Are your homeschool students completely and utterly bored with their writing lessons? Is it a struggle to get them to write again?
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When it comes to writing essays, it’s easy for students to stall out. They need motivation. They need a change. They need some fun—and so do we!

3 Shocking Tips

Here are three shocking writing tips you can use in your homeschool—shocking because they are fun and because, to your children, they are totally unexpected.

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1. Ask your children to teach you something from their writing books.

Did they just learn about introductions? Do they have a good grasp of transitions? Ask them to choose a concept they are familiar with and teach it to you. The reversal of roles will be a unique experience for them, and teaching a concept will cement it in their minds.

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2. Write with them.

Writing may make you feel like a trembling Piglet at the top of a wild and wicked roller coaster, but give it a try. Find some fun, non-graded writing prompts and go at them with your children. Click here for Middle School Prompts. Click here for engaging High School Prompts. Writing with your kids makes the act of writing more legitimate, and your socially minded children will appreciate doing the activity with you.

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3. Switch papers and evaluate each other’s work.

Try writing the same essay you assign to your children. Tell them ahead of time that you are going to switch papers so you can evaluate each other. This will astound and amaze them, and it might even make writing more fun for them since they are anticipating how they will evaluate your paper. I occasionally give the students in my writing classes a chance to evaluate me, and, believe me, they have great fun doing it.

Stick to the guidelines below when you evaluate each other’s papers, and keep them in this order: