Grading Essays Made Easy #2: Point Orders

Grading your middle school or high school student’s essay can be difficult. Where do you begin? What criteria do you use? How do you ask intelligent questions that will really get to the heart of the essay?

In this informative video series, I show you specifically what to look for when grading those homeschool essays. Grading Essays Made Easy #1 teaches you six key questions to ask of your student’s essay, beginning with the most obvious and proceeding to the least obvious.

For a free grading grid for middle school essays, click here. >>

For a free grading grid for high school essays, click here. >>

Point orders

The question in Grading Essays Made Easy #2 is this: Are the essay’s points arranged in a logical and effective order?

In this video, I’ll show you six different point orders your student can use when organizing his or her essays. They’re easy. They’re fun. And they’re all about trash.

Noah: Devoted or Demented?

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

Noah was a righteous man who obeyed God. No, he was a psychotic mess who heard voices and saw visions.

God destroyed the earth in a worldwide flood because mankind’s sins were so great. No, he flooded the earth because we were cruel to animals and were destroying our planet.

Well, which is it?

Welcome to this week’s high school writing prompt. Is it about the new movie Noah?

Yes. And no.

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

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:

Change Nouns to Verbs for Clear Writing

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

change nouns to verbs Ever 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:

The Enumerative Essay: Parking Spaces and Baseball

SHARON’S BLOG

My husband Terry gave me the idea for this writing prompt though he didn’t know it at the time.

A love of lists

Last summer we drove to our local grocery store, and as Terry pulled into a spot, he said, “I like to park here because . . . ,” and he listed four reasons why he likes to park in that particular place. Now that you know how exciting our lives are, you’ll be happy to know that his love of lists surfaced yet again—at the ball park.

We were watching the Indianapolis Indians play the Rochester Redwings when one of the Indians smacked a ball and headed toward first. Terry leaned over to me and said, “There are nine ways to get to first safely.” Or was it seven?

Terry was halfway to writing an enumerative essay because he began with a number (four or nine) and had a secure idea of a list.

A Moving Description?

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

Aren’t descriptions those portions of books that you skip? Aren’t they boring? Don’t they stop the forward movement of the plot?
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Sometimes they do. But when you are the writer, you don’t have to stop the movement even if you are describing something.

Make something move.

An effective writer makes a description move. Wind blows the curtains. The sea surges on the shore in frothy waves. The train plows through fields of ripe winter wheat. You get the idea.

Read the following description of an abandoned cabin from Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire and figure out what is moving:

3 Best Proofreading Tips for Homeschool Writers

SHARON’S BLOG

Proofreading is painful for students. They feel they’re through with the writing process when they write their first draft and then want nothing more to do with that essay. Students tell me that writing the first draft and proofreading it is like writing their paper twice.
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However, the skill of proofreading their own papers is essential to the writing process.

Why proofread?

First, by catching their mistakes or finessing the points or flow of the essay, students learn to write more effectively.
Second, they show respect for their teachers by handing in a well-thought-out paper with few mistakes.
And third, students begin to understand through the editing process that there is an audience at the other end of their essays. They aren’t writing simply to keep themselves busy; they are writing to communicate, educate, explain, persuade, or entertain.

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What methods can we teach our students so they can proofread their work by themselves?

Gather Around the Campfire . . . or the TV

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

Gathering around the campfire as a family or with your friends in the summer at camp or during the crisp fall days can be fun. Whether you’re singing or roasting marshmallows for s’mores, it’s a unique experience.

Gathering around the TV to watch a movie or show with your family or friends can feel very different from circling the campfire. The blue glow from the TV may not warm you up, but its content may be more entertaining.

Flee the Boring Description!

MIDDLE SCHOOL PROMPTS

You know that boring description in the last book you read for school?

No, wait. You didn’t read it. You skipped the description because it was so dull.

It’s time to fix that. Here’s a paragraph from H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. Notice the specific and powerful verbs he uses to keep this description of refugees moving along:

Point orders

Grading Essays

A love of lists

Make something move.

Why proofread?

Looking for something?

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