Thesis Statement Practice Handout

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.If you are writing a text that does not fall under these three categories (e.g., a narrative), a thesis statement somewhere in the first paragraph could still be helpful to your reader. Your thesis statement should be specific—it should cover only what you will discuss in your paper and should be supported with specific evidence. The thesis statement usually appears at the end of the first paragraph of a paper. Your topic may change as you write, so you may need to revise your thesis statement to reflect exactly what you have discussed in the paper.

The thesis is introduced as the simple combination of a topic and the writer’s opinion on that topic.

Ninth grade students most easily remember the method for writing a thesis as a formula: topic opinion = thesis. Begin the class with the following starter question, which may be written on the board ahead of time if desired: “What is a thesis statement?

Once students understand that a thesis statement is merely the main topic of the essay and the author’s opinion or position on that topic, they may begin practicing thesis creation.

Give the class some sample subjects on the board and invite several students to offer their opinions on these topics.

In this lesson students will explore the most important feature of an academic essay: the thesis statement.

Many students are perplexed and often daunted when asked to write a thesis, but in this lesson they will discover that writing a thesis is neither a mysterious nor difficult undertaking.Allow about 10-15 minutes for this activity, while traveling around the room to offer help and answer questions.Any remaining time should be used by students to work on their final project essays.This allows you, as the writer, to lead up to the thesis statement instead of diving directly into the topic.If you place the thesis statement at the beginning, your reader may forget or be confused about the main idea by the time he/she reaches the end of the introduction.This activity will afford your fourth graders the chance to think about the claim they want to make in their literary essays and give them practice writing an introductory paragraph.Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission.Students will practice identifying, creating, and correcting thesis statements to ensure that they understand the concept.This assignment may be done individually or in pairs, depending on your class composition.Not only does it help the writer organize subsequent information in the essay, but a strong thesis statement helps the reader understand the information that leads to the conclusion.Time4Writing’s free writing resources cover the writing of a thesis statement.