“All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.”
Do you agree with Walt Disney, the author of this quotation?
For a dream to come true, do you only need courage? Do your dreams come true simply because you pursue them? Or is there something else to add to the recipe? What do you think?
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“You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage
to lose sight of the shore.” –Christopher Columbus
When an author wants to let readers know that a character is, say, courageous, she doesn’t write, “Chris was courageous.” Instead, she sets up a situation in which the character has to act bravely, even if he or she feels fearful, showing just how courageous the character is.
Christopher Columbus showed courage by doing something—crossing an ocean when many believed he would fall off the edge of the earth into oblivion.
“Show, don’t tell” is an important element of writing stories. You don’t want to insult your readers by telling them how characters feel or what a character is like. You want to show them by
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Many students tell me that after they do the hard work of coming up with an idea, they do not know what to put in the paragraph or even how to write the paragraph.
Is this an issue for you as well? Could you use a little help in this area?
{Looking for the MIDDLE SCHOOL version of this tutorial? >>}
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You want to avoid plagiarism in your writing. Yes. Yes, you do.
Plagiarism is using someone else’s quotation, facts, statement, idea, or story without giving them credit.
So, how do you let your readers know that you borrowed the quotation, fact, and so on?
You cite your source by using an in-text citation. This simply means you are giving credit to someone for their information, and you tuck it into your essay.
An in-text citation comes in tremendously handy when you are writing an essay that does not include footnotes, a bibliography, or a works cited page.
This is a tutorial on how to easily create in-text citations. Robin Hood may be involved.
Here we go . . .
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You’re writing your essay and everything’s going great until you realize you need to let readers know where you got a certain fact. You aren’t using a bibliography, footnotes, or works cited page because this is just an essay, not a report or research paper.
You don’t want to plagiarize. Putting someone else’s fact or idea in your essay without any citation would definitely be plagiarism.
What are you going to do?
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Have you ever seen a man with his back pocket bulging from an overstuffed wallet? Do you know a woman who carries around a huge purse? Do you ever wonder what could be in there, like old rubber bands, ketchup packets, her kids’ Legos, or a stapler?
You can tell a lot about a person by what’s in their purse, backpack, or even bedroom.
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Earthquakes. Fires. Tornados. Hurricanes. Super viruses.
Breaking your finger before the big game. Using bleach instead of laundry soap on your favorite shirt. Losing your cell phone—again.
Where am I going with all of this?
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Once in a while, it’s interesting to look at a picture and write whatever comes to your mind—no guidance, no rules.
So, here goes . . .
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Proofreading. What a pain.
You finish your essay and think you’re through with it, but, no. Now you have to proofread it.
It turns out that writing and proofreading are two separate skills. In fact, they use two different parts of your brain and should be done at different times.
To take this a step further, when I proofread, I
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Students will follow along as I guide them through my experience with making stained-glass butterflies. As they read, they’ll be learning how to write a how-to and then insert transitions into the essay to move their readers easily through the process.
Suitable for students in 5th – 12th grade.
Last week I attended a class on how to make stained-glass butterflies. You know, the kind you hang up on a window with little suction cups.
My stained-glass butterfly and my mom’s. Hers turned out better than mine!
The teacher was very clear on how to do each step. We practiced cutting glass first, listening for the “hiss” that showed we were scoring the glass correctly with our cutters. After we had cut a line and a circle (both of which I messed up), he moved us to the next step.
I chose what I thought would be a simple butterfly design and found out how wrong I was.
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