Another Lynn Posted August 9, 2015 Share Posted August 9, 2015 If you followed the pattern of outlining as laid out in SWB's talks on Writing focusing on the middle years, what particular sources did you think worked particularly well for outlining?. What did you outline (besides Kingfisher's History of the World)? So many books I've looked at either have lots of short paragraphs, or too many different kinds of information in each paragraph, or some other reason they are not the best/easiest to outline from. What have you liked? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gnomewardbound Posted August 10, 2015 Share Posted August 10, 2015 Definitely following this thread! I have been searching the forums for a couple hours now :) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apple Bean Tripod School Posted August 10, 2015 Share Posted August 10, 2015 Thanks for asking this question! I've taken a look at the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, and I'm wondering why a person would bother outlining it. I guess it could be done, but why? It also certainly isn't a good place to learn outlining either. DD doesn't relish doing things just because. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perogi Posted August 10, 2015 Share Posted August 10, 2015 Following. I was planning to have dd outline Kingfisher this year. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pen Posted August 10, 2015 Share Posted August 10, 2015 I don't have a good answer to this. We will be trying it with ds's science this next year, but I do not yet know how it will work out. Not sure that it will be "best" or "easiest," but it will be an example of something "real." 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KeriJ Posted August 10, 2015 Share Posted August 10, 2015 I'm always wondering this as well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KeriJ Posted August 10, 2015 Share Posted August 10, 2015 Lynn, I thought I remember that you had Makers of the Americas?? I was looking through the assignments at the end of the chapters, and one of them was outlining. They recommended using the chapters in that book to outline. I'm assuming only a page or two at a time though. I'm going to look at it again to refresh my memory. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KeriJ Posted August 10, 2015 Share Posted August 10, 2015 It seems to me that science textbooks might work well. We have an A Beka book that is broken down into what looks like doable sections. We're also doing a version of it similar to what they do in CC Challenge A for It Couldn't Just Happen. We're listing the bold title and giving a short summary of each section. I know it's not exactly outlining though. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Critterfixer Posted August 10, 2015 Share Posted August 10, 2015 I'm diving in. I've been doing some narrative outlining with our CW Homer stories, but we're talking plot, character, scene construction stuff. Important, but I don't think quite the kind of outlining in TWTM. Then I looked at resources for outlining, and I wasn't moved. So I also would like to work through outlining with our own books. It occurred to me that if I want the boys to enjoy taking things apart for the purposes of outlining it had better be something either 1) short, 2) easy and/or 3)enjoyable. To that end, I figured I'd start with books that are pretty much falling apart on our shelf because the boys have read them so much. They are very familiar with the material, so building the outline should be easy. I dare not take a tolerated subject like history or a more difficult study like science to start our outlining work. I figured I'd let them pick the book, then I'll outline it myself to have a form that they can check their work against. And I figure we will delve deeply into outlining narratives when we start some of the flashback story work in Homer this year. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Another Lynn Posted August 10, 2015 Author Share Posted August 10, 2015 Lynn, I thought I remember that you had Makers of the Americas?? I was looking through the assignments at the end of the chapters, and one of them was outlining. They recommended using the chapters in that book to outline. I'm assuming only a page or two at a time though. I'm going to look at it again to refresh my memory. Thanks! I do have Makers of the Americas. It has sub-titles in each chapter which could be Roman numerals. Then I think a person could look for important points within each section. But I don't think it would work very well to outline paragraph by paragraph. And I think that's probably my problem. I need to stop expecting my source to have paragraphs each have a main idea with supporting points. (You would more writing would, though, right?) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Another Lynn Posted August 10, 2015 Author Share Posted August 10, 2015 Critterfixer, I think short, easy and enjoyable are good criteria for success! I agree that this is different outlining than narrative outlining. I have lots of narrative history books I have ruled out for this purpose. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penelope Posted August 10, 2015 Share Posted August 10, 2015 We do have the Kingfisher, but never outline from it. I thought the encyclopedia was just to get an overview and make a list of facts and important people and places, and then I would choose other books for outlining and written narrations. Last year I used the National Geographic History Atlas as the encyclopedia, but assigned no outlining from that, either. Human Odyssey and Oxford University Press World in Ancient Times books (and the books for the later time periods).... worked well for outlining, especially the latter, and those were our main spines for fifth and sixth grade. For early modern, I used some of those books, but a lot of Dorothy Mills and library books. I just chose a passage from whatever book we were using that looked like it would work. Science was a little harder, because some of the things we used weren't at all suited to outlining. But when we were using a good library book or textbook, or occasionally a magazine article, I would assign outlining from it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hollyhock Posted August 10, 2015 Share Posted August 10, 2015 My boys' favourite books to outline are R&S textbooks. They usually have nice coherent paragraphs. We've also used God's Design science books and The Story of... books by Guerber. