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Once you have your checklist, now you can start to put all those requirements in some
semblance of order. You will want to start thinking about the flow of your paper. Do
you want to go from the most important to the least important? Do you want to use some
sort of time-line approach? Do you want to go from simple to complex, or perhaps the
other way around? An outline allows you to explore all these options without having to
revamp your entire paper each time you change your mind. Also, the more details you put
in your outline, like examples you want to include in the paper, words, thoughts, or
ideas, or even alternate options for wording -- all these things will help you a ton during
the drafting process. So, the more details you include now, the less work you have to
do later! During this presentation, I will type in black for the general outline comments,
those things that will apply to any essay or paper you write for school. In purple will
be the specific requirements for the Phase and suggestions for that outline in particular.
Even if a title for the essay wasn't a stated requirement, you still need to have one. Titles
should serve 2 purposes: to inform your reader what your essay is about, and to interest
your reader in reading your essay, even if your reader is only your instructor. Remember,
for the Portfolio Project essay, you may NOT use the name of the title of the book you
read as the title of your essay. It needs to be a title you have created. It's a good
idea to put a couple of possible alternate titles in the outline, unless you already
have your heart set on one in particular. Throughout this outline, I will use the book
"Who Moved My Cheese" as the example book, but the examples I give pretty much apply
no matter which of the 5 books you read.
The first paragraph of any essay is the intro paragraph. It lets the reader know what is
coming up in the body of the essay by introducing the main theme and setting the tone. Specifically
for the Portfolio essay, this paragraph can let your reader know which book you read and
your general impression of it. Keep in mind, that this is NOT a book report. However, if
you want to spend one or two sentences summarizing the book's story, this would be the place
to do it. This is also a good place for a quote from the book, although that quote really
can go anywhere in the essay. You just want to make sure that you have a quote IN your
essay somewhere. Forgetting the quote and citation can cost you a bunch of points!
In the main body of the essay, each paragraph will concentrate on one particular main point.
Depending on the length of the essay, you might end up devoting an entire paragraph
to a subpoint or supporting idea. However, in the one-page essay for this class, that
would be overkill. Just keep in mind that you want to make sure to hit the important
ideas and give examples and explanations for your important ideas as well. I've tried to
illustrate that in the purple part of the outline. IN the actual essay, I would take
the idea that Who Moved My Cheese will help me deal with eTexts and give specific examples
of just how it will do that, rather than simply stating that as a fact and moving on. In the
outline, I might jot down a few key words about the type of example I'm considering,
so that when I do the draft, I don't have to try and remember what I wanted to say.
As you are making your main points, don't forget that each of them should be a separate
paragraph. If your paragraph is approaching half the page, it is too long, and you need
to break that paragraph into two smaller paragraphs. Subpoints are a good way to do that. However,
again, for this essay, that shouldn't be necessary, since the entire essay should only be between
1 and 2 pages long.
Finally, you want to wrap it up. Your conclusion can be quite short, just two or three sentences.
You want to pull the entire essay together here. For hints on how to do that, go back
to your intro. While your conclusion won't be exactly the same, it can sort-of mirror
what you said at the beginning, maybe taking that idea just one step further. Specifically
for this essay, you can remind your reader what your overall impression of the book was.
You might even indicate whether you would recommend it to others or not.
Finally, here's a picture of what this outline looked like on the board. I think it works
better on paper, rather than on the whiteboard, don't you? Good luck with your outline and
your essay!