essays for middle school students

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by Michelle Boyd Waters, M.Ed.  

A Plethora Of Writing Examples For Middle School (& High School)

October 14, 2014 in  Pedagogy

When I started my first job as a professional newspaper reporter (This job also served as an internship during my junior year in college — I just didn’t leave for about 6 years.), I quickly realized that all my experience, and all my years of journalism education had not been enough to help me write stories about drug busts, fatal car accidents and tornadoes. All the theoretical work I’d done, and all of the nifty little scholastic and collegiate stories I had done, did not prepare me for real world writing.

At that point, I had to find a solution quickly. After all, I had a deadline to meet, and it was only a few hours away.

One of my colleagues, who also served as a mentor, had the solution. She introduced me to the newspaper’s “morgue.” This was a room filled with filing cabinets in which we kept old — dead — stories arranged by reporter. Whenever I wasn’t’ sure how to write a story, all I had to do was check the morgue for similar stories. If I needed to write a story about a local drug bust, for example, I’d find another story on a similar incident, study its structure, and mentally create a formula in which to plugin the information I’d gathered.

Once I’d gained more experience, and had internalized the formula for that particular type of story, I felt free to branch out as the situation — and my training — warranted.

I do the same thing when I want to write a type of letter, brochure, or report that I’ve never written before.

This is what writing looks like in the real world.

Of course, if you’re a new teacher like me, there is one problem with providing mentor texts to my students: I have a dearth of middle school level writing sitting around in my file cabinets.

Fortunately, the Internet is full of sources, so I scoured the bowels of Google to find examples. I know how busy you are, so I’m sharing.

Expository writing examples for middle school

Below are several sources of expository writing samples for middle school students.

• The Write Source Expository Writing Samples
• Holt, Rinehart, Winston Expository Essay Models

Finally, here is an article in the New York Times that will help you teach your students  real-world expository writing skills .

Descriptive writing examples for middle school

• Descriptive Writing Samples from Novels
• Milwaukee Public Schools Descriptive Essay Samples (p. 137)
• Holt, Rinehart, Winston Descriptive Essay Models

Narrative writing examples for middle school

• Writing Samples by Steve Peha (PDF)
• The Write Source Narrative Writing Samples
• Oregon Department of Education Scored Writing Samples (Ideas and Organization)
• Oregon Department of Education Scored Writing Samples (Sentence Fluency and Conventions)
• Oregon Department of Education Scored Writing Samples (Voice and Word Choice)
• Oregon Department of Education High School Scored Narrative and Argumentative Writing Samples
• Holt, Rinehart, Winston Narrative Essay Models

Argumentative/persuasive writing examples for middle school

• The Write Source Persuasive Writing Samples
• Holt, Rinehart, Winston Persuasive Essay Models

Reflective writing examples for middle school

• Reflective essay examples from Lake Washington Girls Middle School

If you know of any other online writing example sources, please feel free to share them in the comments below.

Related topics: Argumentative Writing , Informative Writing , Mentor Texts , Narrative Writing

About the author 

Michelle Boyd Waters, M.Ed.

I am a secondary English Language Arts teacher, a University of Oklahoma student working on my doctorate in Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum with an concentration in English Education and co-Editor of the Oklahoma English Journal. I am constantly seeking ways to amplify students' voices and choices.

This is very, very helpful. Thank you for sharing!

As a new middle school teacher (coming from elementary) this was very helpful and encouraging.

Thank you very much for letting me know. I’m glad that I was able to help you!

Thank you! I’m glad I can help.

Your welcome

This is super helpful. Thank you!

These links are a fantastic help. Thank you!

This helped me BUNCHES! Thanks so much!

thanks so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! XD

These links are now dead 🙁

Thank you for notifying me! I have updated the post to include new (live!) links. Some of them are geared towards high school, but I think we can still use them as exemplars of what we want our students to aim for.

Comments are closed.

Reluctant Reader Books

The Ultimate Guide to Middle School Essays

Why are middle school essays such a chore? Is there a way to make them more manageable? To teach the planning, organizing, writing and editing in a way that is simpler but more effective? We think so.

