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

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Empathetic Characters: The Author Molds Your Child’s Heart

Empathetic Characters: The Author Molds Your Child’s Heart

SHARON’S BLOG

I recently witnessed this conversation between a teen and his mother:

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“The main character divorced his wife and married another woman,” the teen announced after he read his book...

.“That’s not good,” his mother said.

“But he had to, Mom. His wife was really awful! She treated him really badly.”

The son went on to tell his mother some of the hateful things the wife had done to her husband in order to explain why this man was justified in divorcing his wife. Anyone would agree that they were truly rotten things.

The exasperated mother calmly stated, “God hates divorce.”

Her son did not change his mind. “But he had to divorce her.”..

My friend was scrambling to figure out how her son could have viewed this divorce in a positive light when she had taught him otherwise.

.What had happened to make her intelligent son fall prey to a viewpoint unacceptable to his parents?

This blog is not about divorce. It’s about two methods authors use to influence our children’s minds and hearts.

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Grading Essays Made Easy #1: Paragraphs in the Body

Grading Essays Made Easy #1: Paragraphs in the Body

SHARON’S BLOG

Your child has just handed you a completed essay, and you are ecstatic . . . until you realize you now have to grade it. Where do you begin? How do you evaluate this marvelous gift?

Grading Essays

Welcome to this exciting, first-in-a-series blog about grading your middle and high school students’ essays! You can find the whole video by clicking here.

Learn to ask six key questions of the paragraphs in the body of your students’ essays in this part-one tutorial. I’ll walk you through these questions from the obvious to the not-so-obvious. Keep reading to view the outline and quoted paragraphs from the tutorial.

What you’ll want to know:

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What’s Your Story?


HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

what have you overcomeHave you lived through an illness? Been in an accident? Are you stuck in the middle in your family? Do you have a tendency to lie? Are you afraid of what others think about you?

Can you imagine putting your trouble, weakness, or sin on a piece of paper for all to see?

Cardboard story

That’s just what teens in one group did. They wrote the negative or troubling thing about themselves on one side of a large piece of cardboard and showed it to viewers. Then they flipped the cardboard around to show how God helped them or to reveal a truth about themselves that God showed them. You can view their “cardboard testimonies” here.

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What Treasure Do You Want to Find?


MIDDLE SCHOOL PROMPTS

Find treasureSo you’re out walking your dog one day, and you look down and see a rusty can partially buried under an old tree you’ve walked by hundreds of times. “Hmmm,” you say. “What’s up with that?”

When you investigate, you find not one but eight rusted cans filled with mint-condition coins from 1847-1894, neatly piled in each can according to their dates. Turns out, even though the coins themselves are only worth about $28,000, the value of the coins today is over $10 million. Eureka!

This scenario is exactly what happened to

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Advertise Your Product


MIDDLE SCHOOL PROMPTS

 AdvertiseA garbage bag that deters rats? A taco with the spices on the outside? Luggage you can ride on?

It seems we humans have a great amount of imagination when it comes to cooking up new products. But are those real or just someone’s dream?

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3 Myths about Literature That Will Ruin Your Class

3 Myths about Literature That Will Ruin Your Class

SHARON’S BLOG

Choosing a literature program for your teens isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Neither are actually having the class and getting teens to read the books. Are false ideas about literature sabotaging all of your good efforts?

Read on to see if you have avoided believing these three myths about homeschool literature. And before I forget, check out the link at the end of this article for your FREE downloads from our literature courses.

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How Do You Make Friends?


MIDDLE SCHOOL PROMPTS

how to make a friendYou have friends. What did you do to make them? You are a friend, but how did you become one?

Have you ever thought of how to make friends? It is as simple as smiling when someone is sad, giving a genuine compliment, or being a good listener?

Or making a friend could be a process with many steps, beginning with step one and ending with step five (or as many steps as you like).

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Change Nouns to Verbs for Clear Writing


HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

change nouns to verbsEver wonder why some writing is so confusing? You read it once. It makes no sense. You read it again and hope for the best.

Most business, legal, and government writing rely on lengthy and unclear sentences and plenty of nouns.

Nouns stop the forward motion of the sentence and often make the sentence longer, like this:

The addition of a 10-minute warm-up routine made the winning of the gold medal possible for him.

Why not punch up the sentence with specific, active verbs? This generally makes sentences shorter, and it definitely makes them easier to understand, like this:

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