Okay, I feel a little clueless on how to teach my dd to write an outline from KHE..

[jacqui in mo]

My dd is in eighth grade & we have be using SOTW & KHE for history. We have been outlining very generally from the KHE last year. I'm wanting her to be more comprehensive this year, having a main topic with subtopics for each paragraph in the text. Yesterday's KHE assignment had 6 paragraphs. She generally can get the topic sentence/main point of the paragraph, but has trouble identifying the sub topics (Let alone any sub points of those). We've been through R&S exercises on outlines but it hasn't helped her here.

How can I help her look for the subtopics in a paragraph? (w/o crying would be nice:)) Should these type of outlines be topical outlines or sentence outlines? How picky should I be to have her write outlines that are as parallel as possible?

If you have any suggestions, I'd really appreciate it!
Jacqui

[Alana in Canada]

I've heard that KHE is difficult to outline and apprently it isn't recommended anymore. I've actually tried--and I struggle! Try something else. Perhaps the Haaren materials? Blast, www.mainlesson (http://www.mainlesson) seems to be down. John Haaren wrote The Famous Men of....series.

Hope you get some better rcommendations!

[Peela]

Yes, dont worry, KHE is hard to outline and you don't need to keep struggling with it.
I read SWB recommend people use the library books they get out each week (choose one, I guess). What I did was choose a particular book I had for our country's history (Australia) which was straightforward to outline, for our parallel stream of Australian history, and we just did assignments /reports for world history. Many people find different ways. I am getting my dd to outline an essay before writing it.

[Deb in NZ]

their science (Apologia). I found KHE too hard to successfully outline.

Blessings,

[JFS in IL]

I could not get my kids to outline from KHE - it is too densely written. Choose selection from their science book, or another history book from the library, to practice outlining. We just use KHE as a reference book now.

[keithfamily5]

I thought it was just me! We struggled all year last year with outlining from the Kingfisher. I really wanted my daughter to do more of it ON HER OWN this year. But, after reading this, now I know it's not just her. She does have trouble with reading comprehension. Which is our main area of focus this year.

Thank you so much for this post. It was a confirmation of sorts for me!

Patty

[Janice H]

I am in complete agreement with others here re: Kingfisher outlining.

Outlining, however, was not well understood by dd until we used Classical Writing Homer, which teaches outlining using narrative models. The "scenes" of a historical or fiction narrative form the basis for the outline. This made sense to my daughter.