Hamburger Paragraph Writing with Main Idea & Details

My 1st and 2nd grader have been working for a while on personal narratives in our writing time. So after we worked through our Healthy Body Unit, I decided it was time to do some nonfiction paragraph writing! I found some fun clip art and created these simple paragraph writing organizers for them…hamburger style!

If you’re using this after a body unit, feel free to download our free human body report pages to go along with these!

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**The free printable can be found at the END of this post. Click on the teal download button.

 

Hamburger Paragraph Writing Using Main Idea and Supporting Details

When we ask learners to write in a way that they aren’t familiar with, graphic organizers {especially ones with cookies on them}, can help them break the process down in their head. And when it becomes less complicated in their head, it can make the process easier to get on paper.

 

 

Now, you and I both know that not all nonfiction writing is organized in this neat, nice package. But teaching paragraph writing using a main idea {or topic} with supporting details is an easy place to start! {Older learners can expand this concept into multiple paragraphs.}

{By the way, this entire process took 3-4 days.}

First, I just handed them the hamburger organizer. We looked at and talked about each part. Having examples from texts handy is vital! If you can’t find a good example, you can quickly write your own.

 

I gave them this simple graphic organizer to write down their own sentences based on the body part they chose from our unit.

The hardest part by far for my learners was the closing sentence. How exactly do you tie the topic back in without completely duplicating the topic sentence? We brainstormed a lot with closing sentences on day 2. I didn’t give them their answers, but I wanted to show them how flexible it was with other examples. {This is why examples are KEY.}

Do learners have to use these graphic organizers? Absolutely not, but they can sure help in the process of brainstorming and getting thoughts on paper!

 

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 Simple Writing Lessons Descriptive Writing Cookie Organizer Nonfiction Text Structures Chart

 

 

 

 

Enjoy!
~Becky