Writing is an important skill. For the next five years of school, and possibly longer, our students will be required to write - a lot. Writing well is one of the single best ways to score well on tests and to perform better in almost every subject.

In 7th grade, our writing prompts start evolving into more complex questions. Instead of asking "What is the theme?" the prompts are more likely to start asking "How does the author develop the theme?"

In order to address this additional layer of complexity, I do two things:

• I try to teach my students to think analytically
• I give them structure for both answering the question and for writing the answer.

The writing structure detailed below is a strategy for organizing thoughts and writing in a formulaic way to satisfy academic requirements. This is not a particularly creative or flexible organization.

My fervent hope is that my students will take this strategy and outgrow it. Consider this structure training wheels - eventually, they won't need it.