Using Mini Lessons to Teach Students How To Write a Thesis Statement

Mini Lessons are a great way to provide chunkable content and incorporate seemingly smaller skills that can be practiced over time. Personally, I love using mini lessons in conjunction with stations, so that I can get some individual attention with small groups of students. I am also a fan of conferences, especially for thesis check-ins.

In this article, I will discuss how you can quickly teach students how to write a thesis statement that doesn’t sound like Every. Other. Thesis. Statement. We have seen them so many times: I believe _____ because topic A and topic B. These thesis statements are great when students are first learning about overarching ideas, but they can elevate their thesis statements with a simple system. Below you will find a step-by-step for how to teach thesis statements and some insight into how I incorporate this type of lesson into my own classroom. 

Try out this thesis writing template and instructions with the information below to help your students with their thesis creation. Ready-made materials are always a plus when trying to incorporate a new strategy. Less time spent on prep and more effectiveness while teaching is my motto this school year.   

What are Writing MiniLessons?

Mini Lessons can be used when you have only a little bit of time, you need to cover a smaller skill within a larger skill (i.e. thesis writing within essay writing), or as a review of concepts that you notice students are not fully comprehending.

Students are able to take these short, chunkable lessons and understand how to apply the skill more quickly. Minilessons focus on a singular idea; after the initial teaching of the concept, include short practice to deepen learning. This will help students maintain connections and add new applications to their understanding of the main concept. 

Incorporate mini lessons into station time or even use them right after bellwork to review concepts you know students need a little more help with (or to bring everyone up to speed). When using mini lessons in conjunction with stations, you also get more 1:1 time with students.

Mini Lessons are not just for the smaller grades. Students (and even adults) can have shorter attention spans, so mini lessons are helpful to get small amounts of learning that can be far more effective. Try to change topics every 20 minutes in order to keep student engagement up and distractions down. 

How-To Write A Thesis Statement

I tend to use a mini lesson within stations for teaching thesis statements because it allows for me to have more direct instruction with fewer students. We work in small draft teaching instead of trying to make sure that 30+ students are all getting the same attention for this more comprehensive skill. 

Working in small groups, or even individually while other students are working to offer a check-in for an upcoming essay, allows you to streamline the writing process for students and the grading process for you. I also love that you can use my thesis template to have individual conferences and offer quick adjustments in under 3 minutes.

The truly amazing part of using the template, is that it helps students not just create a thesis, but also an outline and logical progression within their soon-to-be essay! It's like a 2-for-1 special!

When teaching students how to write a thesis statement, there are 5 steps they can follow:

1. Have students find the evidence they have collected for a draft. Identify commonalities between pieces of evidence to categorize them. Evidence 1 and Evidence 2 should be similar in some way and then Evidence 3 and 4 should have a commonality as well. Add these to the paper (usually shortened versions work well here). If working with an argument prompt, try to have Evidence 3 disagree with Evidence 4 (yet on the same overarching topic).
2. Identify what those commonalities are and use them to create categories or topics for the paragraphs. These will be added to the next section of the paper.
3.  Have students find some sort of overarching idea that includes both items more broadly to create a main claim/controlling idea.
4. The purpose here is to get students to work from the evidence in front of them. The topics create the roadmap for how their essay (aka each paragraph topic is listed and what evidence they will include in the paragraph is listed above). Then, the claim/controlling idea area allows for students to link back to a main idea for the whole paper instead of the 2 separate entities that are paragraph topics.
5. Essentially, we are pulling students away from the “In this essay I will discuss Topic A and Topic B” format and instead into “My essay will argue for the understanding of ____, which will be supported by Topic A and Topic B.”
6. Optional: If you are doing a conference directly with students, I suggest having students sign at the bottom simply to have them showcase that they did this, they have ownership of this, and possibly that you approve of their working thesis statement at that time. 

Note, if students are having difficulty coming up with an overarching idea, they may want to go back to their evidence and see if they can find something else that will work better. We need to remind students that writing is recursive and may take a few passes to fully elaborate one main point. 

They will not like this; but encouraging them that it is okay to not get something right the first time, just means that they are learning and that is what education is all about. This should also promote a growth mindset and an understanding that even outside of educational systems, we still have to review our own work and better ourselves as we learn and grow. 

This thesis mini lesson and template also comes with instructions ready for student-use. The language is similar to what is above, but includes probing questions, and more detail into what each of these parts will look like. This way, they have a reference after the mini lesson to use for any future papers. I would suggest using this for the first several papers or even as bellwork practice (giving them parts of the template and having them create a thesis statement from the parts you provide) to reinforce learning over time. The thesis template offers a model that can be used for this exact purpose.

Goal: Keeping Grading at School

Whether you are adding in mini lessons as whole-group instruction, stations, or individual conferences, they can be a great source of increasing engagement within the classroom. These seem to be the most effective ways to give students bite-sized content, explicit feedback, and make sure that they are hearing/implementing the commentary that you give them. Mini lessons are especially helpful for discussing ideas that students need more help with, like thesis statements.

Hopefully, understanding how to help students elevate their thesis statements, will also help them understand the writing process a little better. Plus, using the ready-to-use thesis template and mini lesson can allow you to support students' writing, while also not adding more to your already overloaded plate. 

Use conferences to grade during class or essay grading rubrics to help you keep that grading at school. Let it stay at school and not come home with you. You deserve that. To learn more about incorporating essay grading rubrics, stations, and conferences, click the links provided. 

If you need more content for mini lessons or stations (without the extra prep), check out the Writing Concisely Course available in the Life Skills Academy. The course includes a full ebook, activities for each strategy, and a video for each lesson in the course. Plus, you get the Google Slide Deck, so you can teach these strategies using ready-made curriculum with or without the videos depending on how best your students learn. Only you know what will help your students best, I am just here to give you ready-made resources that can lessen your prep time.  

Let me know in the comments what part of this article helped you best! Or if you need more clarification, add that too! 

Let me help you make this nearly impossible job of teaching just a little more possible. 

Jewels