The Power of Three – BluePrints For Communication

3 Facts
3 Details
3 Examples
3 Suggestions
3 Recommendations

The greatest gift we can offer our students is a way to make sense of structure. There indeed is a basic pattern to most informational writing. I call this pattern “The Power of Three.” Three facts, three details, or three arguments or claims become the foundation for all informational and argumentative writing. These three facts, details or arguments form the body of a short-constructed response, a structured paragraph, and a formal essay or report. This concept is fully developed in our materials.

The Power of Three will help students develop all kinds of writing including:

Powerful short constructed responses
A wide variety of paragraphs
Compelling longer texts
The ACT Argumentative Essay
The SAT Analytical Essay
Performance Task Writing

It is our strong conviction that there must be much more deliberate instruction involved in the early stages of writing. Merely assigning a writing task without ample instruction leads to rough drafts without a structure. We strongly advocate for clearly defining the writing task and demonstrating how to organize writing before a rough draft is attempted.

We Don’t Need to Do More. We Must Do Less Better.

We can’t teach skills in isolation. We must deliberately connect multiple skills in all lessons. This allows us to go into greater depth in our instructional practices.

Teach the Process. Unravel the Mystery.

We need to directly model the process we require. We must move to more direct instruction where all students succeed. (refer to whole group instruction)

Discover the Gem Inside Every Child.

We must move from being experts of our subject matter to becoming facilitators of learning. We need to honor different learning styles that allow us to tap the potential of all students.

Phase One - Introduce the writing task

Read/ View relevant sources of information appropriate for task

Clearly define the organizational pattern required (e.g. informative/explanatory, opinion/argumentative)

Identify organizational structure (sequential, comparative, cause/effect, problem/solution)

Provide extensive samples of words and phrases appropriate for task

Offer basic plan for organizing information

Phase Two - Plan

Provide Specific Strategies for Introduction, Body, and Conclusion of Text

Phase Three - Polishing the Rough Draft

Review Strategies for Beginning, Body, And Conclusion

Use Revising and Editing Checklists

Reading and writing are connected.
Nonfiction reading and writing shapes our knowledge base in all subject areas.
We can demonstrate our knowledge with our writing skills.
Nonfiction writing is clear and precise.
Nonfiction writing can be exciting and creative.
Informational writing prepares us for life.

This stage involves direct instruction. The teacher must model the particular skill students are to master as a whole group process. Each step is modeled in front of the class. Ample time is given for EVERYONE to succeed in the process. There is no failure.

Our Three Stages of Instruction support Anchor Standard Ten – Range of Writing.

This stage involves allowing students to work together to produce a collaborative piece of writing. The groups should never exceed three students. The teacher needs to ensure that there is a diversity in each small group. In other words, whenever possible, there should be a more advanced student, an average student, and a student who struggles in each group. This process could also be engaged in pairs where a more advanced student and a struggling student are partners. Each group must share their rough drafts in the whole group setting. This enables students to learn strategies directly from each other. This process can eliminate some of the need for individual writing conferences. In this way, all students benefit from hearing and understanding several methods that can be used to develop the same topic.

Once students have mastered Stage One and Stage Two, they should be ready for Independent Writing. Again, students should be encouraged to share their written responses with their classmates. In this stage, students need to learn how to use checklists and rubrics for clarity. Helping students evaluate their own writing as well as the writing of their classmates is a key component of this stage.

We often describe techniques in three steps or stages. Our guiding principle, The Power of Three, will be particularly useful in preparing for the SAT Essay. Examining the source document for logical, ethical, and emotional techniques can become a practical way to select and present the most relevant techniques in your SAT Essay.

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