Below you’ll find our complete guide to middle school essay writing. The resources mentioned below can be found on TPT.

Want a sneak peak first? Check out the preview below (preview does not include full resource).

Before You Write: Taking Notes & Brainstorming

Taking notes for middle school essays.

Often middle school essays begin with taking notes. There are dozens of quality notetaking methods out there, from Cornell Notes to Sketch Notes and more. We don’t necessarily recommend a single notetaking system, given that some students are linear learners while others are visual, etc. Whatever notetaking method you use in your own room is fine.

What our resources focus on is the fundamentals of notetaking. What does it mean to take notes in the first place?

At it’s core taking notes is about noticing something within a text and then thinking about what you noticed.

This is what we try to get across to middle school students.

What you notice is not actually as important as the fact that you noticed it in the first place. And no matter what you did notice, it is the thinking that is most important of all.

Noticing…thinking…noticing…thinking. Back and forth.

But aren’t there questions students can ask? Guides that can direct them to the kinds of deeper level noticing that we want them to aspire to.

Indeed there are.

Which is why we have created just such a list.

We recommend modeling notetaking as a whole class. It can often be helpful to assign different types of questions to different students to track. So one student might be responsible for tracking images, another for looking out for foreshadowing, another for pondering why the writer chose a particular title, etc. Then you as the teacher can model how you take notes, what you notice and think, while at the same time getting input from students as you go.

No matter what system of notetaking you use with your students, it is an endeavor that requires lots of practice. But the more you do it together as a class, the more students will start to understand what to look for in the first place.

Image Boards & Quote Boards

So you’ve got a decent set of notes. Now what? How do you use those notes to write a compelling essay?

This is the step that many middle school students get bogged down on. Many either can’t come up with anything at all or just want to dive directly into the writing (which can be fine for the students who are great writers, but is often a disaster for everyone else).

Image Boards and Quote Boards are two methods for mining the notes students have taken and pulling out ideas to build an essay around. And what’s great about both is that they are very visual.

To make either, the first step is for students to review their notes and identify major ideas, concepts or themes that stand out (hopefully something stands out).

For example, a student reading Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart may have noticed that there is a lot of references to eyes and seeing. Poe repeats words related to sight multiple times throughout the story, and the old man’s eye is central to the plot. Jumping off from there, a student could create an Image Board that focuses on this theme.

Or perhaps a student has noticed that Poe never names the narrator of the story. In fact, there are no details about the narrator at all, nothing that reveals the narrator’s identity in any way. A savvy student might then ask: what if the narrator is a woman?

Image Boards do not have to be overly complicated. The purpose is simply to identity major themes and ideas that could be explored in an essay. Image Boards work best when students stick to broader concepts (which, after all, are what essays will likely be crafted around).

A Quote Board is in the same vein. The difference is that instead of looking for images, students will search for quotes from other writers that relate to the theme or idea they want to write about.

For example, Ray Bradbury’s story All Summer in a Day revolves around the idea of memory. In the story, it is Margot’s memory of the sun that separates her from the other students on Venus, who cannot recall the sunshine they experienced when they were little.

Quote Boards and Image Boards can easily be combined by simply requiring students to make an Image Board that includes so many quotes.

Both boards can be easily made in Canva (which offers free versions for students).

Claim Station

Once students have started to get an idea of what they want to write about, it’s time to start crafting claims. A claim is the central argument or idea that students will explore in the essay. It is the essay’s central thesis statement.

There are lots of ways to work with students to create claims for their essays. We like creating a Claim Station: a tag board or area in the classroom where students can write out claim sentences on sticky notes and hang them for everyone to see. We recommend having each student write multiple claims and post them (this encourages students to think about a range of different essays that can be written from the same text).

As students post claims, give them time to review all the different claims that their classmates have come up with. Then tell students that any claim at the station is up for grabs. You don’t have to write about the claim you came up with if a different claim is more compelling.

The purpose of a claim station is for students to see that there are a lot of different ideas out there, and thus a lot of different possible essays. It can also help those students who still feel lost in trying to connect their notes to an actual argument to build an essay around.

