A Quick Guide to Teaching Any Middle School Academic Essay

Whenever I met with my middle school English department, sat down with a colleague to collaborate, or simply talked to other others that teach any type of writing, the question would always come up: “So, how do you teach the essay anyway?” The academic essay is often largely subjective in terms of skill sequence and design involved in a unit plan. As I get the opportunity to work with more and more teachers, I find that this type of assignment is largely assigned based on the teacher’s own personal learning experiences, the teacher’s experiences with their mentor teacher, or a commonly known set of skills that everyone thinks is accurate. I am not saying that my way to teach any academic essay is better than anyone else’s method of teaching the essay. This post serves as a starting point for a larger discussion about how the genre of academic essays is implemented throughout the various grade levels. The goal should always be consistent. For the sake of this post, I am going to use the Six Traits of Writing as a common language to talk about how writing is taught in a classroom. I like the six traits of writing because all of the terms used can apply to many different types of writing. Throughout this post, you will find examples and tips on how to approach each part of the academic essay.