Running Head: THE HAMBURGER MODEL OF ESSAY WRITING

The Hamburger Model of Essay Writing

Ashley Carter
University of St. Mary

THE HAMBURGER MODEL OF ESSAY WRITING

Context
Prairie City Monroe High school is located in Monroe, Iowa. It is a small school situated
in a farming community. Our junior class is consistently proficient in the eighty five to ninety
two percent range (District Recourses, 2012) and we have very few students with IEP and
behavior plans. PCM has a low free and reduced lunch percentage, and the majority of the
students are Caucasian. My classroom is made up of five classes of English 10 and one class of
English 9. My action research will involve my English 10 class.
My teaching style hails from Jim Fay and David Funks book called Teaching with Love
and Logic. Love and Logic is a style of teaching that puts teachers in control of their
classrooms. It discourages the class clown and kids build a strong relationship with their teacher;
striving to meet the teachers expectations (Fay, Funk, 1995 p. 1-427). Although I agree with Fay
and Funk about their ideas on student responsibility, I also feel that we as teachers have an
obligation to do everything we can to prevent students from failing our classes. I always go out
of my way (often annoying my students) to do everything I can to prevent kids from failing my
class.
The Issue
Although bright, students in my classroom struggle with writing. One area that is
exceptionally difficult for them is essay writing. In my opinion, the issue is not the students, but
how they have been taught to write their essays. In my experience, I have found that my students
respond positively to visual aids. I plan to use a visual aid to teach my students the steps for
writing the five paragraph essay.

THE HAMBURGER MODEL OF ESSAY WRITING

There is an obvious gap in our curriculum when it comes to writing essays. This became
apparent to me my first week in my classroom. When I asked the students to write a five
paragraph essay about their thoughts on global warming, they had no idea how to format their
thoughts. According to our curriculum map, essay writing is covered in ninth grade. When asked,
the ninth grade teacher said that she had covered this in her class. After I made this observation,
she and I had several meetings and I decided to conduct my research about the hamburger visual
aid.
Essay writing is one of the most important things that students learn in English class. It is
an important skill that they will need in college and in the work force. When students get to
college, it is assumed that they know how to format a simple five paragraph essay. I felt that we
were doing kids a disservice by sending them out of our doors without completely understanding
the essay writing process. According to Bayley, Posters can be used to increase learning
opportunities (2004 p.31 ). Students in my class are very visual and I was excited to find a
visual way to teach an otherwise dry process.
Expected Outcome
I am anticipating the students essay writing scores to increase after implementing
hamburger visual aid for teaching essay writing. When they get to my class, the kids have trouble
writing the five paragraph essay. Their previous teacher uses no visual aids and simply lectures
to teach the process. By using a visual poster, I believe the students understanding and memory
of the process will increase. Essays are graded on their layout, their content, spelling and
grammar, and the proper use of a thesis statement. Using this scoring system, their essays before

THE HAMBURGER MODEL OF ESSAY WRITING

learning using the hamburger model and their scores after will be compared. As stated before, I
am expecting these scores to rise dramatically.
Negotiations
My research topic falls under the category of ethical research and requires no
permissions. The students safety is never compromised and all student information will be kept
confidential (Hendricks, 2013 p. 81-87). While everything I am doing is ethical, I still anticipate
some obstacles within my research. While I expect most students scores to improve after the
implementation of the hamburger model, I imagine there may be a few whose learning styles
lend them towards the previous teachers lecture method. There I also the possibility that the
high school students may find the graphic organizer to be too elementary in nature. Hopefully,
they will embrace the model despite its simplicity and bright colors.

THE HAMBURGER MODEL OF ESSAY WRITING

References
Bayley, D. (2004). POSTER POWER. Australian Primary Mathematics Classroom, 9(3), 31-32.
District recourses. (2012). Retrieved from pcmonroe.k12.ia.us
Fay, J., & Funk, D. (1995). Teaching with love and logic: Taking control of the classroom. (1st
ed., pp. 1-427). Golden, CO: Love and Logic Press.
Hendricks, C. (2013). Improving schools through action research: A reflective practice approach.
(3rd ed., pp. 1-193). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.