Outlining, a skill, a valuable skill that should be learned. Really it is a must be learned skill in my book, but how to teach it in a fun way? Such a dilema.

The following method is one that I used with ScienceKid the first week of 5th grade. In Classical Education this stage of learning is referred to as the Logic Age, when the child is ready to start organizing his thought process. What a great way to assist him in this journey by teaching him outlining skills.

Here is the approach I used; Legos and a bit of time.
Day one: Each child collects a cereal bowl full of legos. They are told to categorize the legos. (Use the words categorize, category, separate into groups, etc).

Most likely they will use color categories. Praise their efforts. List on a board the colors they used.

Now tell them to categorize differently! Shapes and sizes may play a bigger role now. Praise this effort just as much as the first effort. Next to the original list on the board, write the new list. Point out the differences.

Using their second pile of legos, have them categorize the piles further: flat pieces may now be separated into colors or sizes: onesies, 8’s,weird shapes, etc. Let them have leeway in how they choose to categorize.

Use their new piles to fill in the second list on the board. Indent this new list as you would a traditional outline. Show the kids how to letter/number the outline. Show them that they could even take the little piles and categorize these little piles even further.

Day Two: Review the lego lesson from the day before. Have 3×5 index cards available. Have the child brainstorm types of sports…soccer, swimming, baseball, ice hockey…get at least 15 sports, one on each index card.

Now have the child categorize the sports. Let him think about possible categories: inside sports/outside, needs balls/doesn’t need balls, summer sport/winter/year round, needs arena/no arena. Write this on the board for the child: Main categories (with Roman numeral) followed by the sport (number them).

Now have the child re-categorize the sports. Let him discover and choose a new category. Write this new list on the board. Show the child that he is in control of how he chooses to categorize a list and reinforce the myriad of possibilities.

Day Three: Let the child pick his own list to make: animals, famous people, cars (my son chose wars America has fought-strange kid-but it worked-he separated them into wars we won/lost). He must write at least 15 to 20 in his list. Let him use index cards. then have him categorize his list. Let him play with this list and re-categorize it. Let him choose which way he prefers and have him write his own list out on paper using Roman numerals and letters. Show him how he can further categorize the sub-headings. For example, animals may be categorized as inside/outside/either, for inside: needs a cage/no cage, further: glass cage, wire cage.

Day Four: Using the child’s written outline, show him how to write a complete paper. Intro, paragraphs, complete sentences and conclusion will flow out of this outline. He’ll need help with the first paragraph but will see how easy it is to turn the outline headings into a list: Some animals need to be kept outside such as horses and ducks. Sometimes dogs need to live outside. Horses and ducks need fences.

Simple sentences are fine! You are teaching outlining. Keep it simple.

Day Five: Edit and re-write. We edit and re-write EVERYTHING! Good form, good habit, good practice.

Outlining is so important, but does make sense it the child can “see” it with legos. I hope this helps.