5 Tips for Beginning Essay Teaching From Language Lady

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5 Tips for Beginning Essay Teaching From Language Lady

#1

 

Essay Writing Is the Easiest Writing Place to Start

The range of “fun” and difficult in essays can’t be beat! An essay can be fun (three reasons Superman is the best super hero), hobby related (three easy cross stitch patterns), personal (your three favorite vacation foods), straightforward (three colors of the rainbow), formal (three quotations about a topic or by a person), or research-based (three reasons smoking should be banned in public buildings). Essays are easier to scale in terms of difficulty level because even second graders can learn to write a one paragraph personal essay (compared to a research-based report or story with story writing elements).

Along with the difficulty level in general, the number of skills needed is significantly less in beginning essay writing than in other types of writing. A student in elementary school who has learned the fundamentals of what a sentence contains, what a paragraph contains, and how to create a simple outline can start essay writing. There are myriad of skills that are needed for research writing and/or story writing. (Not that essay writing can’t be complex, as shown in my book, Meaningful Composition 11 I: The Three P’s of Persuasive Writing. However, those skills are not needed to begin essay writing.)

#2

 

Teach the Three-Topics-Three-Paragraph Method to Your Older Students

If your high schooler has never written a five-paragraph essay before, I recommend that you begin with what I call the “three topics/three paragraphs for the body” (P’soB) approach. This is a simplified way of teaching students how to write multiple paragraphs when they are not used to writing more than one or two paragraphs. In this approach, the student writes about three different things, such as three different foods or three different beaches or three different novels, etc.  For the overwhelmed older student who is trying to catch up in his writing skills, it is ideal because it feels like “three little essays” as opposed to three complete paragraphs for the body of a one-topic essay.

The beauty of this approach is that a student does not have to think about so much information for three paragraphs. He can simply plan out information for one paragraph of 6 to 8 sentences about one topic. He moves onto the next paragraph, and it is about a completely different topic. Then the student can tack on a thesis to the first paragraph and a closing sentence to the last paragraph—and have a three paragraph essay! I use this method extensively in my junior high writing books to teach students how to move into multi-paragraph writing painlessly.

#3

 

Always Have Students Outline Before They Write

I have had students who come back from college and bring me a paper to help them edit. When I mention that it seems a little “rambly,” the student sheepishly tells me that she didn’t have time to outline. And it shows. (She couldn’t have gotten away with that in my cottage classes as we take a grade on the outlining/prewriting step as well as any research steps that are needed for report writing!)

Outlining keeps a writer from rambling. It helps him get thoughts on paper in shortened form—while the ideas are flowing. He doesn’t have to interrupt the creative process with writing out full sentences or paragraphs. He can jot down notes quickly—thus, keeping up a little better with the mind than writing full sentences usually allows .Outlining is the thinking/creating step. Writing is the style step. By learning to outline first, the student’s focus is on gathering data and organizing it in the order he wants it. He doesn’t have to do so many skills at one time—research (or think in creative situations), write notes, determine order/placement of material, write quality sentences, divide paragraphs, edit, etc.

#4

 

Do Not Expect a Student to Include Too Many Unusual or “In Progress Skills” in One Essay

One of the most important things in teaching to me is student success. I want them to feel successful at the end of each project. The opposite of this happens when we assign a project without giving them the skills that are needed to complete the project. Because of this, all of the writing assignments in my books have skill building lessons for the tasks that are needed to complete the project. Thus, if they are doing a quotation essay, students will have lessons on how to punctuate quotes. If they are doing a research report, they will have lessons on how to research and organize material.

 

When students are first learning skills, we don’t want to expect too many of them all at the same time. For example, if he is still in the quotation process, have him simply add one quotation and be sure that, that week’s lesson includes quotation writing as a skill building lesson. Don’t assign a project with a formal tone if he doesn’t know the difference between first person, second person, and third person. In every project, a student should know how to do the skills that are expected of him in that type of writing.

