Only Five Paragraphs?

If I were an impartial spectator to the development of my opinions regarding teaching and I were asked what I thought my opinion would be regarding whether or not the Five Paragraph Essay, I would have laughed in my own face and walked out of the room, leaving myself alone behind.

...that doesn't make any sense.

Anyway, contrary to what you may think that I think, I like the idea of the five paragraph essay. Here's why.

While I do tend to lean towards going against the grain of traditional teaching measures, I think there are plenty of merits in teaching the traditional structure of the five paragraph essay. At its core, I think teaching this structure allows students the opportunity to construct their arguments in a concise manner that follows a logical progression, as opposed to letting students essentially vomit each and every thought that runs through their heads onto a page and call it writing. Writing is a bit more refined and eloquent than word vomit, and I do wish that more people understood that sentiment.

To be honest, I did not know there was a great deal of pushback on the five paragraph essay. Granted, this Novak article was written in 2001, but the idea has likely gained even more traction since then. Freedom is good and all, but freedom cannot be realized and actualized without any prior knowledge of how to effectively perform a task. This concept absolutely applies to writing. The article touches on this nicely - "Taught with creativity and variety, it gives our students a useful tool...if the teaching is done with imagination and skill."

I want to ask: would this same idea apply elsewhere in teaching? Do we have to teach certain structures/scaffolding via some "banking" method of teaching before actually letting the students take liberties with their educational vessels?

For a source this week, as we've been talking about the importance of writing as a teacher, I wonder if we're all familiar with medium.com - I like using it as a more formal blog, as it's a super easy to use website where you can write, edit, and archive your articles while having them out in the public. It's not super easy to generate a lot of traffic off of the website alone, but if you're looking to get your reps in, it's a great start. I've used it on and off for a few years now and it definitely gets the job done.

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