This posting focuses on Steps One and Two of an Organization Strategy when the Organization Task in Step One uses Outlines. An outline visualizes as a hierarchical structure of super- ordinate, ordinate and subordinate headings the relationships between and among separate items of verbal target information. Students who are given outlines to follow while reading a selection from a textbook remember significantly more of the target information than students not given outlines to follow when reading the same selection [1]. Using outlines enhances students' retrieval of verbal target information from long-term memory that they read or hear for two reasons [2]. First, outlines help students pick out the target information from the complex mass of verbal information they are reading or hearing. Second, the hierarchical structure of ordinate and subordinate headings help students encode the target information in connected networks in ways that facilitate later retrieval from long-term memory. Two kinds of outlines are effective in an Organization Strategy: Names and Attributes and Narrative Discourse Structure.
NAMES AND ATTRIBUTES
The teacher can help students organize verbal target information around outline headings that refer to names and attributes. Students' retrieval from long-term memory of verbal target information they hear in lectures or read in textbooks is enhanced whey they are helped to organize it around outline headings that identify names and attributes [3]. Here is a portion of an uncompleted names-and-attributes outline
Depending on the ability level of students, the teacher might use the entire uncompleted outline in an Organization Task in Step One of an Organization Strategy in one of two ways. First, if students are more able, the teacher might give students a copy of the entire uncompleted outline before they read an assigned section on vitamins in their textbooks or listen to a lecture on vitamins. Students write the information in the relevant blanks on the outline as they read or listen. Second, if students are less able the teacher probably should have students read the assignment or listen to the lecture before getting the outline. When the lecture is over or the reading completed, the teacher hands out the uncompleted outline and shows a copy of it on the screen. The teacher leads students in a discussion of the information that belongs in each blank, and shows the information on the screen. Students are given time to copy the information on their own outlines. The teacher provides Organization Guidance by focusing students' attention on the information in the outline, and corrects students' inaccurate responses and confirms their correct responses. In Step Two of an Organization Strategy the teacher provides a Recall-Practice Task by having students put away their completed outlines. The teacher asks them questions about the target information, such as, "What are the animal sources of Vitamin A?" Students might answer orally or in writing. Having them answer in writing will assure the teacher that every student is performing the task. When students have difficulty retrieving the information from memory, the teacher refers them back to the outline, and may eventually have to have them look back at their outlines.
NARRATIVE DISCOURSE STRUCTURE
Students in the early elementary grades begin intuitively using the essential structural elements in narrative discourse when they encode and later retrieve verbal information presented to them in stories, biographies and novels [4]. After reading a short fiction story, for example, readers are able to retrieve information that pertains to the structural elements of narrative discourse better than information that does not pertain to those elements. They remember verbal information that pertains to the narrative discourse elements of setting, theme, plot and resolution better than they do verbal information that does not pertain to those elements. Utilizing the naturally occurring phenomenon of narrative discourse as an organizer is an effective way of helping students encode and retrieve verbal target information they read or hear in fiction and nonfiction stories and in biographies.
Here are the essential structural elements in narrative discourse in an outline format that can be used in an Organization Task [5].
In Step One of an Organization Strategy, a history teacher whose class is presently studying Theodore Roosevelt's presidency, might begin an Organization Task by having students read the section in the textbook about Roosevelt's first State of the Union presentation to the U.S. Congress. Then the teacher projects onto a screen a discourse outline. The teacher helps students identify the relevant information in the outline. Students write their own copy of the outline they are developing. When focusing on the minor setting of Roosevelt's six-minute tirade about modern anarchists of the kind that abuse the First Amendment and incite anarchy, and who assassinated Roosevelt's predecessor, William McKinley, the teacher focuses their attention on this section: The wind is sowed by the men who preach such doctrines, and they cannot escape their responsibility for the whirlwind that is reaped....If ever anarchy is triumphant, its triumph will last for but one red moment, to be succeed for ages by the gloomy night of despotism..." [6]. The teacher helps students identify the five events in the Plot that pertain to Roosevelt's six-minute tirade. To help them understand events in Roosevelt's day the teacher asks students to compare how the First Amendment is being abused today by people who incite anarchy. When students have been helped to complete the outline, the teacher has them put it away and begins Step Two of an Organization Strategy by using a Recall-Practice Task that consists of questions about the target information for the topic of Roosevelt's presidency. The teacher might ask questions orally, which allows only a few students to participate, or the teacher might have students write their answers, which has every student participating. When students have difficulty the teacher guides them in recalling the outline they completed. The teacher might have to provide more explicit guidance by having them look back at their written outline.
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1. Glynn, S.M., & DiVesta, F.J. (1977). Outline and hierarchical organization as aids for study and retrieval. Journal of Educational Psychology, 69, 89-95.
2. Goetz, E.T., & Armbruster, B.B. (1980). Psychological correlates of text structure. In R.J. Spiro, B.C. Bruce, & W.F. Brewer (Eds.), Theoretical issues in reading comprehension (pp. 201-220). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
3. (For example). Frase, L.T. (1969). Paragraph organization of written materials: The influence of conceptual clustering upon the level and organization of recall. Journal of Educational Psychology, 60, 394-401.
4. (For example), Whaley, J.F. (1981). Readers' expectations for a story structure. Reading Research Quarterly, 17, 90-114.
5. Adapted from Gordon C.J., & Braun, C. (1985). Metacognitive processes: Reading and writing narrative discourse. In D.L> Forrest-Pressley, G.E. MacKinnon, & T.G. Waller (Eds.), Metacognition, cognition, and human performance (Vol 2, pp. 1-76). New York: Academic Press.
6. Morris, D. (2001). Theodore rex. New York: Random House.
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