✍️How to make a student ESSAY TEMPLATE on google docs to make your life much easier
So look, you’re doing the same thing over and over and over, wasting time and energy you could use for other things. This video will show you a simple trick to make an essay template you can literally use for years and in many different classes. It’ll save you time and make it WAY easier to get started if you’re someone who tends to procrastinate.
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Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF.
What is up students? My name is Seth Perler, I’m an executive function coach in Colorado and I help struggling students navigate this thing called education. So you can have a great future. And my job is that make your life easier, more fun, less stressful, have more success, and make it easier. And what I’m gonna teach you today, in order to make your life easier students is this, I want you to go into your Google Calendar, go into your Google, I want you to set up a template for essays that you will be able to use. If you’re in middle school, you can use it through middle school, high school, and college. If you’re in college, you can use it over and over and over and over and over. It’ll save you a lot of time. Here’s the gist of how that works.
The first thing we are going to do is we’re going to hop right here, you’re going to go into your Google Drive. When you go into your Google Drive, you’re going to open up a new document right here, click on Google Docs. And now you have a brand new document. And what I want you to call this document is “Essay Template”. Get ready to hit pause a lot on this video because I want you to set yours up as well. Go away, please go away, get out. Okay, great, thank you. Now when I click up here, it’s automatically going to snag what I put there. I don’t know if you knew that little hack right there, I’m going to make this easier for you to see. I’m going to put this on size 200 so that it’s easier to see. I’m going to hit Command+A, I’m going to hit Command+A right here, and I’m going to enlarge this, et’s say to 14 for the purposes of this video. Now we have an essay template. I’m going to delete this and I’m going to the right name, or actually, all right, well, I’ll leave it name, date, teacher, class, title. And what I’m gonna do is I’m going to Command+A, I’m going to go right here. I’m going to make it 1.5 spacing, just because I like how 1.5 spacing looks on things like this. Trust me, you will use this for science, social studies, language arts, and sometimes other classes. Math not so much, maybe. But in any class, you have to do a written piece or an essay, we’re going to start with this. We always start with name, date, teacher, and title. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to put your name in here, Seth Perler is my name. So I’m going to put it that in there, I’ll never have to change it for any teacher. The date I will have to change, but I’m going to just put in 7/31/20. And I’m going to leave that there. And then I just have the template and I can just change it for each new paper. Let’s say it’s Mr. Smith, and let’s say the class is language arts. I’m just going to leave those there as placeholders, but those will change for every new paper I do. Title, I’m going to go ahead and take. I’m going to center the title because that’s very professional looking, I’m going to put it in bold, I’m going to do that and hit enter, I’m going to left justify this and I’m going to unbold it, and I’m going to click intro, body one, body two, actually, I’m not gonna write body three yet, I’m gonna write the conclusion. Oops. And then I’m going to write the bibliography and works cited. I’ll explain, don’t worry.
The purpose of this template is this, once we have this template, what you’re going to do is either cut and paste the template or duplicate the template every time you have a new paper, it is going to save you time. But also, if you are a student who struggles with getting things done, this is taking a bunch of steps off your plate, because they’ve already done, why reinvent the wheel? But not only that, one of the biggest problems my students have, I work with students who struggle with executive function, a lot of them have ADHD, a lot of them are very global, big picture, brilliant, creative minds. When you have a creative mind, what do you think happens when you start writing? Well, what happens when my students start writing, probably 95% of the students that I work with have the same struggle. They’re so creative, they have so many ideas, but they’re not what’s called ‘linear.’ So what happens when they start writing a paper is they vomit their ideas all over the paper. What that means is they type in what I call a mono-paragraph, one big, giant, long paragraph. So they might have a paragraph that’s two or three pages long, it makes no sense. It goes in a million different directions. And then they spend a lot of time trying to edit it, revise it, and make it make sense. Then they get frustrated, they don’t turn it in at all, or they turn it in late, or they turn it in on time, but they turn it in and they’re not really happy with it. It’s just too frustrating for them to edit it and revise it. This template that I’m showing you will help you have what I call buckets. In this case, we have five buckets, intro, body, body, body, conclusion. Those five buckets are how you’re going to build a paper. So even if you write a one-page essay, or even if you write a 10-page essay that has many, many, many paragraphs, it still generally has three main body sections and an intro and a conclusion. So even if you’re in college and you’re writing a 20-page paper, oftentimes this type of format is still at least the basics of what’s going to get you started. So let’s go ahead and look at this. We have name, date, teacher, class. And these you can put on the same line if you want in your template. And then you have a title, the title is centered. The title also can be called assignment. What is your intro do? It tells what I will teach, so it tells what you’re going to teach or talk about in this paper. So go ahead and write that in there.
