Use Organizers to Help Students Outline and Layout an Essay
Writing is an essential part of education. Research papers and thesis statements lie at the end of the educational road. For the experienced writer, it's easy to take this skill for granted and forget how complex of a process it really is.
Using some form of organizer is a great way to help students learn the mechanics of the writing process. These organizers model the basic writing process for the student, and provide him or her with some guidance. Although no particular organizer will suit every student, there is surely one out there for every student.
Thinking Spatially – Visual Organizers
Some people think in terms of space and orientation. Visual organizers help these students turn random words and phrases into meaningful units.
A simple visual organizer for writing an essay would help a student break his or her knowledge down into three parts.
First, the student lists the individual vocabulary words and terms relevant to the essay's subject. These may be taken from a list given by the teacher, or may be generated by the student. They will provide a road map later on for what should be included in the essay.
Next, the student should use those words to identify the major themes of the topic. These themes should fall into three or more main ideas. When formulated as questions, these main ideas can form the basis of the body paragraphs of an essay.
Finally, the student pulls together supporting information to help
answer each of these main idea questions. This supporting
information, along with the original vocabulary terms, will provide
the bulk of each paragraph.
The organizer helps the student break the writing process down into basic parts – identifying a core of knowledge, organizing this knowledge into main ideas and categories, and then researching that knowledge for supporting information.
Here's a sample visual organizer – for MS Office (.doc) and for Open Office (.odt) (See the picture to the left).
Thinking Sequentially – Writing Step by Step
Some students don't do so well with visuals. Instead, you can try taking them through the process sequentially. For some, it helps to work through an essay step by step instead of conceptually attacking each category.
With this organizer, the student begins with the thesis statement. Then, through a series of simple questions, the student identifies the topic of each paragraph and then fills in supporting information for each paragraph.
In essence, the student is writing the essay as he or she goes – but it's broken down into little chunks. Rather than writing five paragraphs at a time, the student is answering one simple question at a time.
After all of the information is laid out on the outline organizer,
the student can go back, add transitions, and add a little language
fluff. By this point, though, most of the writing has already been
done.
This method is great for simple expository essays, in which a student is describing or explaining something. The student can sequentially go through the topic in his or her head and simultaneously organize the essay on the outline.
Here's a different sample – again in MS Office (.doc) and Open Office (See the picture to the left).
Don't Forget to Model
Whatever organizer you and your students end up using, don't forget to model its use. These organizers can seem self explanatory – especially after we spend time researching and creating them.
For students, they aren't self explanatory. A student needs to see an experienced writer model how to break a topic into main ideas. A student needs to see an experienced writer look through the information for support for his or her argument.
Eventually, the organizer will be enough of a crutch – but until that point you need to model the process as well.
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