Writing with Sharon Watson-Easy-to-use Homeschool Writing and Literature Curriculum

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In-text Citations for High School

In-text Citations for High School

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

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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Proofreading: It’s Not Just for Cheerleaders

Proofreading: It’s Not Just for Cheerleaders

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

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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Stained-glass Butterflies and How to Write a How-to

Stained-glass Butterflies and How to Write a How-to

SHARON’S BLOG

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.

My stained-glass how-to essay

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.

butterflies image for how-to

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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How to Complain Constructively

How to Complain Constructively

SHARON’S BLOG

True story: I was eating dinner in a restaurant recently when I heard a woman in the booth behind me state, “This is an abomination!”

My ears perked up. My curiosity was piqued. I rarely hear the word “abomination” any more and wondered what could be so horrific as to need that word. I imagined she and her dining partner were reading a magazine article on human trafficking or perhaps watching a YouTube video about persecution in Indonesia.

I strained my ears to learn what she was referring to.

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Storywriting: Put Your Character into Hot Water, Part 1

Storywriting: Put Your Character into Hot Water, Part 1

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

You have an idea for a story but don’t know how to get it going. Or you would like to write a story but are out of ideas.

When you write a story, you have to throw a lot of things at your main character, things he or she would rather not have to deal with. In this prompt, you’ll learn two proven methods to get ideas and plunge your character into hot water. In this prompt, you’ll explore three more.

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A Sonnet: Be the Shakespeare

A Sonnet: Be the Shakespeare

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

Today you get to be Shakespeare and write a sonnet.

A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines. The last two lines, however, are separate and either sum up the rest of the poem or provide a new twist, as does the sonnet below.

Let’s look at Shakespeare’s Sonnet 62. The letters at the end of each line are Shakespeare’s rhyme scheme, but ignore that for now. Take a few moments and read the sonnet. Then I’ll explain it:

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