Rather than teach students how to make an outline, I have all my
students make plans. Planning is far less stressful for struggling
students than creating an outline. Everybody makes plans. Outlining
is just for English teachers and other weirdoes.
Avoid terrifying terms like outline
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I try to avoid using the terms struggling students associate with
high stress situations, such as the terms create and creating,
which most boys think of as effeminate, and the terms write
and writing, which many students of both sexes associate
with frustrating, irrelevant work.
So instead of creating an outline or writing an outline,
my students make a writing skeleton™ or do a
writing skeleton™ from their working thesis.
The writing
skeleton™ is a special sentence outline consisting of the
topic sentences of the body paragraphs of the essay students are
planning to write, but I don't say that. I avoid terms like topic
outline or sentence outline. I don't even use the word
outline if I can avoid it.
Changing the terminology makes teaching how to make an outline
less stressful for both me and my students. It also allows me
to sidestep the potential for confusion inherent in such terms
as topic outline and topic sentence outline.
A term unfamiliar to everyone levels the playing field for students
who don't love to write or who find writing a struggle.
Minimalist approach to outlining
When teaching writing, I have students target their plans toward
the so-called five paragraph essay, which I regard as a strategic
writing process. (I
have a whole page about why I use the 5-paragraph essay format
if you want to know.)
For such essay assignments, students can get by with a plan consisting
of:
-
A working thesis statement, and
-
As many main points as there will be body paragraphs
in the finished piece.
Mathematically, that adds up to between 3 and 6 sentences.
Even reluctant writers can be coaxed, cajoled, or coerced into
learning how to make an outline (which I call a writing skeleton™)
if an entire essay can be planned in a half dozen or fewer sentences.
I do not require students to do outlining beyond the initial writing
skeleton™. Instead, I teach students to plan their writing
following a five-paragraph essay outline
template that looks like a form for them to complete. It's really
a kind of informal outline, but I never say that.
With little careful phrasing on my part, students end up with detailed
plans that lack only traditional symbols to be considered formal
sentence outlines.
Nobody gets stressed out over creating an outline.
Everybody's happy.
