What do paragraphs and stop lights have in common?

If you were in our class you would know the answer to this question because we have been writing paragraphs using a stop light as our color coding guide.

Green is for the topic sentence - this sentence grabs the reader's attention and tells what the paragraph is going to be about.
Orange is for 3 -5 detail sentences - these sentences slow the reader down to digest information about the paragraph's topic.
Red is for the closing sentences - this sentence tells the reader that it's time to stop reading for a moment before moving on to another paragraph.

We have been writing color- coded paragraphs for a few weeks now, so if you get a message from a student, it might just be color-coded!