baby thesis for bucket one

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How to Use the Baby Thesis Method for Cohesive Essays

By Krystal N. Craiker

Teaching writing to students is a major challenge for every teacher. One of the hardest parts for students is writing a cohesive essay. They might have great introductions and solid body paragraphs, but their essays can often lack unity and flow.

As teachers, we harp on about the importance of having a strong thesis statement. Usually, we teach students to list their three main points in their thesis statement. This is an easy way to show students that their main points should relate to the essay topic.

But then the body paragraphs fall flat. They cover each of the main points, but the students haven’t shown how those points relate to the entire topic of the essay. They are little more than fact dumps, and they don’t tie back to the thesis statement or the prompt of the paper.

Teachers live for light bulb moments. And that light bulb moment for cohesive essays might be as simple as a terminology change.

The DBQ Project has two unique terms for their writing process. First, they refer to the major points in an essay as “buckets.” They also changed the term from topic sentence to “baby thesis.”

What Is the DBQ Project?

The baby thesis, words matter.

The DBQ Project is a program for social studies teachers to encourage writing across the curriculum and historical thinking skills. DBQs, or document-based questions, are a type of history essay that provide a series of primary and secondary sources that relate to an overall prompt. AP history tests include DBQs, but these skills are adaptable for all levels.

DBQ essay prompts are not just explanations of a historical topic. They ask students to defend a particular argument using primary and secondary sources and prior knowledge. The DBQ Project makes teaching this writing skill accessible for every level of learner.

The lessons that come from the DBQ Project are not just for social studies. How DBQs are taught can help students write stronger arguments in a more cohesive essay across all subjects.

A good scholar lets the evidence inform their argument, not the other way around. This requires two major steps: analysis and categorization.

Categorization is not a skill that comes naturally to many students. It’s considered one of the highest-level activities in both Bloom’s and Marzano’s levels of thinking. But it’s the skill that is necessary for creating strong body paragraphs .

DBQs are a great way to teach this skill because the documents are provided to the students. However, if you’re writing in English or science class, you’ll need to help teach this skill differently.

For higher-performing students, encourage them to research a topic, write down facts or quotes on notecards or a graphic organizer, and then practice putting this information into “buckets.” For lower-level students, provide excerpts of research for them to categorize. If necessary, you can even provide them with the categories and have them sort the research into those specific categories.

Visual aids are helpful for this step. Teach that “like goes with like.” You can even model with actual plastic buckets or a bucket template if you want. Use kinesthetic learning to have students physically place their research in different groups.

Once their research is divided into buckets, it’s time to take a look at the prompt again. This is where you’ll teach writing a strong thesis statement for the whole paper. After that, introduce the concept of a “baby thesis.”

Students are likely familiar with the phrase “topic sentence.” But a topic sentence can miss the entire point of strong body paragraphs. A topic sentence can tell you what a paragraph is about, but it might not tie in to the overall thesis of the paper. This is where cohesion begins to drop off.

I’m arguing semantics here, but how we phrase things in the classroom can trigger those light bulb moments for students.

The Purpose of a Baby Thesis

A strong topic sentence should do two things:

• Tell what the paragraph is about, and
• Tie back to the thesis of the whole essay.

Students can fairly easily give you a simple sentence that explains what the paragraph is about, but they struggle to relate it back to the overall thesis of the paper. Calling it a “baby thesis” reminds the students that this sentence should support their thesis.

When I modeled pre-writing, I drew a lot of arrows back to my thesis statement to really hammer home the idea that they relate back to their thesis. Let’s look at an example of a thesis statement along with weak and strong topic sentences.

Thesis: The New Deal programs had long-lasting effects on the political, social, and economic systems in American, many of which are still present today.

Weak Topic Sentence: There were also many economic programs in the New Deal.

Strong Topic Sentence: The New Deal also established many economic programs that affect Americans every day.

