Graphic organizer for writing essays
Is an outline template in disguise

For the standard five-paragraph essay, the essay graphic organizer I prefer is an outline template cleverly disguised as a fill-in-the-blanks activity.

I prefer to refer to the graphic organizer as a comprehensive plan template or planning form. I avoid the word outline because of its negative connotations. In the students' view, an outline is some "dumb, English teacher thing." (Students may even be so ungracious as to omit the comma.)

The template is helpful in getting students to plan their writing because it

• Indicates the information students must provide

• Shows the relationships between major essay elements.

DIY on computer or graph paper

Although you could do a search and download a template to reproduce, I recommend you make your own.

DIY is faster than sorting through all the junk that passes for graphic organizers. More importantly, though, if you do it yourself, you will have a tool you can use in a variety of situations. Somebody else's pdf is not going to give you that kind of flexibility.

You don't need anything fancy. In fact, the more the outline template looks like something students could scratch on a napkin, the better. You want planning to look like a natural, everyday activity. Flashy, high-tech products are not the way to go.

An outline is nothing more than a grid. A formal outline (the "dumb, English teacher thing") adds unnecessary and confusing symbols and rules about the number of subpoints. Seventh graders Samantha and Sean don't need all that stuff.

Don't teach the way I did my first time

Don't do what I did the first time I taught using an outline template: I made an extremely detailed outline template incorporating all the strategies students needed to use.

It ran several pages.

When I handed it out, students nearly died of shock.

Now I usually keep my outline template out of sight until after I've shown students

how to enter the information for the first point.....

and then how to enter information for the second point........

and then how to enter the information for the third point.

By the time we go through the process three times, most students get the idea that they can produce a detailed essay plan by doing the same few steps over and over and over. Remember, it is the repetitive nature of the five-paragraph essay that makes it the best learning tool for beginning writers.

Show students just the section of the outline template for the strategy you are teaching. The bright students will catch on and have their entire essays planned before the struggling students do one section, but the slower kids can learn to plan if you take it slowly.

A teaching strategy that works

When I teach students to plan their expository essays, I use several graphic tools make it easier for them to record information they will need. I present and teach them over a period of days or weeks as students are ready for each step.

2 tools for the big picture

The first outline template I show students is a graphic organizer for entering their writing skeleton™. It looks like this:

Students can learn to create a full-sentence writing skeleton™ in just a few minutes using a simple formula. Once they finish each point, they put their points into the appropriate place in the template. Later those points will become the topic sentences of the body paragraphs.

The second graphic organizer I show students adds a place for entering three pieces of evidence for one of the writing skeleton™ points. The space for evidence to be entered as single-sentence summaries is indented below the writing skeleton point to which it applies. (The indentation makes the organizer into an informal outline.)

Notice I use colors to give a visual clue to what part of the essay plan template a student is working on. Using colors in print materials may be too expensive, but you can do use colors as a learning aid in digital materials students will view.

Together these two graphic organizers compose an outline template. You can put the symbols for a formal outline in your graphic organizer if you wish. If you want to avoid any connection with the deaded English class outline, skip the symbols and "gray out" the boxes students cannot use.

2 tools for adding development details

I use two additional graphic organizers that provide a place to record information students must have to write expository essays but which is not normally placed in an outline. I do this un-English-teacher thing because the typical student finds it easier to have everything in one place.

My third graphic organizer adds a place for recording the source of the information. A source is the person or organization who provides the information. Source information is entered as a single sentence summary.

A fourth graphic organizer adds a place for recording where the writer found the information. Locator data is information the writer needs for a citation or bibliography entry.

I set my the data entry columns for the source and the locator information so that the source and locator information is indented below the evidence to which it applies.

Using all four organizers together produces an outline template each point of which looks like this:

When students actually use the outline template, they are likely to complete all the information about one evidence source at one time, like this:

That's the most efficient way to prepare a comprehensive plan. However, I've found most students l earn best if they get three chances to do one small task before I introduce another small task, regardless of how closely related the tasks are.

Table function is simple, quick

If you want to make your template on a computer, the simplest way I know is to use the TABLE function in a word processor. Make the template from tables just the way you build your own rubrics.

Build the section students need to record the first piece of evidence for their first body paragraph (the portion shown in the previous visual). Make multiple copies for each of the other pieces of evidence using copy and paste.

Making a full essay outline template on computer is a good option if you can provide copies of the outline template to students as a computer file they can use. If you have classroom computers, a school computer lab, or if you homeschool, the computer file is a good choice.

If your students don't have adequate computer access to make file sharing possible, a good alternative is to print a copy of your graphic organizer showing one paragraph. Let students follow the pattern using their own notebook paper for additional paragraphs.