Divide and Conquer

When my daughters were in grade school, they loved to use colored strings to weave friendship bracelets for their classmates. Typically, though, Maria and Katrina became frustrated early in the process because their colored strings had become a tangled mess, and the girls had a hard time picking out the four colors they wanted to use for their bracelets. Inevitably, they’d come to me and ask, “Daddy, can you help us untangle this ball of string?” Though my daughters didn’t realize it, they were really asking, “Daddy, can you show us how to write a division/classification essay?”

When you write a division/classification essay, you’re really doing the same thing my daughters were trying to do. You’re trying to bring some kind of order or logic or organization to a subject that has not yet been categorized. In my daughters’ case, for instance, they solved the tangled-string problem by, first, separating all the different colors and, then, storing them in different compartments in a new, plastic divider they purchased solely for that purpose. The separation and organization by color made it so much easier for them to choose their colors and to begin work on their bracelets.

Other examples of division/classification are all around you. In your backpack, for instance, you probably have a collection of folders to divide your academic paperwork by courses. At home, you probably have a plastic…