Paragraph Development In News Journalism

Teach class members how to use comparison in their writing to clarify and enrich ideas. Referring back to the brief description and the sample paragraph, writers develop a paragraph that uses comparison effectively. More scaffolding and...

After reading an example, writers compose a paragraph that focuses on contrasting ideas. The resource starts out with some information about topic ideas and functional ideas, but there could be more explanation. Use this as a warm-up...

Exercise paragraph writing by focusing on the impact of each statement or idea. For this organizational pattern, writers compose their paragraphs by increasing the force of each idea so that the most important idea is the concluding...

Demonstrate how to draw in readers by starting a paragraph with a familiar topic, and then moving into the more complex ideas after they are already engaged. Writers can read over the example, which is a bit abstract and might need...

Details, details, details. That's what comes first in this style of paragraph. Writers think of supporting details, list them, and then compose a general statement that encompasses all of the details. A fairly basic resource, use this to...

Paragraphs need structure, and here is one possibility! Ask writers to begin their paragraph with a problem, explore several possibilities in the middle of the paragraph, and end the paragraph with the solution. A sample paragraph is...

People use time to organize their days and structure their lives. Why not use it to structure a paragraph? Chronological order is logical and fairly straightforward. Ask class members to first read the provided example and then write...

Focus on logical paragraph writing and ask your class to write cause and effect paragraphs. To get started, learners read information about the format as well as an example. While there is some basic information about how to structure...

Apply analogy to paragraph writing. After reviewing what an analogy is and how it can be used, show your class the example. Writers can use the sample as a model as they compose their own paragraph that explains an idea through an analogy.

There's no set length for a good paragraph, but the short block of text should contain key components. A handout on paragraphs, the 12th in a series of 24, outlines a five-step process for paragraph development. Additionally, the handout...