English Essay Lapbook

 I did a favor for a friend and made her a lapbook for

language arts (English). This is more for the high school,

possibly college level writer. Even I learned a thing

 or two making this. I love it when that happens.

 Here is the inside.

I have a more detailed list of what each mini book is below.

 Another view of the inside. 

So, here is the breakdown of the lapbook:

1. 4 Types of Essays: Narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive. Each tab had a little explanation about that type of essay.

2.  Run-on Sentence cards: I made cards with run-on sentences and stuck them back to back and laminated them. They can be corrected using a white board marker many times for practice. I also made "correcting cards" to help understand how to correct a run-on sentence.

3-5: I made an outline for a 5 paragraph essay with

specifics on how to break it down into manageable pieces.

3. Introduction paragraph: This is broken down into three parts: Hook, Body, and Thesis Sentence.

Hook: Something catchy that makes your audience

pay attention to your topic. This is usually just one sentence.

Body: Review the main reasons why your topic is important and

which will be reviewed in the body of the paper. You can also

give necessary background. This is usually 2-4 sentences.

Thesis Sentence: the controlling statement that serves as

the backbone of the paper. Try to make this just one sentence

4. Body (3 paragraphs): This section is to help move the essay along and give more information. Each paragraph should be written using the S. E. E. method.

Statement: A topic sentence states a paragraph’s main

idea. When answering a question or responding to a prompt,

make your answer or response part of your statement.

Examples: Also known as supporting sentences, strongly

support the topic sentence and form the support every

paragraph needs to have. Whenever possible, directly cite a

published source to provide the necessary examples to support

your paragraph’s topic sentence or statement.

Explanation: Closing sentences which bring your paragraph

to a logical conclusion by clearly explaining how the cited

examples strongly support and prove the topic sentence.

5. Conclusion: This is broken up into three sections: Restate thesis, summation, and concluding sentence.

Restate thesis: Restate your original thesis to remind

the reader of where you started and the point of this essay.

Summation: Tell the reader what they should have

learned in this essay, why it is significant, and how

it relates to the real world.

Concluding sentence: The is the final thought. This is

a chance to leave the reader with something to think about.

Close-up of the middle blue match-books.

6. You may be noticing that the center of the lapbook looks like I just duplicated everything. You would be kind-of right. The left side has the explanations and the right side has empty lines with one word or letter to help prompt the writer. This is meant to be a worksheet to help write one essay.

7. 4 Kinds of Sentences: Statement, questions, command, exclamation. After reading online, these names are the easy version with the real names being fancy words that I will never repeat. So, I stuck with things I would understand and called them the easy names.

Statement: A Statement sentences tells about something.

It ends with a period.

Example: She ate pizza for lunch.

Question: A questions asks something.

It ends with a question mark.

Example: How are you?

Command: A command tells someone to do something.

It ends with a period.

Example: Eat all your vegetables.

Exclamation: An exclamation shows strong feeling.

It ends with an exclamation point.

Example: I just won 100 dollars!

8. A fun pencil-shaped book for punctuation. Don't be fooled into thinking this book will teach you about punctuation, but rather it is a fun add-in. It has examples of sentences that have different punctuation that change the meaning. Please see the example above. Punctuation can save lives! he he

So that is my attempt at teaching language arts. Hopefully, by the time my kids get that age, I will get better at this.

~Possum