What is body one about? Well, it is basically your introduction, okay? Listen very carefully to this part, because what I’m going to tell you, helps you in middle, high school, and college, it’s very simple. Writing is hard. But this structure is used in all, almost all of your writing. Listen very carefully. Your intro, basically, is going to say, “Yo, what up. I’m about to tell you about this topic. I’m going to tell you three things.” So I might say, “Yo, what’s up, I’m about to tell you about Paul Reed Smith guitars, my favorite electric guitar company,” or “I’m about to tell you about acoustic guitars.” Okay, let’s just say I’m going to talk about guitars, why you should play guitar. And then I’m gonna say topic number one, the benefits of electric guitars. Topic number two, the benefits of acoustic guitars. Topic number three, how to jam with other people. So I have a paper that says, “Hey, I’m gonna tell you when to pick an electric, when to pick an acoustic, and how to jam with other people. So that’s what I’m going to teach them. Body one is the subtopic, or the topic. This is details, and this is sort of proving your point. Sorry, I’m talking and typing in the same time, proving your points. This is where teachers will talk about supporting your idea. So supporting evidence, you might hear teachers say things like that. This is where you’re going to say, and in this case, in our body one, we’re going to talk about electric guitars. Body number two, we’re going to talk about “Let me do this,” and then I’m going to do this again. This is body two, this is body three. But these are the same, you’re just talking about that point. This one is all about electric, this one is all about acoustic, this one is all about jamming, and then your conclusion.
What does the conclusion do? The conclusion simply says, “Yo, what up? I just told you, boom, boom, boom.” So the intro says, “Yo, I’m about to tell you,” then you tell them, then the conclusion says, “Yo, I just told you,” and then you have your bibliography and work cited. Usually, I will center this, I will bold this. And oftentimes I will hit enter un-center that, I will unbold that, and I might put an example of a website or a book or a newspaper in here, just so that I have sort of a template for the work cited page. Now, we’re going to do is delete this, and then I’m going to show you how you would use this in a class. Let’s say you are in social studies, and you have to write a paper about my least favorite topic right now, politics. Eww. So you have to write a paper on this, you’re going to go ahead and click that. And you’re going to click ‘Make a Copy.’ And I’m going to call it instead of ‘Copy of Essay Template,’ I’m going to call it ‘Social Studies Essay,’ and I always like to put the due date on there. So let’s say it’s due 09/08/20. And I always put my name in the title, there’s a reason for that, and that is because your teachers get inundated with a lot of stuff.. Look what’s happening, oh my gosh, it’s automatically generating my brand new paper. Now I have the template, but I still have not lost my original template. So I can still use my original template for any other class. But I have my brand new template, I’m going to make this easier for you all to read. Now I can put the title it’s as a social studies thing on politics, I can put the new teacher, I can put the new date, I’m going to leave my name. Now I have, instead of vomiting everywhere, I can really start to think through how I’m going to do this. Then if your teacher doesn’t want to work cited, many don’t, you can just delete the work cited but it was already there just in case. You’re only going to be doing work cited on a small fraction of papers, but I’m telling you, you will do a lot of them the next few years. So just listen to me. Do it right the first time, have it there so that it’s all ready to rock and roll. And boom, there you go. I forgot to put on the conclusion. Here’s what I taught or told you, here’s what it was about. And that’s about it.
So, to recap, students, my job is to make your life easier, less stressful, have more time, more freedom, more fun in your life because you’re wasting less time and you’re being proactive rather than reactive. You’re doing things, a little hack that’s going to make your life easier, creating a template called ‘Essay Template,’ with a template for what you use for almost every paper, you’re going to do in middle, high school, and college that is ready to rock and roll. If you’re in college, obviously, you can make it more complicated, you know, maybe Times New Roman, most of your teachers in college are going to want Times New Roman, 12-point font, double spaced, it might be a certain format at your university, whatever. But to have the template ready to rock and roll and just click ‘Copy,’ like I did ‘File, Make a Copy’ and you have a brand new one. Or the other thing that you can do is you can hit Command+A to select all, and then start a new document and Command+V to paste it into your new document. I personally like this way of the make a copy better, but doesn’t matter. They’re both very similar.
My name is Seth Perler. I’m an executive function coach in Colorado. If you like this, give it a thumbs up. Subscribe on YouTube, subscribe on my website. If you’re a parent or teacher, I have a bunch of freebies for you. I have so much content on there, support what I do, sign up grabs freebies and share this with somebody. Leave a comment, tell me what you think of this. Is this helpful? What would you do? Did I forget anything? I don’t think so, I’ve been doing this a long time. But if I did, leave your tips below. Let us know what would make this even easier, what will make it even better for people. Have a fantastic day. Hope you have some peace in your heart today. I hope you have joy today and I hope you have a real connection with human beings in your life that you care about today. Take care.