Structuring Your Essay

Structure cards.

Once students have a solid claim, they can begin structuring their essays. This is another area middle school students often struggle with. Which is why Structure Cards can be particularly helpful.

Structure Cards are color-coded cards for each of the following:

• Claim/Thesis Card
• Opening & Closing Paragraph Cards
• Topic Sentence Cards
• Evidence Cards

Each card requires students to get specific: what is your thesis sentence? What evidence supports this sentence? What sentence opens your closing paragraph? Etc.

Because the cards are color-coded, students can visually see the way their essay’s structure works. They can visualize the connections between the different parts of their essay.

Structure Cards a great way to help visual learners understand essay structure.

Visual Essays

Once students have worked out the structure of their essays, they can now craft Visual Essays. This is the last step before sitting down to pound out the first full draft.

A Visual Essay is another scaffolding piece between brainstorming and writing. It allows students to build from their Structure Cards and fully visualize each section of their essay.

To create a Visual Essay, students must create either a slide or a PNG image (we recommend using Canva) for each paragraph in their essay. For each slide/image, students must take a picture or upload an image of the text they read (you can have students take pictures with their phones and upload them, or do this yourself and supply the images in a shared drive). These pictures are used as the main section of the image/slide.

Students must identify and highlight in the text the evidence they will be citing for each paragraph. This forces students to get very specific and connect the ideas they are writing about to the text they read.

Then students must add the following:

• Their thesis/topic sentence
• An Evidence Sentence that points to the evidence in the text
• A Justification Sentence that explains how the evidence supports the thesis/topic sentence

Visual Essays are also great for peer feedback. They are much easier for students to read and review and provide criticism for. And they provide an excellent space for feedback before students go through the laborious process of writing the entire essay.

Writing & Revising Your Essay

Brain dumping.

We work with a lot of visual-spatial students. Many of these students struggle to write at all and especially struggle to write by hand. Their minds are often filled with dozens and dozens of ideas, all of which are vying for attention right this second .

One way to help students put aside all the ideas buzzing inside their heads and focus on the single idea of their essay is to have them do a Brain Dump before they get to work.

A Brain Dump is simply a bullet list. It doesn’t have to be complete sentences (although it can be). Give students five minutes to write down every single idea that they have in their heads right now. Tell them to jot the ideas down quickly and succinctly.

And then, at the end of five minutes, tell students to review their Brain Dump. These are all the ideas that they must now shelve to Think About Later. For some students, it may actually help to cross each idea out to reinforce this concept visually.

Once this is complete, have the Brain Dumps put aside, and students can begin to write.

Sentence Starters

Once students get going on writing a first draft, it can be helpful for them to have access to sentence starters and transitions they can utilize to move their essays forward. In our resource, we include handouts with all the various sentence starters below.

Check out our full resource for middle school essays .

Topic Sentence Starters

A topic sentence is the first sentence of a paragraph or essay. It informs the reader of the subject of the essay or the paragraph.

• This essay discusses…
• This essay explores…
• This essay outlines…
• This essay examines…
• This essay analyzes…
• This essay explains…
• This essay evaluates…
• This essay describes…
• This essay illustrates…
• In this essay we will discuss…
• In this essay we will explore…
• In this essay we will outline…
• In this essay we will examine…
• In this essay we will analyze…
• In this essay we will explain…
• In this essay we will evaluate…
• In this essay we will describe…
• In this essay we will illustrate…

Conclusion Sentence Starters

A conclusion sentence is a sentence where you make a final point by wrapping up or summarizing what you have been explaining to your reader.

• In summary…
• In brief…
• Thus…
• Ultimately…
• As a result…
• As I see it…
• Accordingly…
• Finally…
• To review…
• Hence…
• Given these points…
• Considering these facts…
• Put simply…
• In a nutshell…
• Consequently…
• Therefore…
• In conclusion…
• In short…
• In general…
• After all…
• To reiterate…
• In effect…
• Essentially…
• Undoubtedly…

Evidence Sentence Starters

An evidence sentence is a sentence where you support a claim or argument that you have made by providing evidence to your reader.

