Paragraph Sort

 Once again, I have the pleasure of co-teaching with Mrs. Hall in 3rd grade writing  this year. To kick off our writing unit, we introduced elements of a paragraph. 

During the mini-lesson,  students learned that a good paragraph has a topic sentence, supporting details, and a concluding  sentence.  The topic sentence is the main idea, while it’s supporting sentences provide details of the main idea and the concluding sentence wraps up the entire paragraph. 

Additionally, they learned that paragraphs typically have 3-5 sentences, although they could have more or less. They also noticed that sentences range in length to make the paragraph more interesting. 

Students were then provided with a paragraph that has been cut up into individual sentence strips. Then they put the  strips in order. 

Working as a team, the  students  collaborated to determine which strip was the topic sentence, which were supporting details and  which was the concluding sentence.

The activity was a great way for students to demonstrate their understanding of elements of a paragraph while working together to put it together so it made sense.