In his blog The White Rhino: A Chicago Latino English Teacher, Ray Salazar argues that the five-paragraph essay should be tossed out the window. The Chicago public school teacher writes that the ...

The five-paragraph essay, a staple in school writing curricula, has become a source of debate for educators, with critics charging the format is too rigid and constraining.

In a sense, the introduction should be a summary of the whole essay – later paragraphs should not change the direction of the argument or introduce new and unexpected topics.