• According to the text…
• According to the author…
• The text states…
• The author states…
• The study notes…
• The study demonstrates…
• The evidence shows…
• An example can be seen…
• This clearly shows…
• Another reason…
• I observed…
• The research concluded…
• The author describes…
• One example of this…
• According to the passage…
• I think this because…
• The graphic shows…
• The statistics prove…
• The illustration demonstrates…
• This explains…
• This demonstrates…
• This confirms…
• According to the research…
• What the authors discovered…

Transition Sentence Starters: Contrast

When you contrast between two different ideas or pieces of evidence, you may want to use a transition sentence starter that cues your reader.

• However…
• Nevertheless…
• On the one hand…
• On the other hand…
• Alternatively…
• Apart from…
• Contrarily…
• Despite this…
• Whereas…
• Even so…
• In spite of…

Transition Sentence Starters: Order

Many times you need to make distinct to your reader the the information you are giving them comes in a specific order.

• Following…
• First/firstly…
• Second/secondly…
• Third/thirdly…
• At this time…
• Previously…
• Last/lastly…
• Subsequently…
• Before…
• Next…
• Above all…
• Only then…

Reading Your Essay Aloud

Middle schoolers should be encouraged to read their essays aloud to a partner both during the writing process and once their drafts are finished. The ear is almost always a better editor than the eye, and the process of reading aloud often draws a student writer’s attention to problem areas they would have otherwise overlooked.

To make peer review a bit less laborious, we have students find different partners for each paragraph of their essays. This breaks the editing process up and ensures that students hear from a range of different editors.

Paragraph Cut Apart

Another fun (and visual) way to edit essays is to have students cut their paragraphs apart into their component sentences. Then give those cut-apart sentences to a partner and have the partner try and put the paragraph back together in the proper order.

This exercise is useful for both partners. It can reveal structural and transitional problems for the writer, and it is good practice for the partner who is trying to reconstruct the paragraph. Well-written paragraphs have a flow to them. Their ideas progress in a logical order. Identifying and understanding that order is something that requires practice.

1,029 Writing Prompts for Middle School

In addition to the middle school essay resources mentioned above, our Ultimate Guide also includes another resource we use regularly for bellringers and fun writing exercises: 1,029 Writing Prompts for Middle School.

This massive collection of writing prompts is perfect for short writing assignments but is also a goldmine for ideas for larger essays. It is broken down into 20 different prompt categories:

There are dozens upon dozens of prompts for each category. Some are serious and thoughtful. Others are comical and amusing. Many are designed to get students to reflect upon their own ideas and place in the world.

Our 1,029 Writing Prompts for Middle School can be used throughout the year and for every subject, with prompts that cover a wide array of topics and subject matter.

Interested in just the writing prompts guide? Check it out here .

Using ChatGPT in the Classroom

Many school districts and educators have taken a stand against ChatGPT and other AI programs. We have no problem with that. But we were also curious if ChatGPT could be used effectively in the modern classroom, and we set out to create an in-depth guide on how to use ChatGPT to enhance student writing.

Since ChatGPT is most effective in the planning and organizing of student essays, we have included this resource as well in our Ultimate Guide to Middle School Essays.

Our ChatGPT guide ( learn more about it here ) examines how AI can be used at every stage of the writing process: idea generation, outlining, writing topic sentences, editing, making citations, etc. But at each stage, our guide focuses on the thinking process that students must engage with if they are to use AI as something other than just a crutch.

The trick is to leverage AI in a way that keeps the critical analysis and thought process squarely with the student. And our guide provides a roadmap for how to do that.

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Bell Ringers

3 types of essays your middle schoolers need to practice.

Writing can be a real headache for ELA teachers. Writing is layered with skills – from grammar to analysis – so it’s not a walk in the park for teachers or students. It’s really common for students to struggle to apply what they’ve learned, think deeply and critically, and write independently. There are several types of essays that middle schoolers need to learn, but if the thought of teaching them makes you want to run for the hills, stick with me. We’re going to talk about three different types of essays middle schoolers need to practice, and I’ll share some resources to help you out.

