teaching aids Archives - Page 4 of 10 - Writing with Sharon Watson-Easy-to-use Homeschool Writing and Literature Curriculum

Benefits of Bike Riding: Brainstorm and Organize

Is it tough to come up with ideas when your teacher gives you a writing assignment?

And if you have ideas, is it hard to plan and put them into an effective order with main and supporting points? This prompt will help with these problems.

Many students feel that brainstorming is a waste of time, but you’ll see otherwise in this prompt as you brainstorm the benefits of bike riding. Also, you’ll practice organizing your ideas so they make sense. These worksheets will make your tasks much, much easier.

Veterans Day Compare and Contrast

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

We honor our U. S. veterans on Veterans Day every year.

Do you know someone who has served in the U. S. Armed Forces: Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, National Guard, or Reserves? Chances are you know quite a few men and women who have served, defended, and protected our country and those of our allies.

Working in the Armed Forces is very different from working in the private sector. Let’s explore this idea.

Proofreading: The Good News and the Bad News

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

Proofreading is not a happy activity. It takes attention to detail and maybe even some groaning.

After all, you feel as if your first draft is enough. You’re done. Finished.

Students tell me that writing the first draft and then proofreading it is like writing their paper twice.

The Bad News

.Here’s the bad news: The skill of proofreading your own papers is essential to the writing process. Why?

First, you learn to write more effectively.

Second, you show respect for your teachers by handing in a well-thought-out paper with few mistakes.

And third, you begin to understand that there is an audience at the other end of your essays. You aren’t writing simply to keep yourself busy; you’re writing to communicate, educate, explain, persuade, or entertain.

The Good News

Here’s the good news: You’re about to learn four sure-fire ways to catch more mistakes when you proofread..

Why Teach Writing?

SHARON’S BLOG

Why teach writing? After all, it’s tough. It’s confusing. And sometimes crying is involved.

If your writing class is flagging and your zeal is dragging, consider this post as a friendly smile I am sending your way.

So, what are some of the benefits of teaching our kids to write?

Benefits

1. Students become more organized in their thinking when they learn to write. Writing clearly involves organizational skills that will aid our students in other subjects.

Click here for middle school organizational skills. >>

Click here for high school organizational skills. >>

2. Writing causes students to think through topics or defend a position. Through this process, students gain an understanding of

Courage: Show, Don’t Tell

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

“You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage
to lose sight of the shore.” –Christopher Columbus

Show, Don’t Tell

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

Paragraph Chart: High School

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

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? >>}

In-text Citations for Middle School Students

MIDDLE SCHOOL PROMPTS

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 . . .

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?

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

3 Ideas to Help Your Writers, and Only 2 of Them Are Crazy

SHARON’S BLOG

I understand at the outset of this article that the word “them” in my title is ambiguous. Does it stand for the writers or for the ideas?

As you can see, writing is hard. At least, that’s what students tell me.

It makes their hands hurt. They don’t know where to begin. They don’t know how to construct paragraphs. If they’re not interested in the topic, they can’t think of anything to write anyway.

The list goes on and on and is pretty much the same in all the classes I teach.

A number of moms confess to me that they’ve given up teaching writing. Some say that whenever they give their students writing assignments, crying is involved. (I assume it’s the students doing the crying, but I could possibly be wrong about that.)

Even in the weekly writing class I teach for high school homeschoolers, at least two students have

The Bad News

The Good News

Benefits

Show, Don’t Tell

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