Practical Strategies for Teaching Elaboration and Adding Detail in Writing

Teaching elaboration is a very difficult skill for students when writing constructed responses. Learn different elaboration strategies for getting students to add more details with writing examples here.

It's a common issue for 4th or 5th-grade students to need help elaborating on their evidence when writing argumentative or informational essays. 

Many young writers new to text-based writing often rephrase the textual evidence as part of their explanation. 

Even when trying elaboration stems or sentence starters, they need help adding more information to explain their point when writing paragraphs.  

 If you've ever wondered how to help those struggling students elaborate by adding more details to their writing, you're in the right place. 

Read along to find practical examples beyond rephrasing, and discover how to guide your students in effortlessly adding rich details. 

How Do You Teach Students to Elaborate in Writing?

Explain what elaboration is, and provide clear examples of how it appears when writing paragraphs. Take them through each type of elaboration strategy so they can use it in their writing.

When you tell students to elaborate, ask specific questions; don't just say, “Elaborate on this paragraph.” They might need help understanding what that means. 

Instead, be clear and direct. The word “elaborate” might be unfamiliar.

 What we want them to do is explain their ideas, make it clear how their writing connects to the main topic, or describe their thoughts in more detail.

For your students to explain their ideas using their own words, you must explicitly teach them how to elaborate in writing or expand on their ideas through continuous modeling, repetition, and independent practice.

Elaboration for Different Types of Writing

Elaboration comes in different forms. How your students elaborate depends on the type of writing they're working on. 

Different types of writing require different approaches to adding details and expanding on those ideas.

In fourth grade and fifth grade, students often have to write about three main types of writing: narrative, argumentative, and informational.

Here is how elaboration will be different for each type of writing.

• Narrative Essay – Students tell a story and elaborate with details by describing a specific moment. The goal is to help readers picture the scene and feel like they're in the story.

• Informational or Expository Essay- Students teach the reader about a topic in this type of writing. They add more details by explaining concepts in a way that someone new to the topic can easily understand.

• Argumentative or Opinion Essay- Students pick a side and share their thoughts. Elaborating in an argumentative essay means adding details to strengthen their point and convince the reader. It's not just about expressing their opinion but getting others to see things differently.

Teaching Elaboration Strategies with Examples 

Anecdotes

 An anecdote is a story. It can be elaborate or brief. Including an anecdote within a paragraph should be based on an experience that happened. 

Explain to your students the purpose of an anecdote is to make a text-to-self connection by telling a story. 

There are two common misconceptions among students when it comes to writing anecdotes. 

First, a story is long and includes tons of descriptive writing. 

Second, their anecdotes have to include every detail that happened that day. 

For an anecdote to be compelling, it must be short and straight to the point.

Here are three steps to show your students how to write an anecdote: 

• Step 1: Start by thinking about the point you want to make. 
• Step 2: Then, brainstorm a story that illustrates your point. The story can be true or fictional, but it should be short and easy to understand.
• Step 3: Write the story's parts that connect to your topic. 

Here is an example of an anecdote:

• Text to self-connection: “While scrolling through my phone, I saw a woman on social media collecting the plastic they found at the beach to make a trash bin. Reusing the plastic to create something new was one way of protecting the ocean.”  

Examples 

Examples give information about a topic. It is one of the writing strategies many students will be familiar with when writing. 

Still, examples in writing become powerful when your students can explain how they relate to the point they are trying to make.

Your students can use examples to clarify a point, explain an issue, or justify a point. 

Here are some examples of different ways to add them to their writing:

• To clarify, “For example, in the passage “Our Home the Ocean,” scientists demonstrate how recycling the trash from our homes can lower the chances of plastic reaching the ocean.”

• To explain: “Here's an example of how we can take care of the oceans in three steps: use less, use again, and recycle.”

• To justify: “Everyone should help keep the ocean clean for marine animals. Both people and animals should be able to enjoy the ocean.” 

 Definitions 

A definition in writing is to explain the meaning of concepts relevant to the topic. If your students write an informative and argumentative essay, adding a definition of the topic is a great way to elaborate. 

A common error students make is defining long or new words to them. To avoid your students making this mistake, here are three steps to show them how to pick keywords:

Step 1: Identify keywords related to the topic. Aim for one or two words max.

Step 2:  Before writing the word's meaning, use a comma after the word, the word “or” following the word, or the word “means.” 

Step 3: Think of synonyms and examples to write the definition using your own words.

Here are examples of using definitions to elaborate in writing: 

• Using the “or”: “There are 5.25 trillion pieces of waste or trash found in the ocean today compared to five years ago.” 

• Using the signal word “this means “: “Another way to protect oceans is by reducing our carbon footprint. A carbon footprint means the pollution we make when we use things like cars and electricity.”  

Facts & Stats

Facts and statistics form a combination that we can split into two parts. 

Facts tell us things we already know or factual statements. 

Statistics involve numbers like percentages.

Tell students that adding a fact or statistic makes their statements more believable and helpful because people can check the information. 

As a result, it strengthens their writing.

