Hobbit Day
September 22 is Hobbit Day! Let’s celebrate by writing a character into a portion of the hero’s journey, just as Bilbo refused his call to adventure from Gandalf.
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“I Am Sorry for Your Loss” Tutorial
How to Write a Letter of Condolence How many times have you had to write a letter of condolence? Unfortunately, your teens and students will have to write some in their lifetimes. Your teens will have friends or family members who experience losses in their lives. Maybe their friends will be in an accident or…
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How to Create a Paragraph: Middle School Chart
Solid Help for Writing a Paragraph Do you have trouble coming up with ideas to put in your paragraphs? Would you like help organizing each paragraph so it is not a jumbled mess? Check out this chart below, along with one that is filled in, to make your life a little easier. {Here’s the HIGH…
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Composition: Let’s Make it Easier
You’ve just read the title of this post and are laughing uncontrollably. I get it. Writing is hard. My students confirm this, and so do yours. Many moms report that their students have ideas in their heads but can’t get them on paper. Let’s start fixing that today. What creates this strange head-to-hand disconnect? One…
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High School Prompts | Middle School Prompts | Middle School Tutorial | Sharon's Blog | teaching aids | tutorial
New Tutorials to Document Sources
SHARON’S BLOG Okay. I’ll admit it. I abhor the nit-picky rules about citing sources and making a works-cited page. The rules are tedious. They’re boring. And they’re nerve wracking. So, if it is hard for adults (which I like to think I am), what must our children and teens think of it? After all, writing…
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High School Prompts | Middle School Prompts | Middle School Tutorial | Sharon's Blog | teaching aids | tutorial
Fun with Outlines. No, Really.
SHARON’S BLOG Could your students use a little help organizing their ideas? And what does a bowl of salad have to do with outlines? Many students make their outlines after they have written their essay. This is fairly common. But is a formal outline necessary? Not exactly. You can read about my sticky-note method here….
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High School Prompts | Middle School Prompts | Middle School Tutorial | Sharon's Blog | tutorial | Writing Prompts
7 Prompts on Wisdom
SHARON’S BLOGLet’s use a quote from Confucius and a passage from Proverbs to get your students thinking about wisdom. In this bundle of writing prompts centered around wisdom, your students will encounter these types of writing: opinion, personification, parallel construction, definition, and more. These prompts are just right for students in grades 5 – 12. So,…
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High School Prompts | Middle School Prompts | Middle School Tutorial | Sharon's Blog | teaching aids | tutorial
Intro to Writing, Part 6: Easily Develop Thesis Statements
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…
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High School Prompts | Middle School Prompts | Middle School Tutorial | Sharon's Blog | teaching aids | tutorial
Intro to Writing, Part 5: Point Orders
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…
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High School Prompts | Middle School Prompts | Middle School Tutorial | Sharon's Blog | teaching aids | tutorial
Intro to Writing, Part 4: Paragraphs
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…
