Teachers' Tips

As a retired teacher with a good many years of experience, I look back on my teaching experience in New York's middle schools with joy and a little sadness. The joy came during those tearful times when I would be teaching a writing skills lesson to a group of resistant learners and discovered that most of them got the gist of listing, outlining & drafting essays in a surprisingly short time! The sadness comes from those times in June when my students moved on to the next grade level and I didn't.

Fortunately, most of my kids really got the knack of writing essays--but this was after years of testing out new ways to reach them. I was often told that writing essays, especially outlining them, was too boring or too difficult. Or I was asked, "Do we HAVE to do outlines?" Can't we just write it [the essay] out first, and revise it? My answer was plain and simple--"Uh--no." [If I tried to explain my reasoning to them cognitively, they turned completely off.]

I do have a tip for teachers who may find it hard to get students to grasp the concept of outlining, however. Teach it with a picture about something that kids love. An education professor from Baruch College once told us, "If you teach cognitive learning before you teach affective [emotional] learning, you will fail." Most educators may know by now that kids must relate personally to what you're teaching them, so my advice is "use this approach with outlines as well--right from the outset. You see, most ten-twelve year olds don't foresee the long-term advantages of outlining, such as good organization, cohesiveness, clarity, and less mental frustration; while most teachers realize that once students have mastered the outlining technique, drafting the essay becomes a virtual cakewalk. Don't waste valuable time and effort at this point trying to make them see it--you and your writing lesson will be mentally replaced by daydreams of movie stars, sports heroes, and rock singers.

Tip: Have students complete a writing activity based on a picture. The key is to choose a picture/subject that kids truly, truly love. Some examples are pets, movies, music, friends, and various games. In this way you are appealing to their emotions more than to their intellect. This method can be a point of entry for students when they are struggling with a difficult task.

Here's what I would recommend doing:

1. As preparation, obtain a package of overhead transparencies from a teacher's supply store. [Your can get an overhead projector from your assistant principle or whomever is in charge of supplies at your school.] Select a picture that has a single theme or object such as a beach, a park, a musical instruments, sports [a stadium, a field or even sports figures or] or pets. Write a short outline yourself about the picture before starting the activity. Write one main topic and 3-4 subtopics.

2. Write the instruction for the "Do Now" activity onto the transparency if you're using an erasable marker; or write it on the chalkboard. An example could be: "List 3 or more things that you see in the ­[example: stadium]."


3. Elicit answers from students. List their answers on a clean overhead plastic or on the chalkboard. [If the picture displayed a "Park," student answers might be sliding board, trees, grass, swings, etc.] As the answers [the picture's subtopics] are being given, list them alphabetically using capital letters. [See example below.]

4. Next, ask students to tell you one word or phrase that explains what all of these listed answers are about. [Don't tell them that this is the main topic just yet.] Typical answers might be: It's about things found in a park, It's about things kids play on in the park, It's about how a park looks or It's about a park. Jot their answers down. By a show of hands, have the class judge the best word or phrase [the main topic of the picture]. Write it next to Roman Numeral "I" above your list of subtopics. Then eliminate, with the class, subtopic answers that don't support the chosen main topic.

Finally, ask the class to come up with a good title for the picture.

Example: "The Park" -Title
I. Things Kids Play on in the Park [main topic]
A. Slides
B. Swings < subtopics
C. Monkey Bars

When all is finished, expect a student to say something like, "Why Mrs. Jones, that looks like an outline." You might smile and say, "You are right…this is a paragraph outline; and the class is to be commended for doing such a fine job in composing it. Most students might sense soon enough that this is what you've aimed to accomplish from the beginning, but the point is that they will always associate the picture of something they related to emotionally with the outlining activity. [The park is not what most 10-12 years olds might find exciting, but you can always come up with something suitable for them.] A follow-up activity the next day could be to add the descriptive details and sub-details to each subtopic.

Conclusion: Can you make students love outlining? -Probably never. Can you get them to respect it and do it? -Very likely. Use those pictures!

By Carol Gray-Javid, author