Implementing Outlining for middle school

[HiddenJewel]

I am looking for ideas on implementing outlining SWB style for our history which consists of usually a spine and some outside books/articles. I have read WWE so I have the overall plan of how it should work in the logic stage. Now I need to put some nuts and bolts to it.

 

My girls already do a summary each day of the topic we have covered. How do I include more outlining?

 

Thanks.

[Colleen in NS]

I am looking for ideas on implementing outlining SWB style for our history which consists of usually a spine and some outside books/articles. I have read WWE so I have the overall plan of how it should work in the logic stage. Now I need to put some nuts and bolts to it.

 

My girls already do a summary each day of the topic we have covered. How do I include more outlining?

 

Thanks.

 

Have they been introduced to outlining skills in any way yet? I've taken my cues from R&S 5 outlining lessons so far (ds is younger than your girls). And these lessons do two level outlining, but I'm only having ds do one level outlining so far (I'm thinking of SWB saying in her writing CD - which is basically the first few chapters of WWE - to let 5th graders practice one level outlining all year long).

 

I had a rough start at first with helping ds learn to figure out the main idea of a paragraph, but it seems to be getting easier for me to teach and for him to understand. Basically I find a 5 or 6 paragraph section of reading from a library book or a World Book encyclopedia article, and we go through that to list the main ideas with Roman numerals. For each paragraph I show him the details everywhere, then ask him what he thinks the bigger idea is that the details are talking about, because there isn't always a nice, neat topic sentence, and I suspect later on outlining becomes outlining whole sections, not necessarily paragraph by paragraph. Anyway, we do this paragraph by paragraph one level outlining once a week for history (but we also do it once a week for science - so he gets outlining practice twice a week ) for 5th grade. And I must say that WWE really helped prepare for outlining.

 

My current idea is to keep this going for the rest of 5th grade, then in 6th grade go to 2 level outlining and having him do enough that it would be roughly equal to one page of rewritten composition when he learns to rewrite from outlines. (I say currently, because I'm going to the PHP conference and can't wait to hear what SWB has to say about the nitty gritty of logic stage writing) And then increase that to 3 level outlining and 1.5 pages of rewrites in 7th, and 4 level and up to 2 pages of rewrites in 8th. This is all VERY speculative and subject to change depending on what I learn at the conference.....but that's how I understand it so far.

 

I had planned on using the spine (KHE) for outlining, but after reading numerous posts here about how difficult it was and the reasons why, I switched to using regular reading. It's much easier. I also switched my thinking from "The spine must be outlined so that the notebook shows a progression through history" to "outlining skills must be practice and honed so that my kids learn to think clearly, so we will practice them as we read through the history (and science) books, using the spine for guidance on getting library books and for dates for the timeline."

 

Maybe if you find a source to teach outlining skills (R&S? The other one rec'd in WTM?) you could have your kids start off with main idea outlining, and move quickly to multi-level outlining and include this practice weekly in your history studies.

 

hth

[HiddenJewel]

Thanks, Colleen. I've listed to both SWB's writing CD and I have read WWE and they make a lot of sense.

 

Dd13 is very familiar with outlining and I'm not so concerned with her getting practice as she already can pick main points, summarize and rewrite the information in her sleep. Dd12 does need the practice. So perhaps I will just take one history class per week. It has been harder to implement as taking notes from an oral presentation seems to be a harder skill than outlining off of written material. So perhaps we can walk through picking the main points together for the rest of this year. Then we can add more detail next year.

[mcconnellboys]

Since all my history encyclopedias are too compressed to outline, my son is reading SOTW on his own this year after I've introduced the topic for the week and he's outlining from one section or another of that reading. Any book that's written in paragraph style would work for this, so you might even pull some outlining work from various library books they're reading.

[HiddenJewel]

Since all my history encyclopedias are too compressed to outline, my son is reading SOTW on his own this year after I've introduced the topic for the week and he's outlining from one section or another of that reading. Any book that's written in paragraph style would work for this, so you might even pull some outlining work from various library books they're reading.

 

Thanks. I'll give that some thought.

[Colleen in NS]

Thanks, Colleen. I've listed to both SWB's writing CD and I have read WWE and they make a lot of sense.

 

Dd13 is very familiar with outlining and I'm not so concerned with her getting practice as she already can pick main points, summarize and rewrite the information in her sleep. Dd12 does need the practice. So perhaps I will just take one history class per week. It has been harder to implement as taking notes from an oral presentation seems to be a harder skill than outlining off of written material. So perhaps we can walk through picking the main points together for the rest of this year. Then we can add more detail next year.

 

I think I misunderstood the heart of your post - sorry about that!:D I guess I'll suffice it to say that we are doing history outlining once a week for now (since he gets another outline practice in science), after ds reads KHE and another book/encyclopedia article and picks out a topic to outline.

 

Somehow I'm going to increase it to twice a week, but I think that will come in 6th or 7th when he gets better at typing and when he learns to rewrite from outlines - then more will fit into the week. So by 8th he might ideally (oh some of the dangers of planning ahead when I don't really know what I'm doing!) write a 2 page outline, then rewrite a 2 page composition from that later in the day, or the next day....all I know is I can't wait to go hear SWB talk about all this.

 

hth

 

Question for you - you mention oral presentations - are you giving lectures that you have your kids take notes from? If so, how do you go about that whole process?

[HiddenJewel]

Question for you - you mention oral presentations - are you giving lectures that you have your kids take notes from? If so, how do you go about that whole process?

 

I knew oral presentation was the wrong term when I typed it but couldn't think of a better way to say it quickly. I just meant we read the material out loud instead of them reading it on their own. So she doesn't actually have a book to look at while taking notes.

 

I think I just need to give some thought to which material would best lend itself to outlining and then we can work on it together at the start.