How to make an outline
with topic sentences for a 5 paragraph essay

Your students can be taught how to make an outline for a five paragraph essay easily — and learn how to write one easily as well.

The trick is to start with a working thesis statement and build a writing skeleton™ from that working thesis.

A working thesis is a sentence containing a topic and an assertion set out in simple subject-verb order without any frills. No introductory clauses, qualifiers, or any compound elements should be in the working thesis. Just use simple syntax, like this:

Computers can hurt you.

Let me show you how easy it is to turn that working thesis into a powerful, three-sentence outline I call a writing skeleton™. The points of the skeleton are the topic sentences of the body paragraphs of the five-paragraph essay. Students can build this essay outline form in complete sentences with minimal fuss.

I'm going to put some of the text in color so you can see the parts easily. (Helping nonverbal learners with tricks like using color is one of the best practices for teaching writing.)

How to make a writing skeleton™

To make writing skeleton™ from a working thesis, do this:

1) Replace the period in the working thesis with the word because. That leaves you with a sentence fragment:

Computers can hurt you because

2) Make three copies of that sentence fragment.

Computers can hurt you because

Computers can hurt you because

Computers can hurt you because

3) Pretend there is a blank after each occurrence of the word because. Fill in each blank to make a complete sentence.

The result is a simple sentence outline containing the topic sentences of three body paragraphs that support the thesis statement. It looks something like this:

Computers can hurt you because computers can cause eyestrain.

Computers can hurt you because computers can cause repetitive stress injury to hands.

Computers can hurt you because computers can cause neck and back strain.

In other words, students have a five paragraph essay outline in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

Need to see another example? Click here.

Why the writing skeleton works

Anyone can learn how to make an outline using a writing skeleton™. It makes outlining a mechanical, no-creativity-needed, fill-in-the-blanks activity.

In addition, a writing skeleton™

• Adapts to any persuasive-pattern material.

• Ties the thesis to the topic sentences of the body paragraphs, eliminating the danger of students losing sight of their thesis.

• Can be used with other templates to complete the supporting points for the topic sentences.

• Puts the outline at the front end of the writing process where minor changes can have major impact on the finished paper.

When showing students how to make an outline for a persuasive-pattern paper using a writing skeleton™, there's one situation you may encounter in which you may want to add three words to the left of the working thesis.