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| | Free Thesis Statements

Tools for the writing teacher:
Free examples of thesis statements

ebook Shape Learning, Reshape Teaching

Students and teachers alike regularly seek free examples of thesis statements. I assume they use them as patterns or even as the main ideas of essays.

Eliminate the need for such crutches by giving your students authentic writing prompts and teaching them how to read a prompt.

To help you see the prompt-thesis relationship, I'm going to give you some free examples of thesis statements that respond to free writing prompts I've provided elsewhere on this site.

Instead of charging you for this material, I'm going to ask you to pay for it by writing a thesis that responds to each prompt. Call it sweat equity. I've provided a Zoho word processing file for use with each prompt, so you have no excuses for not trying.

By writing these five thesis sentences, you'll get a fairly good idea of the difficulties students may encounter.

Ready?

For each item below, I've given you just the core directions. To see the entire prompt, click on the image box.

Want print copies from this page?

You will lose your work when you navigate away from this page unless you save it to your computer. You can use the save function in the Zoho files or copy and paste your work into a file you create in another word processor.

If you need print copies of the free examples of thesis statements on this page or the writing prompts from which they are developed, you'll find directions for downloading them at the bottom of this page.

Prompt & thesis #1: onomatopoeia

This first prompt is for middle school students. It asks them to write a definition essay, though it doesn't use that terminology.

Hint: Life is easier if you don't introduce students to all the different types of essays until after they are competent at writing the essential one: the thesis + support (persuasive essay) pattern essay

I underlined the essay topic in the basic directions.

Writing prompt about onomatopoeia

You have the topic. You just need to add an assertion to get a thesis. You can type your answer right in the Zoho word processor file shown below.

Your thesis should look something like this:

Don't worry about copying this all down. If you need the information you can download a PDF file of either the writing prompts or the free examples of thesis statements that are developed from them.

Prompt & thesis #2: online searches

The second prompt is also appropriate for middle school students. This time the topic is online searches. The topic and assertion are included in the prompt. See them?

writing prompt about online searching

See what your flying fingers and brilliant brain come up with as a thesis statement for this one. The Zoho word processor form is below.

Your thesis statement should look something like this:

Prompt & thesis #3: passive voice

This next prompt is for high school students. Like the previous example, it includes the topic and the assertion in the prompt. See them this time?

Writing prompt about passive voice

I'll bet you will knock this thesis statement out in no time.

Your response should look something like this:

Your sentence won't match the one in my free examples of thesis statements exactly, but it should give the same general idea.

Prompt & thesis #4: asking questions online

The fourth prompt gives only a topic. Students have to develop their own assertions.

The prompt, however, helps students limit the potential assertions by giving them prep work that will naturally restrict the kinds of assertions they can make. You can see the full prompt by clicking on the image.

writing prompt about asking question online

Whack that answer out in the Zoho word processor.

Your answer probably reads something like this:

Your assertion was probably different, but you should have roughly the same topic and sentence structure.

Observations on the examples

As you read these prompts and wrote your theses, you may have realized that there is no relationship between how easy it is to write a working thesis and how easy it is to write a paper based on that thesis.

When you are teaching writing — or teaching a subject using writing — you need to test your writing prompts to see what answering them actually entails.

Often a prompt I think will be easy to write about turns out to require skills or patterns I haven't taught. Rather than ask students to submit work that requires knowledge I haven't taught, to be fair I have to scrap that prompt and write another.

You may also have realized that you can raise or lower the grade level of a prompt by changing the assignment details. For example, to make a writing assignment more challenging, you could require students to:

  • Use additional types of sources.
  • Develop their thesis by inductive analysis of specific information.
  • Use skill or knowledge from more than one course component, such as literature and grammar.
Linda Aragoni writes about teaching writing

Thesis first

When you teach how to write an essay, start with the thesis statement. It is the center of every essay. Everything else follows from it.

Linda

Linda Aragoni

 

Shape Learning Reshape Teaching book cover
talk it out is colaborative strategic planning device for writing

 

Shape Learning, Reshape Teaching

"teaches how to use informal writing prompts to improve student writing (or learning in any subject)."

~Livia N. McCoy
Director of Professional Growth, The New Community School

Click photo for details.

 

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