Preparing to Write: Drafting Your School Essay

Before building the twelve-story Kwame Nkrumah Conference Center in Accra, the construction crew made a strong foundation. No one sees the foundation, but without one a building may topple. In a similar way, when you prepare to draft your essay, you are constructing a foundation for your paper or essay. There are several ways to go about doing that, and all of them involve thinking about the topic. One reason students can have difficulty getting started on a draft is that they haven’t given the topic enough thought.


Brainstorming

Free Writing

Map Your Thoughts


After thinking through the points in your essay, you are ready to draft a thesis and some topic sentences for three paragraphs.


Place a Thesis Statement in the First Paragraph

Write a Topic Sentence for Each Paragraph