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Five Paragraph Essay Template
LearningAlly.org
To the teacher:
Use this template as a beginning guide to help students with the writing process. This is an ideal template to be used
for persuasive or informational essays. Best practices tip: model the use of this template before starting your essay
assignment.
Terms to know:
1. Hook: This is what grabs the reader’s attention. A hook can be a quote, a saying, a question, action or dialogue.
Provide examples of a hook in writing through informational and narrative texts before introducing this concept to the
class.
2. Topic sentence: This is what the essay is going to be about. Some writers choose for this to be the rst sentence of
their introduction, while most collegiate-level writing focuses on having the topic sentence as the last sentence of the
introduction paragraph.
3. Claim: When writing a persuasive essay, the topic sentence is often called the “claim.” This is what the author is
intending to assert, or explain in the essay.
4. Supporting evidence: This is what supports the topic sentence in each body paragraph. Most writing should have a
contextual basis for a claim or topic, so have students use citations and/or paraphrasing to help support each section
of their essay.
5. Transitions: These are words that denote movement from one topic to the next. They include rst, last, third, fourth,
next, etc. Teach these words to your students as necessary before starting an essay assignment.
6. Conclusion: This should wrap up the paragraph, or essay in its entirety, re-stating the topic sentence or claim.
7. Reverse hook: This is just like the hook at the beginning of an essay, except now it is something that leaves the
reader with an important thought or insight as related to the essay topic. Like a hook, it can include a quote, saying,
question, action, dialogue and more to leave a lasting impression.