An error teachers make is telling students to make up information for the sake of including a fact or statistic. 

Instead, show kids to look for factual information in what they are reading and restate it using their words. 

Here are four tips to show your students how to include facts or stats in their writing: 

• The fact must clearly relate to the topic.
• Tell where the fact or statistic is coming from.
• Explain how it is relevant to their topic. 
• If you're using a number or percentage, explain what it means.

Here are three examples to show your students the power of facts and statistics in their writing:

Adding a trustworthy authority: “There are 8 million tons of plastic in the ocean, according to The Ocean Conservancy.”

Making connections: “According to The Ocean Conservancy, there are 8 million tons of plastic in the ocean. This fact explains the importance of joining a beach clean-up to remove trash from beaches.”

 Explaining the numbers: “There are 8 million tons of plastic in the ocean, according to The Ocean Conservancy. That's like having 800,000 elephants made of plastic floating in the sea! So, you can see it's a big problem we must solve.” 

Quotes

In writing, a quote is copying a sentence word by word from the reading passage. 

Including a quote can help explain what the paragraph is about. Quotes also make a point stand out better than rephrasing it in your own words.

It goes hand in hand with students knowing how to back up what they say using information from the reading passage, known as text evidence. 

A common problem students encounter is selecting big chunks of text to add as a quote and copying it word by word. 

To help them, remind your students to follow these tips on adding a quote within a paragraph.

• Select a sentence: Find a quote that helps with your topic. If the quote is long, use the parts related to the topic.

• Introduce the quote: Tell where you got it from, like the author's name or title of the passage.

• Add quotation marks: Put the quote in quotation marks (“”).

• Explain the Quote: Explain why it is important and how it connects to the topic using transition words like “says” or “explains.”

Here's an example:

• Adding to a quote: “Protecting the ocean is a job everyone has to take part in. The captain of the Green Seas ship urges, “Let's all work together to save our beautiful oceans from pollution and overfishing.”

• Explaining a quote: Dr. Johnson, a marine scientist, explained, “Coastal habitats like mangroves, salt marshes, and coral reefs serve as breeding and feeding grounds for many marine species.” These homes found in the oceans are where ocean animals have babies and find food to survive. 

  Dialogue 

Dialogue is a conversation between two or more people in a written form. 

Many students might think that dialogue is only found in stories because stories are a common place to read dialogue.

Instead, writers use dialogue to incorporate expert opinions within a paragraph, strengthening the essay's main idea.

Here are three writing tips to help your students add dialogue effectively in an informative essay:

• Punctuate Correctly: Place the spoken words within quotation marks (“”) and use punctuation like commas and periods inside the quotation marks.

• Define the speaker: Mention who speaks in the conversation before or after the dialogue. 

• Explain the connection: Keep the dialogue short and explain the connection to the topic or main points of the essay.

Here's an example to show your students how to use dialogue in an informative paragraph.

• During an interview, the marine biologist Dr. Lopez said, “Pollution and rising sea temperatures threaten all marine species.” Dr. Thomponson, an oceanographer, agreed and replied, “The temperature changes have far-reaching effects. Pollution only adds to the problem.” Their answer shows experts agree that throwing trash into the ocean makes it challenging for animals to live there. They both feel it is vital to work together and find ways to help the sea animals and keep their homes. 

In the example above, both experts received credit, and what they said was marked by quotation marks. 

The following sentence clarifies why this conversation is significant to the essay's main idea about ocean preservation.

Descriptions 

A description helps the reader visualize and understand what the author is talking about using sensory details. 

Sensory details include any of the five senses to help readers get a vivid and complete picture in their heads.     

Here are ways to help your students write descriptions in their essays.

• Have your students think about how they present the details. They can organize the details in the order they happen or in a way that makes the most sense for their topic.

• Choose one of the five senses and use it to describe what someone can see, hear, touch, taste, or smell in the paragraph.

• Prompt students to use strong verbs. Make an anchor chart with different words for students to use as a reference.

• Make sure your description relates to the topic sentence of the paragraph. It should help the reader understand the topic better.

Here's an example of a description to show your students: 

•  “Preserving the ocean is super important so that people in the future can still enjoy it.” In other words, a clean ocean will allow people to continue visiting sandy beaches with warm sand under their feet while a colorful world of corals and fish lies beneath the water.

Takeaways

Teaching elaboration is a writing skill 4th and 5th-grade students benefit from having direct instruction, whether in small groups or as a whole class. 

When telling students to elaborate, be specific with what you want them to do. 

For many students, “elaboration” might be a word they have heard before but are unfamiliar with the action it requires them to do within their writing. 

The type of elaboration techniques students incorporate within their paragraphs depends on the kind of writing they're working on. 

Students can use any of the seven elaboration strategies to add more details to their paragraphs. 

They can do this by telling a story, giving examples, explaining what something means, adding facts, using a quote, adding dialogue, or describing things using their senses with strong verbs. 

Need writing resources to teach elaboration? Explore these helpful writing practice worksheets featuring handy elaboration sentence starters and examples. They're perfect for helping your students review and master various elaboration techniques for writing paragraphs!