informative essay examples for 4th grade

Super Writing Lessons | Student Writing Lessons | Expository Writing

Informational/Expository Student Writing Sample- Grade 4

Read Time 4 mins | Mar 25, 2020 11:43:49 PM | Written by: Toolbox

7-Day Process Piece Student Sample Grade 4

One way that I found to ease the tremendous stress of a research project was to break it into manageable chunks for my students. Upon introducing the topic or subject of writing we began by creating a list of everything we knew about the topic and then sorting and categorizing that list.

Our journey into the research then became much easier to manage. Students focused on one aspect of the big topic and then began to notice severa l smaller main ideas that matched each focused area. Students found information about the main ideas and then it was time to write. The following piece of exposition is a result of breaking the writing process down into small chunks and wr iting one section of the piece each day for a total of seven days ( see the Expository/Informative Writing Summarizing Framework . ) In the real world, authors do not just write in one big blur, or what some might call flash drafts. They in fact write a section, reflect on that section, and revise it as they go. That is exactly what my students were able to do quite successfully.

What really works in this piece:

Organizational structure – the pillar
Word choice – word referents
Distinct Main Ideas
The use of research: quote, amazing facts, anecdote
The voice and tone

Note the use of informative verbs and the way the author states each main idea in this introduction paragraph.

Note the use of “word referents” instead of “the horseshoe crab…the horseshoe crab…the horseshoe crab…” The author uses the productive questions “What does it look like, why is it important?” to add meaningful detail to support the main idea – appearance.

The student states the main idea of this paragraph as a question. This is one strategy taught for revising boring main idea sentences. Note the use of an anecdote to provide interesting detail to support the main idea – habitat.

In the conclusion paragraph, the author uses a hypothetical anecdote, informative verbs, a definitive phrase, word referents, and a general restatement of the topic sentence. All of these are strategies taught in EW instruction.

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