do you all do outlining/summaries ?esp those of u with boys

[fmburney]

I have son going into gr.6 next yr. We will finally be finishing off SOW series next yr.might supplemnent with HO

1.Do you do or did outlining or summaries that are recommended in WTM guides when you use SOW 4 or HO.

2.Did you do research projects in SOW 4. Up till now history has been stress free in we just use easy tests, mapwork. We do quite rigorous writing curriculum and im worried the outling, summaries and research projects might turn him off

appreciate your feedback

mar

[Jean in Newcastle]

We do some - but not all at once. Esp. at first I would do some, and then have him fill in the rest.

[abbeyej]

Yes, absolutely. My 6th grader has done HO2 Middle Ages (I assume you're talking about doing History Odyssey level 2 Ancients with your son next year, not level 1, which is for early elementary students)... He did all of the outlining and summary writing. These are *not* meant to be long projects. In fact, one of the great things I think that ds has been learning is how to read and *quickly* distill the most important pieces of information from longer reference material and assimilate it into a brief summary or organized outline.

 

I would certainly assume that if you're doing a demanding writing program in addition to this, that there would be some overlap between longer writing assignments. I would make an effort to combine assignments or make cuts here and there, in order to avoid redundancy.

[Cedarmom]

Yes we did the outlining. My son absolutely hated it. He thought it was something I invented to torture him. There was much groaning. BUT, even he now admits he is glad we did it.It helped him to learn to organize his thoughts, and to be able to pick out the main points from his reading material. I think outlining is one of the most useful things your son will learn.

 

We didn't do it as often as the WTM suggests, and he had much shorter passages at first. When we first did it, it was often together. We would sit and he would dictate to me and I would write it down. Then as he learned how to do it, we progressed to him writing it down.

[fmburney]

Did you find it difficult to outline from Kingfisher book. How long do outline and summaries take for a 6th grader.

thanks

mariss

 

Yes, absolutely. My 6th grader has done HO2 Middle Ages (I assume you're talking about doing History Odyssey level 2 Ancients with your son next year, not level 1, which is for early elementary students)... He did all of the outlining and summary writing. These are *not* meant to be long projects. In fact, one of the great things I think that ds has been learning is how to read and *quickly* distill the most important pieces of information from longer reference material and assimilate it into a brief summary or organized outline.

 

I would certainly assume that if you're doing a demanding writing program in addition to this, that there would be some overlap between longer writing assignments. I would make an effort to combine assignments or make cuts here and there, in order to avoid redundancy.

[Peela]

We did some, but I didn't use a separate writing program all the time. My reluctant writer would focus on outlining, writing from outlines, research assignments, written narrations, and planning short essays/essays, all at different times over a few weeks each- and also in different subjects (so sometimes we only read/oral narrations for history while he did lots of writing for English or Science, or some other combination) . He actually never did too badly with outlining, so I would move him onto to working on other skills at different times- then come back to outlining for a while, etc.

In other words, I am fairly flexible and dont do it exactly as any external plan- I try and cater to my son's needs for focusing on one skill at a time, then another for a time.

[MomsintheGarden]

Yes, we do the outlining, too. My two oldest did it, but it was a long time ago:). My next dc (a boy) is in 6th grade. At first I did the outlining with him and we started off simply. We slowly worked up to him doing somewhat more elaborate outlines by himself.

 

I believe it is a valuable, and worth struggling with it at first.

 

GardenMom

[Stacy in NJ]

He outlines one chapter per week from whatever text he's using as a history spine. He then uses the outline to write roughly a 2 page summary of the chapter. We don't use Kingfisher because it's so boring, instead opting for more interesting spines. This year we covered ancients and used the first 18 chapters from A Little History of the World and are finishing off the year with Augustus Ceasar's World.

 

My 5th grader writes 2 to 3 paragraph summaries (or narrations) for each chapter of SOTW.

 

All this to say, that I think outlining and summarizing is an important skill, but you don't necessarily need to use Kingfisher or any encyclopedia.

 

ETA: I'm pretty big on having dss write summaries of other material as well. They also write summaries of the literature they're reading. Not every day, and not every chapter, but weekly they write a brief summary of whatever lit assignment they've had for the week, ususally 2 or 3 paragraph, and it'tsdone on Friday in lieu of a reading assignment.

Edited May 23, 2010 by Stacy in NJ
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