#5

 

Don’t Make the Essay Writing Process Too Open Ended

One of the reasons why students have so much trouble in writing is because we simply give them writing topics. I know because when I first began writing curriculum in language arts and composition, I had a bookshelf full of writing prompts or writing idea books. We have to understand the difference between telling a student to write something and teaching a student how to write that.

We need to be sure that he understands the parameters–how many paragraphs, what each paragraph should contain, whether he is doing an opening or closing, whether the opening or closing had to be a specific style, what person he’s writing in, the tone of the paper, and much more. Writing idea books and writing prompts do not give a student the tools needed to learn how to write.

Resources for this Slideshow:

  1.  Essay Writing Is the Easiest Writing Place to StartCheck out a two-week sample from one of my intermediate essay books

     2. Teach the Three-Topics-Three-Paragraph Method to Your Older Students Check out a two-week sample from my upper level high school essay book

  1. Always Have Students Outline Before They WriteGet a free one month writing book at any level 
  2. Do Not Expect a Student to Include Too Many Unusual or “In Progress Skills” in One EssayCheck out these pre-writing skills…
  3. Don’t Make the Essay Writing Process Too Open EndedSee how students need specifics, not vagueness in this lesson and download

Thanks for Joining Donna to Learn About Grammar and Writing!

Check Out Other “5 Tips From Language Lady” slideshows!

5 Places to Find Language Lady/Donna Reish Teaching Grammar and Writing

5 Tips for Teaching & Learning Nouns From Language Lady

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5 Tips for Teaching & Learning Nouns From Language Lady

#1

 

Nouns Are Not the “Simplest” Parts of Speech

Kids from second grade on can often tell you that a noun is a “person, place, thing, or idea.” We tend to think that nouns are “easy.”  However, that simply isn’t true. Nouns are one of the most difficult parts of speech to spot because nouns act like other parts of speech all the time.

Look at these “nouns” that are acting, either directly or with suffixes added, like other parts of speech:

Noun                                  Verb                                   Describer
Taking a walk…         I walk down the road.            Walking stick
Set the table.            Let’s table that for later.        Table tennis
She is a beauty.       Beautify our yard.                 Beauty pageant

#2

 

Nouns Are Often Preceded by Noun Markers (Articles)

Because of the difficulty in recognizing nouns, I focus my noun teaching on helping students recognize words that tell them that a noun is coming. One category of words that tells us that a noun is coming is the noun marker or article. (I like to call them noun markers because the name tells what they do—they mark nouns, or tell you that a noun is coming.) While a noun marker doesn’t necessarily mean that a noun is the next word up, it does mean that one is coming soon.

Thus, learning to recognize these three little words is super helpful. You can use my rhyme if you’d like. (Oh, and notice the order….when you have a and an together, and you have the word and between them, students think AND is a noun marker.)

              An, the, a….three little words…

            Tell you that a noun is about to be heard.

#3

 

A Preposition Tells You That a Noun Might Be Coming Soon

The next category of words that indicates that a noun might be coming soon is the preposition. The preposition is the first word of a phrase (group of words that is not a sentence) known as a prepositional phrase. A prepositional phrase begins with a preposition and ends with the object of the preposition. That is where nouns come in: The object of a preposition is usually a noun (to the STORE) or pronoun (to HIM).

Thus, a preposition tells us that a noun might be coming soon. Since my students (my personal ones and those using my books) learn prepositions early and often, it is a natural step to teach that when you see a preposition, a word or two or three over will either be a noun or pronoun: INTO the river; OVER the rickety, dangerous bridge.

#4

 

An Adjective Tells You That a Noun Might Be Coming

An adjective is a describer that tells you something about a noun or pronoun. It describes a noun when it comes before a noun (the KIND lady). It describes a pronoun when it is a predicate adjective—an adjective in the predicate part of the sentence (the second half of the sentence) that describes something in the first part of the sentence. Predicate adjectives can describe nouns (The boy is STUDIOUS—studious describes boy) and pronouns (He is STUDIOUS—studious describes he).

