History Outlining Frequency?

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

Next year for 6th DS will be using WWS 1. 

During history I’d like to transition him from the fill-in-the-blank style notes I’ve typed up this year to 1- & 2-level outlines.

He’ll be reading 3 Chapters (6-12pgs) from A History of US daily, so I’m definitely not going to have him outline everything. I’m thinking we’ll start with 5-7 paragraph excerpts, then slowly work our way up to a full 3-4 page chapter. In the first few weeks as he’s getting comfortable with the format they’ll be substituted for the excerpts in WWS, but by September I’d like to have them be independent of those exercises. 

Would you assign these daily? Weekly? 

ETA: DS isn’t a reluctant writer; he can comfortably type a solid paragraph in ~30min & type up a 300-400 word essay in a week. I’m planning on us spending 1h/d on history including our spine, occasional supplemental readings or videos, & these assignments - so they’d need to fall into the 15-20min range if done daily. 

Edited May 5 by Shoes+Ships+SealingWax

[LauraClark]

Next year I'll be having my 6th grader outline 1-2 times per week. I think that's probably sufficient to get them to be comfortable with the outline format.

[caffeineandbooks]

I think once a week is plenty, and if wanting him to write on another occasion each week as well I'd continue with narrative summaries on those days.  In fact, WWS1 will also only ask him to outline once a week, and will continue narrative summaries once a week too.  If you happen to have SOTW4 and he hasn't already done it, you might like to know that in the second half of the book (about World War 1 onwards), the second reading for each chapter comes with a complete simple outline for the kids to write from.  You might like to add in some of those readings and rewritings when you reach that point in your main spine to give him some early exposure to that part of the process.

[Porridge]

I didn't find History of US (Hakim, right?) particularly ideal as a sourcetext for learning how to outline. She writes in a kind of stream of consciousness or strictly chronological way. I much prefer the Lucent history series for learning how to outline.

I agree that 1-2x/week is enough for outlining, and I think your plan to start with shorter sections of the chapter is a very good idea.

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

4 hours ago, Porridge said:

I didn't find History of US (Hakim, right?) particularly ideal as a sourcetext for learning how to outline. She writes in a kind of stream of consciousness or strictly chronological way. I much prefer the Lucent history series for learning how to outline.

I agree that 1-2x/week is enough for outlining, and I think your plan to start with shorter sections of the chapter is a very good idea.

I agree that the chapters as whole units won’t always work well, but from what I’ve seen there are good portions within many that will work & outlining only 1-2x/wk will make selecting those in advance much easier. I can also pull from our nonfiction supplements, if needed. 

Edited May 7 by Shoes+Ships+SealingWax

[SilverMoon]

I'd assign once or twice a week. Daily seems excessive. It's not complicated.

I'm not a Hakim fan but I remember them being almost encyclopedic? My current 8th grader (fresh out of public school) is using WWS 1 faster than it's written, and I assign him articles for outlining practice. His assigned outlining is as frequent as he gets a reading assignment I think he'll tune out on otherwise. 🙃

Here's an example of a page I'd pop into his Google Classroom for an outlining assignment.  https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka

[ScoutTN]

Once a week. And as a pp said, keep the narrative summaries.

I like source texts that don’t already have section titles.