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeWillSoar Posted August 11, 2015 Share Posted August 11, 2015 Just reread your question (I was half asleep) and my answer is more about how to outline and why--not what you were asking, but I'll keep my response as is in case it helps anyone. Last year we used Scholastic Paragraph Writing Made Easy, and there is a section on notetaking by outlining and another on using those outlines to write paragraphs. It was very easy to use with my boys who juts came home from public school and did not know how to outline. We had started out by having them do some outlining with their textbooks but I decided they needed to back up and just learn outlining. It was also good to have them brush up on their paragraph writing skills, and we then moved to five paragraph essays. I believe the point of outlining Kingfisher is to do double duty--gaining proficiency at outline while learning history at the same time. They learn what the important points are to take from their reading. Then they can apply their outlining skills to other texts, which will help them get the main points out of the reading for research papers in the future. I'm new at this so take that for what it's worth. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeWillSoar Posted August 11, 2015 Share Posted August 11, 2015 I just reread your post and now I realize that you weren't asking about how to outline but I'll let my post stay in case it helps others. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kareni Posted August 11, 2015 Share Posted August 11, 2015 Some here might find this older discussion of interest (particularly the "Outlining with Legos" post): Ugh!! Outlining! Where do I begin to teach this??? Regards, Kareni 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KeriJ Posted August 12, 2015 Share Posted August 12, 2015 I'm wondering if I should try child's encyclopedias to start practicing. (we have a set I forgot about) That way the passages aren't too long, and the writing style is simpler, hopefully making it easier to find main points. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Another Lynn Posted August 12, 2015 Author Share Posted August 12, 2015 I have also been thinking that encyclopedia articles would be more straight forward to outline from if I don't find something else. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Critterfixer Posted August 12, 2015 Share Posted August 12, 2015 I have also been thinking that encyclopedia articles would be more straight forward to outline from if I don't find something else. That's an idea. Might save me some time, since the ancient set I have actually provides an outline at the end of each article. Easy way to check your work. :001_smile: 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Another Lynn Posted August 12, 2015 Author Share Posted August 12, 2015 That's an idea. Might save me some time, since the ancient set I have actually provides an outline at the end of each article. Easy way to check your work. :001_smile: Aw man! That's not fair! :D Good for you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Critterfixer Posted August 12, 2015 Share Posted August 12, 2015 Aw man! That's not fair! :D Good for you! They are very, VERY basic outlines. Even so, I'll have to stick an index card over it with a skull and crossbones and a warning note that says "No peeking or you'll walk the plank!" :tongue_smilie: 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kbutton Posted August 12, 2015 Share Posted August 12, 2015 My son has had the best luck so far outlining Notgrass America the Beautiful. He's also tried to outline some magazine articles, but I think he enjoys them just a bit too much and wants to re-write the whole article. While he likes Notgrass, the readings are too long to replicate. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs Twain Posted August 19, 2015 Share Posted August 19, 2015 My son outlined some of the Oxford Unibersity Press books last year (World in Ancient Times series). He will outline from the Medieval and a Early Modern OUP books this year. He spends two days on each chapter. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redsquirrel Posted August 19, 2015 Share Posted August 19, 2015 Encyclopedias are pretty much outlines already, lol. When I did this with my son in grades 5-8 we used textbooks. That is what I used when I was in school. I was assigned outlining throughout grades 6-9 and it was always with my textbooks. I use the K12 books The Human Odyssey series as our main books. We do history as set in TWTM 3rd edition, which I think is very well laid out. Once a week ds would read a sub-chapter in his text book and I would have him outline an approx 250 word section. That is all SWB calls for, any more seems like diminishing returns to me. As a 5h grader it would be a one level outline. I taught it to him by having him read the entire section and then come and get me. Then I would have him read one paragraph. When he finished that paragraph I would have him tell me the main idea and I would write it down. Then we did the second paragraph etc. I would do that with him until he told me to back off, that he didn't need my help anymore, lol. In 6th grade we started the same way but I would ask him to give me one specific point that backed up his main idea. Again, we did this together until he said said it was faster for him to do it on his own. During 7th grade I tapered off on outlining in history because ds1 was using WWS2 and it has plenty of instruction in outlining. It just seemed like overkill. in 8th grade he was using WWS3 and we did outlining from the history textbook on more of a monthly basis. I didn't exclusively use the K12 books for outlining. We did use some other non-fiction books on specific topics, such as the civil war or a biography etc. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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