The first topic sentence is structurally sound. It has a clear transition and lets us know that the paragraph is about economic programs of the New Deal. However, it doesn’t show that the paragraph is specifically about long-lasting or present-day programs that are still in place. With this topic sentence, students might put in examples of economic programs that only lasted a few years.

The stronger topic sentence is a “baby thesis.” Not only does it tell us that the paragraph is about New Deal economic programs, it reminds us that we are only looking at those programs which are still in place. This ensures that your student puts only information that is relevant to the thesis in the paragraph.

A “baby thesis” also reminds students that they need to relate every fact or bit of research back to the thesis . Too often, students write a basic topic sentence and deliver several facts, but they don’t provide any analysis. In the above example, a weak paragraph would list the FDIC and US Employment Service as examples of economic programs without explaining how they affect Americans today. The “baby thesis” reminds students to provide the analysis needed for a cohesive essay.

Baby Thesis as Pre-Writing

When we teach pre-writing, we start with a thesis statement and an outline. We always tell students to decide what their major points are before they write.

The DBQ Project takes this one step further. To ensure an essay that flows well and stays on topic, include the baby thesis as a pre-writing step. Have them write these strong topic sentences before they write the essay as a whole. It will help them organize their thoughts and create a more solid outline.

You can also use this pre-writing step to provide feedback on their baby thesis statements. Offer suggestions to improve these before they begin writing the essay. Strong baby theses will help your students stay on-topic and write an essay that flows well.

Teachers and writers know that it’s not just what you say, but how you say it. Teachers especially know that you can explain something a dozen times to a student who doesn’t understand, but as soon as you explain it differently, they get it.

If you’re struggling to get your students’ essays to be well-organized and cohesive with a strong argument, take a note from the DBQ Project. Change your word choice and how you explain the parts of an essay. It might just be the light bulb you’ve been waiting for.

What is the hardest part about teaching essay-writing? Let us know in the comments.

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Krystal N. Craiker

Krystal N. Craiker is the Writing Pirate, an indie romance author and blog manager at ProWritingAid. She sails the seven internet seas, breaking tropes and bending genres. She has a background in anthropology and education, which brings fresh perspectives to her romance novels. When she’s not daydreaming about her next book or article, you can find her cooking gourmet gluten-free cuisine, laughing at memes, and playing board games. Krystal lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband, child, and basset hound.

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Music Features

Jpegmafia, rap's most tireless agitator, looks inward, on a career-best album, a committed hater turns his fury toward personal ends.

Sheldon Pearce

JPEGMAFIA performs in 2023 at The Rooftop at Pier 17 in New York City. Keeyahtay Lewis on behalf of The Rooftop at Pier 17 hide caption

In January, the rapper and producer JPEGMAFIA ignited some frustrated chatter online when a photo of him and Kanye West , hinting at a collaboration, appeared on his Instagram. JPEG had long been vocal about how much he revered Kanye, and the role that the G.O.O.D. Music architect had played in his musical education. But given the widespread dismay at his hero’s anti-semitic antics (“ Kanye’s a Nazi now ,” JPEG himself lamented in an interview just last year), the backlash was predictable and immediate. The artist fired back, justifying his participation in what would become Vultures 1 , Ye’s first tag-team album with Ty Dolla $ign , as apolitical: a long-awaited call up to the majors by his favorite rapper ever, their connection nothing more than a fated bucket list moment. “its offensive to me that some people on here took a moment i had been waiting on my whole life and twisted into some weird ass oppression olympics,” he wrote in an Instagram story . “I make goals and i achieve them. you make mean reddit threads. We will never be alike no matter how much u want it be.”

