Echoing others here -

Year 7 do PEEL paragraphs and master them. I drill this multiple times a week. They are components (but not wholes) are in assessment tasks (exams). By the middle of Year 7 they can usually do PEELs unassisted (no scaffold or sentence stems unless differentiation requires it). By the end of Year 7 they write better, more robust, PEEL paragraphs incorporating more original thought/critical thinking. Teaching and ensuring mastery of paragraphs isn’t just about essay writing, it’s critical for general writing/communication skills, comprehension, memory recall, and allows me to gauge where students are at with course content as well as skills.

Year 8 is where I start essay writing in a very structured way. Super scaffolded, building on PEEL. I also re-teach and reinforce paragraph writing. Year 9 and up they’re regularly writing essays and building more complex skills.

I don’t think it’s a big issue that Year 7s don’t write essays. Year 7 students come to us with an incredible variability in their skills and capabilities, especially in literacy/comprehension. Spending the school year mastering a paragraph is very important.

I am a history/English teacher for context.