Helping Students
Plan and Organize Academic Writing
ESSAY MAP
Arranging Main Ideas to Support a Thesis
This is one of the first materials I created for the Writing Center at Valencia College, and I’ve used it almost every day since then. When students are unhappy with their essay but aren’t sure why, it’s often due to a planning issue. We needed a simple graphic organizer that would work for most topics.
Students have commented that it’s easier to understand how their essay should fit together when they see it mapped out this way. If I see that the student has planning issues in their essay draft, I’ll often reverse outline their essay onto the organizer to help them see what’s missing.
PARAGRAPH MAP
Using Outside Evidence Appropriately
Sometimes, students need help writing a short response or organizing their ideas within a paragraph. This organizer focuses on the structure of a body paragraph.
If a student writes body paragraphs that are too short, rely too much on information from outside sources, or don’t make clear connections between ideas, this organizer helps them see what parts they may need to add.
NARRATIVE ORGANIZER
Telling a Vivid and Complete Story
Designed primarily to help students brainstorm college admissions and scholarship essays, this organizer is also useful for planning short stories. It focuses on the basics of a three-part narrative structure, with space for notes on sensory details.
Many students have more experience writing informative essays than narratives. They may try to use topic sentences and thesis statements to tell a story (the fact that they’ve heard these called admissions or scholarship “essays” further confuses things).
A good place to start the process is asking, “Tell me about a struggle that changed you.” Once the student has an idea of what they were like at the beginning of their story and how they had changed by the ending, they will need to detail a three-part struggle that led to the change.
VIEW THE ORGANIZERS IN ACTION
OPEN IN GOOGLE SLIDES
(Students may use these organizers for their own work; K-12 teachers and state college and university instructors at public institutions may use them with students they personally teach. For all other uses, please contact me first.)
Essay Map
Organizer
Paragraph Map
Organizer