It should be no surprise, then, that JPEG’s own new solo album uses the slight as fuel. “When they can’t read you like a book / They gon’ try to attack what you stand on,” he raps a few minutes into I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU (released Aug. 2), before resetting his terms: “I’ma take off even if I land wrong / And take everything I can get my hands on.” Later on, he sounds nearly giddy poking fun at the online firestorm, rapping “The lies don’t stick, narratives ain’t fittin’ / Now they gotta pivot, the goalpost shifts” near the end of “ Exmilitary ,” a song that fires from the hip in all directions — at family, at exes, at bros with no Black friends, at nepo babies, at opps who move too much like “Harvey, Jeffrey, R. Kelly,” the unholy trinity of celebrity sex offenders. In place of what he deems fake news about his character, he presents a rousing, dogmatic set of songs hell bent on not just name-clearing but identity-protecting, over production that erupts with the frenzy of hardcore punk. And yet, beneath the mayhem, there is also a bit of second-guessing, a startling development for one of hip-hop’s most relentless wise guys.

A collage artist working somewhere between noise rap and sound design, JPEGMAFIA has for years stood at the forefront of an edgy cohort of hip-hop doomscrollers tapped into the culture wars. He emerged as a Bandcamp success story in 2018 with his second album, Veteran , which was refreshing for all of its glitchy dissonance, channeling the harshness of Throbbing Gristle, the off-balance hardcore nerddom of MF DOOM and the madcap mania of Ol’ Dirty Bastard for pointedly unresolved songs about gentrification in Williamsburg, hipsters infiltrating rap culture and the limits of liberalism. Subsequent albums increased the muchness of his sound by several degrees: 2019's All My Heroes Are Cornballs was tectonic in structure, constantly shifting and embracing melody with a proudly nonsensical execution, while establishing the open dialogue with his audience that would linger throughout his rise. “Young Peggy, I'm a false prophet / Bringin' white folks this new religion / My fans need new addictions,” he declared. “Rap been so good to me, I hope it get me canceled.” 2021's LP! , released in online and offline versions for sample clearance reasons, swung toward a clipping, synthy avant-garde sound and an intense preoccupation with beef. All along, he has matched trolling with trolling, creating a confrontational relationship with his public. Many see him as terminally online and sometimes paradoxical; he sees those who @ him as representative of a widespread scourge he must rail against, once calling himself a villain to basement dwellers. He has never been shy about his own history, as a Black Southern transplant and Air Force veteran turned rap beatmaker by way of sheer overexposure to the internet. But after four albums of kick-in-your-teeth rap making memes out of politicos and sycophants, ILDMLFY is his first to point toward something beyond snark and fury: an untangling of his contradictions, weighing online discourse’s idea of who he is against who he knows himself to be.

That starts, apparently, with setting the record straight. Seemingly answering for something at every moment, JPEG targets his trolls here as if taking up arms to defend his honor. These raps are some of his most biting and snappy; he sounds amped up delivering them, at times agitated but never inconvenienced, and maybe even taking a little joy in what he clearly sees as punching down. “Hating for free but you can’t pay your rent / If you’re gonna d***-ride, make it make cents,” he raps on “ it’s dark and hell is hot .” A lot of rap is preoccupied with hate — resentment and envy, specifically — but JPEG has a way of approximating the snowballing whataboutism of the social web, making it seem like he is penetrating its surreal, suffocating clutch even as the echo chamber bears down on him. On “ New Black History ,” he raps, “Y’all wish I kept on eatin’ prison lunch ‘cause I’m tweetin’ too much,” sounding emboldened to keep posting around a shadow-ban. It isn’t just that he sees his own continued success as a panacea; for him, his music stands as the only real and true thing about him online, an answer for those looking to puzzle him out.

He has spent a lot of his catalog sniping at rap rivals, waving off burner-account critiques and picking actual fights (“All of my songs a diss,” he admitted on 2021’s “ Nemo ”), and this album is as defined by bird-flipping vitriol as any other. But the thrashing energy found at its start dissipates as it goes on, revealing a self-conscious mind, if not apologetic then at least troubled. “I can’t defend this b**** up in the mirror / I’d rather ask forgiveness than permission,” he raps on “ Don’t Put Anything on the Bible .” Later on, he adds, “My b**** never got taken from me, I lost her myself / My b**** never got comfort from me, I needed too much help.” He doesn’t seem much interested in that help now, and it would be imprecise to say he expresses anything like contrition. But he is drawn into a brooding space — thinking about substance abuse and sobriety, his relationship to class, his military background and the music machine, assessing the damage caused by his disposition within his very niche, very online sphere of influence.

