Purpose of paragraphing
I was just thinking about how one of the most powerful learning experiences I had in my career as a teacher was being involved in K-12 writing reviews. We gathered writing samples from across schools and grades all written to the same topic and looked for trends. That's how I saw that ELs tended to write pages and pages of strings of sentences. They didn't know how to group like ideas together to avoid redundancy and develop an argument. And this is how I started to think I needed to come up with an analogy for organizing info into paragraphs. You have to organize details into paragraphs just like you organize your clothes into drawers. Ali is helping me think it through and get it right. Katja thinks it will work.