Writing Problem-Solution Essays leads your students step by step through creating an essay that identifies and explains a problem and then offers a convincing plan for solving the problem. Instructions, activities, examples, interactives, and downloads help students gain new writing and problem-solving skills. You can also present this unit right from your interactive whiteboard.
Students warm up their thinking by identifying a local problem and brainstorming as many possible solutions as they can to fix the problem. Then students read a sample problem-solution paragraph and essay and write in response to them. Afterward, they are ready to write their own problem-solution essays:
- Prewriting activities help students consider local problems and analyze them carefully. Students also learn to brainstorm and evaluate possible solutions.
- Writing activities help students write a beginning that grabs the reader's interest and introduces the problem and solution. Students develop middle paragraphs that first explore the problem in depth and then present and argue for a specific solution to the problem. They create an ending paragraph that calls readers to help with the solution.
- Revising activities help students find strong support and remove exaggerations that weaken the argument. Students also learn to get a peer review and use a checklist to revise.
- Editing activities help students use present and future tense verbs effectively and to correctly punctuate series. An editing checklist helps students check for common errors.
- Publishing activities help students create a clean final copy of their problem-solution essays and reflect on their experience.