Read the student paragraph about a theme presented
in "Raymond's
Run."
According to the PIE structure for writing about theme,
what is missing from this paragraph that should be
present?
One theme in this story is "Treat others the way you
would like for them to treat you." Squeaky feels that
adults should give kids the same respect that they
expect from them. When Mr. Pearson calls Squeaky by
her nickname, she thinks, "... he's got no right to call
me Squeaky, if I can't call him Beanstalk."
a summary of the story
a theme
text evidence
O an explanation of evidence

When we're writing a paragraph (about the theme of a text, for example), we can use the PIE structure. Each of these letters stands for one part of the paragraph:

P - point - the main idea (the theme);
I - information/illustration - information that supports (illustrates) the point (like quotes in the given example);
E - explanation - explanation about how the illustration supports the point.

Based on the given information, we can see that the given paragraph doesn't contain the explanation. We have the theme and examples that illustrate it, but there is no explanation that connects them.