What is important, though, is organizing the material, and that is where students have trouble. They do not want to take the time to organize their thoughts, ideas, or material before they write.
Personally, I benefit from even a casual outline. That way, I don’t have to start with the introduction and work my way down to the conclusion; I have the pleasure of beginning wherever I like, where I feel the most comfortable. Then I can fill in the rest of my article later by using the organized points in my informal outline.
Whether your students use sticky notes or a more formal outline, they’ll benefit from these familiar outline ideas.
Instead of practicing an outline with difficult material, your students will use something they are familiar with. Grocery stores are organized in an orderly way; this will make outlining one easy-peasy.
On the free worksheet, your students will fill in a sample outline based on how a grocery store is organized. The worksheet already has the levels of a formal outline such as I, A, 1, a, and so forth.
Your students may want to extend the outline to include more grocery store departments. If so, they’ll use their own paper.
If they are not ready for a formal outline, let them use the sticky-note method .
Like the grocery store outline, your students will fill in a sample outline based on kinds of restaurants. The restaurants can be in your area, ones you’ve visited while traveling, or ones nationwide.
The worksheet already has the levels of a formal outline such as I, A, 1, a, and so forth. Your students may want to extend the outline to include more types of restaurants. If so, they’ll use their own paper.
If they are not ready for a formal outline, let them use the sticky-note method .
Intro to Writing, Part 3 takes some of the pain out of outlines by using material your students are already very familiar with: restaurant categories and the way grocery stores are organized. Grab it and the free printables here. >>
Part 4 features a tutorial on writing effective paragraphs. In it you’ll find a chart, an example paragraph written from the chart, and an empty chart your students can use again and again for their own paragraph constructions. Find this dandy tutorial for middle school students here. And the tutorial for teens, with an endangered Porcupine Park, can be found here.
Part 5 is a tutorial on point orders, with a link to a video explaining point orders. You can get it here. >>
SHARON’S BLOG Need tutorials for your students? We’ve got ’em, and they’re free. These practical tutorials are complete with a lesson, printable worksheets, an exercise, and the answers. Use them now or bookmark them for later. Here are the three most popular ones on our site this year, just in time for those semester papers:
HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS A story’s point of view (POV) can affect how the story feels. For instance, The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis is written in the third-person omniscient POV: The narrator knows everything, even things that some of the characters do not. The invisible narrator in omniscient POV can tell readers what one…
HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS The comedy team The Smothers Brothers struck a chord when they capitalized on sibling rivalry in their routine “Mom Always Liked You Best.” People laughed because they understood the family tensions in Tom and Dick Smothers’ silliness. When children, even adult children, feel as if one parent loves a brother or sister…
HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS Invisibility—is it a blessing or a curse? According to Irish legend, wearing green makes you invisible to leprechauns and their pinches and tricks. But wearing green is not the only way to become invisible. The scientist Griffin, in H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, makes himself invisible by experimenting with formulas and…
SHARON’S BLOGAn edict. A carol. A strange decoration. What do all these have in common? They are all part of our fun Christmas prompts. Enjoy these prompts created especially for 5th – 12th graders. Ho, ho, ho, and away we go . . .
