Explain the evidence — what did the source mean, in simple language?

Introduction: First sentence: Hook (get your reader interested in the topic)

-at least 3 reasons for believing your claim (usually these are problems… list them in the order you want to present them in the rest of the paper)

Last sentence: Thesis/Claim (these words mean the same thing — what is your argument?)

^This means you’ll usually have at least 3 sentences in your introduction. **Note: your thesis should be your final sentence in this paragraph, but you might list your reasons with the thesis statement, depending on how you write. So, for example, you might say: “Because large houses are expensive, take a lot of resources, and encourage people to buy more things to fill up the space, people should not buy big houses.” This sentence has 3 reasons and the thesis statement all put together.**

First body paragraph: Topic sentence about the 1st reason you listed as support for your claim

Evidence to support your reason (quote a source!)

Explain the evidence — what did the source mean, in simple language?

Explain why this evidence is important — (why did you choose this source? what does it prove? why does it matter?)

Final sentence — explain how the topic sentence ties back to your thesis (in other words, how does this paragraph of information support your thesis statement. You’ve gone into a lot of detail in this paragraph about 1 reason, now you need to remind the reader that this reason supports a bigger argument).

Second, Third, etc. Body Paragraphs: The same format as the first body paragraph. **Note: the topic sentence has to be the first sentence of your paragraph, and the last sentence has to clearly make the connection between your body paragraph and your thesis statement, but the stuff in between (evidence, explanation of the evidence, explanation of why it’s important) can be in whatever order makes sense in that paragraph. You could even give multiple pieces of evidence in a paragraph, though usually that’s not necessary. If you do give multiple pieces of evidence, make sure you still explain what they mean and why they’re important.**

Conclusion: -Remind your reader of your claim and the 3 or more reasons you gave for supporting that claim. Remind the reader of why this is important information. Encourage your reader to think or do something based on all of this information (this is a “call to action”.) **In a way, this paragraph is mostly focused on reminding the reader of information you’ve already brought up. Do not bring in new evidence or a new argument, just remind the reader of everything they’ve read — it’s easy to forget something from several paragraphs ago. In this paragraph, you’re reminding the reader of everything in just a few sentences. The order for this doesn’t matter as much, although the call-to-action should be the final sentence.**