The Power — and Limitations — of the Five Paragraph Essay
by Sherry Lewkowicz
When Dr. Steve Graham, award-winning writing instruction researcher, spoke with the Writing Pathway team, he offered a nuanced take on the five-paragraph essay. He emphasized its value as a foundation from which creativity can grow:
“I’m never going to say you want to abandon structure, but if you get stuck in structure, it’s not to your kids’ best advantage over time.”
That’s the balance the Writing Pathway aims to strike: grounding students in the habits of clear, structured writing while giving teachers the freedom to adapt instruction to different purposes, genres, and content areas.
Learning from Reading Wars: Skills Development in Writing
It’s a debate that mirrors others in education — like the so-called “reading wars.” Is phonics more important, or should we focus on immersing students in great books? The answer, of course, is both. But we also need to understand how skills develop. In reading, students need to decode words automatically before they can truly comprehend texts. In writing, students need fluency with basic skills — letter formation, spelling, punctuation — before they can fully attend to the meaning and organization of what they write. Structure isn’t the enemy of creativity; it’s the foundation for it.
Time: The Critical Constraint for Teachers
The Pathway was built with one major constraint in mind — time. Teachers need writing tools that fit into the flow of daily instruction without requiring hours of planning. The Writing Pathway meets this need by instantly generating high-quality practice aligned to what students are already reading and learning. It reduces the planning load while making it easy to bring more writing into any classroom — ELA, social studies, science, or beyond.
Flexible Structure: Adapting to Different Teaching Needs
At the same time, the tool is designed to be flexible. Teachers can use the default structure of practice in the Pathway (generally: Claim, Evidence, Analysis), but they can also “chat” with the Pathway’s AI to adapt practice for different writing audiences/purposes. They can request that the practice use mnemonics like RACE, RADD, or any others. Structure isn’t abandoned—it’s flexible.
That’s the power of the Writing Pathway: it helps teachers do more with less time, while helping students do more with what they’ve learned.
