Five paragraph essay activities

The last paragraph of a 5 paragraph essay — or any length should be a conclusion. It should not present new information, but it should always wrap up your discussion. One way to conclude is to summarize your 3 main points and then leave the reader with some key takeaways or a final thought about your thesis that drives your essay home.

The key is that you want to intrigue the reader. You want to draw the reader into your topic by creating a natural curiosity about it. Somewhere in the middle of your introduction, you need to present the 3 main points you will discuss in your 5 paragraph essay.

Each subsequent sentence in that paragraph should relate back to your topic sentence in some way. Using topic sentences is how you create coherence, allowing the reader to follow what you’re saying within the paragraph, and cohesion, which is what ties your essay together and makes it a unified whole.

The fourth paragraph is where you lay out the third main point that you promised in your essay’s introduction. Like any paragraph, it should have a transition and a topic sentence, and any examples or support should be related and interesting.