Bucketing is basically an easy way of organizing your thoughts and materials before you make an argument. Every essay you write will be one where you will be arguing that your thesis is true in an effort to persuade the reader. The old school way of organizing thoughts is to outline an essay with bullets. While this way is effective, I have found that bucketing is quicker and easier once you get it down. However, there is a page on this site with information and tutorials on how to traditionally outline an essay if you are interested in going that route.
The following text is a written out explanation of how to bucket an essay with a sample topic. You can choose to instead watch the tutorial on the bottom of this page, which is me talking through how to bucket step by step with a different sample topic. There is a third option of making arrangements with me for us to bucket an essay together.
Once a student has listed prior knowledge, done outside research, processed the docs, and developed a thesis (steps 1-5 on the right panel on this site), they should begin thinking about what their support points (buckets) are going to be. These are the reasons for your opinion/thesis. For example, my thesis can be, "I think blogs are effective in helping students succeed". I know this is a good thesis because someone could argue against me. The support points are my reason why I think this, and those reasons will be potential buckets.
List 4-10 big reasons why you have this opinion. Ultimately the goal is to develop 4-6 buckets, which will then be narrowed down to the best three buckets. Each of those final three buckets will be turned into a body paragraph. Here are my sample buckets for the thesis mentioned above:
- I can share information
- students can see scoring rubrics
- tutorials are available
- outside resources are posted
- I can share other tips for students
- help to empower parents to help at home
- reach students who have missed class
- give instruction on each step
- be proactive on addressing writing issues
Once that is completed, combine the reasons that are similar into broader labelled buckets. So, instead of writing 9 little body paragraphs, you can have 3 that are filled with content (facts, quotes, stats, and examples). So for this list of 9 reasons for my thesis (called support points), I will combine them in like minded buckets.
- Share Info Bucket- scoring rubrics, online resources
- Reach Beyond the Class Room Bucket- empower parents, students who miss class
- Give Instruction Bucket- tutorials, step by step instruction
- Be Proactive Bucket- motive students to face challenge
Once I have narrowed down the buckets I will start organizing the info from the Docs and Outside Info lists by dropping those facts, stats, details, examples, and quotes into the buckets that make sense. Once that is completed, you may want to do some research to add more material to buckets with less material.
The final step is to select the three strongest buckets and rank them 1-3. Each of these three buckets represents the material and topic you are going to be basing one of your body paragraphs on during the essay. Once you have bucketed/organized your material, the writing process is real easy. Plan on presenting the buckets in your essay the following order: Save the strongest bucket for last, sandwich the weakest bucket in between your first and third body paragraph, and start with your second strongest bucket.
Please feel free to watch the tutorial below to get a different sample topic and perspective on the bucketing process. Bucketing may seem complicated when you first start to wrap your head around it, but in reality, most people already organize their thoughts and actions in similar ways and this is a quick step to pick up once you give it a shot.
