SHARON’S BLOG Would any of your sentences ever sell for $1.56 million? That’s what happened recently with Albert Einstein’s one-sentence “Theory of Happiness.” The story, according to USA TODAY, is that Einstein was visiting Japan to receive his Nobel Prize in physics in 1922 when he did not have enough money to tip a messenger….
SHARON’S BLOG Get a writing assignment. Look at a blank piece of paper for hours. Cry. Is this what happens with your students? No need for weeping. In this week’s Intro to Writing, your students will learn what ingredients to put into their introductions and conclusions. In addition, they will grade other students’ work and…
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 BLOGLiterature holds an Aladdin’s cave of treasures that students can plunge their pens into. Whether it’s imitating good writing, pondering a topic in the story, or using the story to write another, your students will gain a healthy curiosity for great works of literature as they write. To enjoy these fun prompts, knowledge of…
SHARON’S BLOG You know you have them—those story writers who won’t come out of their bedrooms, the ones who faint at writing essays but love writing stories. They spend hours creating fictional worlds and populating them with characters in trouble who are looking for a happy ending. Fiction is a powerful tool to influence readers’ hearts….
SHARON’S BLOG Do you ever wonder why some ads and political campaigns are so powerful? There’s a reason for that: They use certain strategies to move their viewers. It’s important to learn these strategies so you can see when they are being used on you! In this tutorial, you’ll learn three powerful tactics, read examples, and…
SHARON’S BLOG Compare and Contrast: 2 Solid Methods Have your students ever been asked to write a compare-and-contrast paragraph or essay but don’t know where to begin? Do they have trouble organizing their thoughts and information before comparing and contrasting? Your 5th – 12th graders will learn two solid methods for compare-and-contrast writing with this…
