paragraph and conclusion sentence

[Brooke]

I'm teaching a compare/contrast writing assignment, asking my students to compare themselves to a friend or family member. I love the Venn Diagram to focus in on details, but I fear the concluding sentence will sound too much like the topic sentence. Does anyone have any good suggestions for modeling how to write a conclusion sentence? Thanks.

 

[SusanTeach]

feeling

The biggest thing I try to stress with concluding paragraphs is to put feeling into it. I ask for a "heart felt ending". In other words, after summarizing what they've already written they can say something like, "Although there are many similarities and differences in my mom and me, my favorite is that we have the same middle name!" or "I miss my cousin, and hope to see her this Christmas!"

 

[fun_friend]

razzle dazzle writing by Melissa Forney

This writing resource has a great activity on concluding sentences. This skill is so hard to teach. Essentially, forney emphasizes restating the topic in a new way. The activity in the book consists of topic sentences for the students to restate in a new way.

 

[istoleahalo]

I've noticed that if I praise a really great conclusion sentence (or topic sentence for that matter) or two and explain why I like it, the kids pick up on it and they want to get praised like their classmate did. I sometimes go overboard, clapping, having the child write his/her sentence on the board, sticker, etc, etc, etc, on the first one to get their attention.

 

[kirsten]

We call them clincher sentences

that pull everything together that we have said providing a sense of closure and tieing it directly back to the topic sentence

 

[fun_friend]

more work on concluding sentences

I had my students compose a journal paragraph to explain why it's winter and never Christmas in LWW. I coached them to add a concluding sentence telling how they personally feel about this situation.