What is the Point of Paragraphs?
A scaffolded worksheet introducing paragraph structure using the hamburger model and ORE framework. Students identify paragraph breaks and organise ideas within a persuasive text, supporting middle and upper primary learners to develop clear structure, cohesion and understanding of persuasive writing.
Learning goals
- We are learning to use interaction skills to listen to and contribute to conversations, use positive statements to engage and appropriate language to disagree in group and class settings.
- We are learning to gather ideas and information in spoken texts by making notes, asking questions and seeking assistance and presenting ideas and opinions using appropriate levels of formality.
- We are learning to use appropriate interaction skills, e.g. paraphrasing and to appropriately check our understanding in formal and informal situations, e.g. making constructive comments, asking questions and justifying a point of view.
- We are learning to contribute to discussions and share opinions, use strategies such as paraphrasing, questioning, clarifying and interrogating ideas to develop and support arguments.
- We are learning to identify the audience and purpose of imaginative, informative and persuasive texts.
- We are learning to identify characteristic features used in imaginative, informative and persuasive texts.
- We are learning to identify characteristic text structures and language features used in imaginative, informative and persuasive texts.
- We are learning to analyse how text structures and language features work together to meet the purpose of a text and to engage and influence audiences.
- We are learning to understand that paragraphs are a key organisational feature of written texts.
- We are learning to understand that texts are made cohesive through the use of pronouns, e.g. ‘she’, ‘he’, ‘they’, determiners, e.g. ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘these’, ‘those’, ‘the’ and text connectives that link, e.g. ‘however’, ‘in addition’, ‘therefore’ and that indicate time, e.g. ‘firstly’, ‘then’, ‘next’, ‘finally’.
- We are learning to understand that writers use the beginning of a sentence or paragraph to signal the reader about how a text is developing, so the reader can make predictions.
- We are learning to understand that cohesive links can be made in texts by intentional use of repetition, word associations or by using synonyms or antonyms.
Curriculum alignment
Australian Curriculum covers QLD / SA / WA / NT / TAS / ACT.
Differentiation
Modifications
Highlight key sections, reduce number of paragraphs, provide paragraph labels, use shared writing, scaffold ORE responses, provide sentence starters.
Extensions
Students rewrite the text using correct paragraphs, apply structure to their own persuasive writing, expand into full persuasive texts, adapt ORE into PEEL for advanced learners, identify paragraph purpose independently.