The Five Paragraph Essay

Students learn how to write an essay for the 2002 series GED(r) test, how to: brainstorm ideas for the topic they are presented with, organize the ideas, write a topic sentence, and write an introductory and concluding paragraph. They also learn what to expect in the testing situation, for example, that the topic is given, that they have to brainstorm ideas without getting blocked, and that they will not have time to draft and re-copy a final essay.

Five paragraph essay lessons like this one, while still pertinent for some high school equivalency tests such as the ETS HiSET test (available in Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Nevada, New Jersey, Tennessee and Wyoming), are no longer the best preparation for the 2014 series GED(r) test.

In this lesson students are given the topic: "What qualities do you think make up a good employer? Write an essay that identifies the qualities you think a good employer has, giving specific examples to back up your ideas."

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