SHARON’S BLOG Thesis Statements A guy walks in to your living room and blurts out, “Pizza.” You look at him and wonder what he means. Well, you know the subject matter—pizza—but you don’t know where he’s going with this. He could take it in any of these directions: “I want pizza.”“Pizza is bad for you…
SHARON’S BLOG Problems with Point Orders? One of my students handed in an interesting essay on volcanic activity. She included lots of facts, dates, and anecdotes, but there was one big problem. There was no rhyme or reason for the order in which she put her facts. Each major or historic volcanic eruption was in…
SHARON’S BLOG Can a chart rescue poorly written paragraphs? Do your students have trouble coming up with ideas to put in their paragraphs? Are their paragraphs only one or two sentences long? Are they a jumbled mess of ideas? A paragraph is all about one idea. In it, your student will teach something about that…
SHARON’S BLOG Outlines. Did I lose you already? The idea of outlines and actually creating them can be confusing and frustrating to our students. But what if we could make organizing material a little easier for them? Intro to Writing, Part 3, shows students some fun and unusual ways to create outlines (organize their material)….
SHARON’S BLOG Are you worried that your students won’t be able to take notes in classes? Would you like to sharpen their listening skills? Teach Your Students How to Take Notes, our most popular eBook, provides you with easy-to-use lessons for seven weeks, incrementally teaching your students how to take notes from auditory sources. Students…
SHARON’S BLOG “A writer is simply a photographer of thoughts.” -Brandon A. Trean Oftentimes our writing spills forth from an experience we’ve had or memory we’ve made. We keep a picture or image in our mind’s eye about that event, and it becomes the inspiration that prompts our writing. Have you experienced that? Using someone…
SHARON’S BLOGSummer is almost here, and that means picnics! When you think of picnics, what comes to mind? It might be fried chicken, sweet tea, or potato salad. You might think of your mom, siblings, or other family members at a park. Maybe you think of Frisbees, Nerf balls, or a blanket to sit on….
SHARON’S BLOG Need tutorials for your students? We’ve got ’em, and they’re free. These practical tutorials are complete with a lesson, printable worksheets, an exercise, and the answers. Use them now or bookmark them for later. Here are the three most popular ones on our site this year, just in time for those semester papers:
SHARON’S BLOGLife is about making decisions, and you’ve got some large ones in your future. Big ones include your future education or training: Should you pursue a college or technical degree. If you do, which one? Will you make the best choice? Will you change your mind several times? What about marriage? Starting a family?…
SHARON’S BLOGAll this month we’re celebrating National Poetry Month with famous poems worth knowing. Be sure to check out the many links at the end of this post for more poetry appreciation and practice! What is today’s poem? Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees.” Here are the first two lines: I think that I shall never see A poem…
