A Research Paper Outline Template For High School Students

You learned all about outlines around the fourth or fifth grade. They taught you how to make them and what information went where. They also told you that before writing anything you should have an outline of it. Most people started to ignore that right away because they felt as if it was only making more work for themselves. In reality, if done correctly, an outline can be a great resource that actually saves time instead of wasting it.

When done the right way an outline can be like a guide for your writing that shows you every step of the way what to write about next. The trick is to put everything in the outline in the order in which it will appear in the paper. This allows you to move directly from one topic to the next all the while knowing what comes after that. It makes writing a lot easier and is a necessary part of the process. Here is a rough template for what an outline should look like and what information goes where using the standard 5 paragraph essay. You can adapt it to any kind of paper format though.

Introduction

Here you want to start off by introducing your topic.
Give the reader a loose idea of what the paper will be about without giving too much away

Body Paragraph 1

This is where you introduce your first fact to support your topic
Give plenty of information to back up this fact
Make sure you have proven your point thoroughly

Body Paragraph 2

Now you will introduce the reader to your second fact to support your topic
Again you back this up with information from your research
Be certain that the point comes across clearly

Body Paragraph 3

You now introduce you last fact
You back up this fact with well-researched information as well
Ensur that you are being clear and understood as with every other paragraph

Conclusion

You want to reiterate your facts in a new way to remind the reader of what you are proving
Make sure that it is a clear ending that sums up the whole paper

This is the basic format of any outline. You want to use it well and include as many facts in it as you can because the paper will be exactly the same as the outline. What you put in the outline introduction is what goes into your paper’s intro as well. So make sure to be thorough and add as much information as possible.