Today I had my very first experience teaching 5th-grade students how to write a thesis statement. I am a veteran middle school teacher to 7th and 8th-grade students, so the addition of teaching 5th-grade world history this year has been a blessing and a challenge.
Our 5th-grade students write a 5 paragraph research paper about their choice of topics related to Ancient Egypt. Some of my students are writing about Egyptian pyramids, Egyptian Gods, and one has undertaken the task of writing about the role of Egyptian women in religion. All students are required to write “thin questions,” or questions that can be answered easily and with a fact, to get their minds going and then use their new knowledge to write a “thick question,” or overarching research question from which their thesis will be derived.
I can’t stress enough the importance of modeling how to write a thesis statement. Model, model, model. Bring in past students’ work, write your own thesis in front of them, do the thesis statement sheet (available below) with them a few times. Go slowly for each step. The idea isn’t getting your students to finish the thesis statement quickly, the idea is for them to learn how to craft their own argument and write it clearly.
In order to help them through the process of getting from thin question to thick question to thesis I used several sources to develop my own version of “Write a Thesis Statement in 5 Steps.” I was able to conference with students in small groups to help them look at their thick questions and their notes to develop a “because statement” for each of their papers. Once they had a “because statement,” students had to prove it using three facts from their notes. The next step and hardest step was synthesizing the question, the because statement, and the facts to write the thesis that will ultimately drive their body paragraphs and conclusion.
If you would like to use the “Write a Thesis Statement in 5 Steps” sheet, thesis statement in 5 steps. It is free, but if you do use it please tell me how it went!
