Informative/Explanatory Writing

A Writing Standard

Explanatory Writing Differs from Argument Writing because

an explanatory response seeks to explain, support, or clarify. The thesis statement for an explanatory essay is factual and objective. It conveys the writer’s purpose to increase readers’ knowledge, not to change their minds.

Explanatory Writing

requires students to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately. The purpose of this type of writing is to demonstrate comprehension of a topic, concept, process, or procedure.

For Explanatory Writing

students write in response to a source, which may be a text or other media such as art, music, charts, or graphs. An effective response requires students to read the “text” closely, in order to demonstrate an understanding of the topic and locate evidence from the “text” to support their response.

Explanatory responses may be organized in various ways…

Cause/ Effect

Problem/ Solution

Definition

Classification

Chronological/ Sequential

Compare/Contrast

Compare

Contrast

A Snapshot of ExplanatoryTasks Related to Organizational Structures

A Snapshot of Content-specific Explanatory Tasks

Science Lab Reports- Explain lab observations; compare a process used to another possible process

Career Technology Education - Diagram the sequence of steps required to diagnose and troubleshoot malfunctioning equipment.

Mathematics Reflections- Contrast the graph you created with a partner and depict the differences you discovered.

Music-After listening to recordings of two performances, identify strengths of each performance and give suggestions for improvement in our performance, considering tone, intonation, balance, and articulation.

Art- Explain the choices you made as you developed ideas for your portrait.

Social Studies- Compare Northern and Southern rationales for the ending or continuation of slavery

most content areas and requires students to think, question, and analyze.

Explanatory writing is common to