One of the major summative assessments of my student teaching semester was a research essay on Japanese Internment based off of internet research, time and the Paul Cuffee Library, and the book source, I Am An American. To make my ELL students more comfortable with writing an essay, and noting that the structure of a five-paragraph essay is what he seemed to struggle with the most, I created the following scaffolded outline to improve his understanding of where the pieces of his essay go and how it should flow together. This outline was in addition to the sample five paragraph essay that was modeled for the class. By assessing first where all of my students were with writing five-paragraph research essays, and then specifically narrowing in on the ELL and special needs students, I was able to create the scaffolds such as this to help support the range of knowledge in the classroom. After this student completed the first draft of his own essay, I then issued him another copy of the outline and asked him to pull out the pieces from his own work, thus checking that the pieces were in order and that he had met all of the appropriate requirements in writing his essay.

To view the outline that went along with both the modeled essay as well as the student's own essay, please select the following link: SampleEssayOutline.docx