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Another way to help students begin to write and to complete a writing is to help students make an outline. Having a format helps them see a logical path to describe something fully. This is the basic form that works for most academic and professional writings.

Because an outline does not need to be written in order in the rough draft stage, students can put ideas in place as they come to mind. Once the outline is edited, writing a complete paragraph is less stressful. 

Although there are many variations for an effective paragraph outline, this one is usually very helpful: 

• Topic Sentence   

Students should put their topic here and an opinion word. This will probably change as new ideas present themselves. 

• Body 

Three is usually a good number of supporting ideas. Sometimes reaching for a third idea helps students provide the most creative ideas. After the outline is finished, students should consider the best order of ideas. Time, spatial, or emphatic (putting the strongest idea last) order are three effective logical orders. 

• Conclusion

With a conclusion signal word, the conclusion sentence is probably the most important sentence of a stand-alone paragraph. It is the ‘educated’ topic sentence that helps both the reader and the writer focus on the benefit of the information in the paragraph. 

Tags: Writing a paragraph; Paragraph outlines; Order of ideas