Types of Essays for Middle Schoolers

There are various types of essays out there, but there are three types I want to specifically look at: argumentative, literary analysis, and narrative. These types of essays cover both creative and critical thinking – and help push literary skills to the next level.

Argumentative Writing

Writing argumentative essays requires that students know how to defend a stance. Students are great at taking stances, but defending them requires deeper thinking.

When writing an argumentative essay, there are a few key things students need to know. To start, students need to be able to select a topic and take a position on that topic (or they can take a position on a topic assigned to them). Students will also brainstorm a list of logical reasons to support their stance, use clear and convincing evidence to support their points, and share counterclaims. 

Of course, that’s where things get tricky. Students really struggle to build solid arguments and find great evidence. Inside the Argumentative Writing Booklet, I included information about credible sources, logical reasonings, and relevant evidence. I referred to these a lot when in the classroom, and it’s likely you’ll need to teach them over (and then over again).

Another important part of an argumentative essay is counterclaims. This requires that students step into someone else’s shoes and think about how someone could break down their stance. Inside the Argumentative Writing Booklet, I included some key points for students to remember about counterclaims and sentence starters to help with essay writing.

If you are looking for a resource to make the process of teaching students to write argumentative essays a total breeze, check out my free Argumentative Student Reference Booklet! Inside, you’ll find reference pages for –

❤️ how to craft an argument

❤️ the elements of writing an argumentative essay

❤️ writing a counterclaim

❤️ the types of credible sources

❤️ how to ensure you are using logical reasons

❤️ and more!

Literary Analysis

Another important skill for middle schoolers is learning how to write a literary analysis essay . Literary analysis goes much deeper than just a simple summary. In fact, when writing a literary analysis essay, students can make an argument, dig deep into specific literary elements, or explore a theory they have about the text. 

In order to know how to write a literary analysis essay, students need to know how to analyze a text and find evidence to support their analysis. (I know, it’s easier said than done.) For example, students might notice a frequent symbol or craft that the author uses and decide to explore what it means or its purpose. Inside the Literary Analysis Booklet, I included pages on symbolism and author’s craft as a jumping-off point for students to brainstorm and analyze.

Another area I’ve seen students struggle with is the thesis statement. Because students often want to write literary analysis like a summary, they get stuck here. In the Literary Analysis Booklet, I give examples of thesis statements, along with a thesis formula and mistakes to avoid.

If the thought of teaching how to write a literary analysis essay is overwhelming to you, check out the Literary Analysis freebie! Inside, you’ll find –

❤️ summarizing vs. analyzing

❤️ literary analysis elements

❤️ how to annotate literature

❤️ in-depth overview of author’s craft

❤️ thesis statement guide

Narrative Writing

The final type of essay I want to focus on is narrative writing . Learning to write narrative essays is the way that students become really comfortable with their own storytelling voice. Personal narratives are often some of the first writing exposure students have in elementary school. As students get older, it’s tossed to the side for more analytical writing. Narrative essays provide the perfect opportunity for students to practice skills like adding details, vocabulary, and imagery. It allows them to give a touch of their personality and imagination.

One big perk to narrative writing is that you’ll have tons of examples to pull from. You can easily slip it alongside your reading unit. Students can use a book club or whole class text as an example of narrative writing – and then try to create their own.

My favorite part of narrative writing is that it reinforces what students have learned in their reading units. They will have to understand the plot and how a plot unfolds. This also involves students dipping into author’s craft by choosing a point of view, using figurative language, and developing character motives. It also means creating believable characters and dialogue. It can be tougher than it might first appear!

In my Narrative Writing Reference Booklet freebie, I’ve included all the foundation information students would need + examples of narrative essays for students to refer to. Inside the freebie, you’ll find –

❤️ elements of narrative writing

❤️ developing the plot of narrative writing

❤️ sensory details + examples

❤️ how to use dialogue

❤️ ways to start and end narrative writing + examples

I know that essay writing can be a head-banging experience (for both you and your students). My hope is that with the Writing Toolkit, you can make it easier for students to write independently and build a strong foundation for writing.

• Read more about: Middle School Writing

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