This self-assessment — a tenacious agitator questioning how those urges affect how he operates, and affect those around him — is guided by dynamic, detailed production that can be as exquisite as it is face-melting. Many of the beats open up to reveal a second beat inside them, as if experiencing a zoological metamorphosis. They swing both ways: from quiet to busy, or from intense to subdued. Sometimes they go from loud to louder. “ JIHAD JOE ” explodes from breakbeat bliss into a ripping metal mash. After a celestial overture from Buzzy Lee on “Don’t Put Anything on the Bible,” a switch flips from saintly splendor to more grounded guitar riffs. The collagist's instincts are still in overdrive here, piecing together everything from Logan Roy sound bites to NBA footage, flipping ‘70s Japanese jazz and contemporary baile funk, repurposing classic soul drums from Sly & the Family Stone . But it all is done with such a steady hand as to feel not just like a densely sampled, brazenly engineered world in miniature, which is true of both LP! and the Danny Brown collab Scaring the Hoes , but like it has turned the sum of its oddball parts into the fabric of a unified aesthetic. He goes about things much differently, but in effect, he starts to take after the old Kanye, making maximalism feel integrated and harmonious.

Music Reviews

At ye's listening events, true believers rally around a chaotic idol.

JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown are here to blow up your function

Speaking of which, the distance at this moment between JPEGMAFIA and Kanye West couldn’t be any more apparent after the Saturday release of Ye’s second album with Ty Dolla $ign, Vultures 2 , another kitchen-sink effort showcasing the worst impulses of a capricious egomaniac. Kanye is at the other end of the firestarter life cycle, and his music is increasingly about provocation without end. You can hear in his recent songs an attempt to channel the ambition and intention of his classic, transformative run, but behaviorally, he’s become a damaged nerve ending, unable to relay external stimuli to the hive-mind entity he inhabits — which itself has come to feel less like a cohort of experts under the orchestration of an Oppenheimer-like maestro, and more like a cult committed to a ringleader’s suicide pact. Shortly before JPEG got the call to work on Vultures 1 , he had publicly voiced his exasperation at the state of the Kanye machine — “U got 27 n****s tweaking hi hats just to make some mid,” he wrote on X — and hinted at himself as the caliber of beatmaker whose tinkering might actually do some good. In the end, his contributions were among that album’s most distinct and fully realized. And listening to both artists’ new records side by side, the difference in their current methods feels overwhelmingly clear.

There is, after all, a purposefulness missing from Ye’s stunts. His persistent tardiness (both Vultures albums followed weeks of unclear teases and blew their release dates by a day) reads as the sign of an artist who doesn’t know when to stop, and that endless tampering seems to mostly serve a vision of his own genius. He can feel, at times, like a trespasser in his own control room, actively sabotaging songs. Like his new producing partner, he is motivated above all by outside hate and perceived snubs (“You tried to bring me to my lowest, I still brought the vision / I see through the blinds,” he raps on Vultures 2 ’s “ Time Moving Slow ”), but that admonishment no longer focuses him, as it once did on the career-resetting My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy . JPEG favors Ye in many ways, good and bad, but I hear in the younger artist’s latest work not only a flowering master craftsmanship, but a willingness to confront the idea of what his music is for.

When I interviewed JPEG a few years ago in the lead-up to All My Heroes Are Cornballs , he cited Kanye as the thesis of the title’s message — that listeners should not put their faith in artists, simply because they do not know them. Yet even then he would not judge his idol, already deep in the palm of Trumpism, because he believed anyone, himself included, could end up there. I’ve thought about that stance a lot while listening to these albums. JPEG could very well end up just like Kanye one day, but the foresight in that comment suggests, to me, an artist seeking awareness rather than faith. That’s what I read in his album’s supplicating title, I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU — a recognition, even between barbs, that provocation is often merely a cover for a desperate desire to be seen and understood.