Yes, graphic organizers can also be helpful, but I have found clustering maps to be totally useless sometimes. Other times they become the key to a big breakthrough. No one thing should ever be depended on as if it were the only way. Part of being a teacher is understanding how your student learns, to know what kind of mode they are most comfortable with. Not everyone is visual, so graphic charts are a real turn off to some. 
   
  I think throwing away the 5 paragraph essay is like throwing away a nice little wrench from your toolbox. It really can turn a some students minds toward a better understanding of organization. 
   
  The old sit-down-and-shut up method has nothing to do with good usage of the five paragraph model. Discussion is always allowed, prewriting helps collect free-flowing ideas, and learning how to write openings and closings usually is exciting to blocked writers. 
   
  I guess the proof is in the pudding. Many of my students have gushed gratefully over the fact that I simplified something that was a mystery to them. Two of my pre-GED students had essays they wrote in class published in local newspapers. These were essays that were really expanded five paragraph essays with gobs of creative writing techniques  mixed in. 
   
  Under my bed  I have a big box of love letters from past students in a shoebox . Every time I feel glum, I just haul them out and read them. The nicest one says, "You don't just see words on the page, somehow when you read my stuff you see right into my soul."
   
  I guess I'm a bit of a free-thinker. If I have had tremendous success with something, I am loathe to discard it just because it is not the "trendiest" technique. 
   
  Another method that has worked well for me is to explain organization in a way that is familiar to most students---to create a court room drama. I compare writing a persuasive essay to a good court trial. You have a point to make. You present your evidence. You call in experts. You then create a good summary that restates your point. This can be done as a group exercise at first. To make it more fun, I ham it up like I am a fancy old fashioned lawyer. I state my point, then get the class to help me think up support for what I want people to believe is true. Once they get going, they usually have plenty of ideas. Sometimes we argue about why one supportive idea is stronger than another. Sometimes we have to defend what others think is a weak support. If the students are very extroverted and verbal, I let them take turns being the lawyer with a point to make. For those who are need texture, we write the our supportive points on pieces of cardboard and the students hold them
 up. The rest of the class enjoys putting the points in order, from most important to least important. After this exercise the students are usually more ready to write a persuasive essay on their own.
   
  What works for one, won't work for all. I think it's important to keep that in mind.
   
  Carole Ann  
   
   
   
   
   
   


A society which muzzles its poets risks going to the dogs. (Carole Borges)
                                                    
  Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to 
make your soul grow." (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 1923-2007)


       
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