for information searches, that people sometimes overlook other sources that produce results quicker. A certified high school teacher told me she spent an hour online searching for the definition of vespers, which she could have found in 30 seconds in a dictionary in print or online.

Writing strategies mesh

Ripple strategy meshes with the other writing strategies I teach students to use for five paragraph essays organized on the thesis-plus-support pattern.

For example, the simplest way to apply ripple strategy is to apply it to the writing skeleton™. Thus the two writing strategies complement each other.

See what goes through a student's mind while he uses ripple strategy.