Some handbooks consider possessives, articles, and clarifying words to be adjectives. Regardless of whether you learned it this way or not, descriptive adjectives should be taught as signaling words for nouns. Students can learn quickly that when they see a descriptive adjective, a noun will usually be following. An adjective tells us that a noun is coming right away (pretty DAY) or that a noun is coming in a little bit (in the case of two or more adjectives in a row—the noun isn’t necessarily right after the first adjective): pretty, warm, sunny DAY).

#5

 

A Possessive Tells You That a Noun Might Be Coming

As mentioned previously, some protocols teach that a possessive noun (Donna’s) or possessive pronoun (her, its, our) is an adjective. Regardless of how you classify possessives, they tell you that a noun could be coming next (or soon, if there is a describer between the possessive and the noun. Thus, I teach my students that possessives OWN (or possess) something (often a noun). This could happen right away: It is HER bike. Or it could happen after a possessive and some describers: That is Donna’s pretty, smooth pen.

It might seem laborious to teach all of these types of “signals” for nouns. However, they are parts of speech that students learn in grammar and writing all of the time. So let’s teach all of the uses for them at that time and make finding nouns then matching nouns with their correct case of describers and even correct number of noun markers, etc., much easier. After testing my books with one hundred students a year for nearly twenty years, I am all about making concepts as easy as possible for our amazing students!

Thanks for Joining Donna to Learn About Grammar and Writing!

Check Out Other “5 Tips From Language Lady” slideshows!

5 Places to Find Language Lady/Donna Reish Teaching Grammar and Writing

Slideshow: 5 Beginning Preposition Tips

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5 Tips for Beginning Prepositions

#1

Start With Object Lessons

I start up my preposition teaching with young children by using objects to teach relationships. They learned that prepositions show position for recitation. Then I use an object such as a little Preposition Practice Pal. It’s a little toy,  like an army man, Polly pocket, or a character from a movie. They use this little character with a bathroom tissue  tube to show the position of the character to the tube.
A young student can learn up to one hundred prepositions with this method. For example as they manipulate their little character and a bathroom tissue tube, we say aloud,  “Birdie is UNDER the tube”; “Birdie is IN the tube”; “Birdie is AROUND the tube”; “Birdie is BETWEEN the tube”; “Birdie is AWAY from the tube”; “Birdie is THROUGH the tube.”

#2

 Use Rhymes and Mnemonics to Teach the Basics of Prepositions

I start all of my students out with the rhyme/recitation: “Prepositions Show Position.” One of the most important things that prepositions do is show a spatial relationship between one thing and another thing. We recite this rhyme weekly for several weeks and then do our practice with our objects.
Through the objects, as well as the rhyme, “Prepositions show position,” I am reinforcing the fact that a preposition has to have an object. I don’t even tell the students at this point that a preposition is the beginning of a prepositional phrase and that it has an object. They intuitively know that a preposition has an object that it is spatially related to. This makes it much easier later on to explain prepositional phrases. All of their positions with their toy and their tissue tube result in prepositional phrases naturally.

#3

Use Preposition Check Sentences to Teach the Spatial Relationship and the Time Relationship of Prepositions

Once students have learned the rhyme “Prepositions show position” and have practiced extensively with their objects to learn at least 20 to 50 prepositions, I move into the two Preposition Check Sentences that I use for all  levels from fifth grade and above. A Check Sentence continues to reinforce the spatial relationship: “The plane flew XXXX the clouds.” We have also used the sentence “The angel flew XXX the clouds” in our religious books. This first Check Sentence re-emphasizes what they have been doing with their little Preposition Practice Pals, except they start to do it in their heads rather than with physical objects. Most students can get up to 100 propositions memorized quickly with this check sentence alone.

The second check sentence that I use is one that shows the relationship of prepositions to time. While there is a small list of prepositions that have to do with time, there are enough to warrant their own check sentence. This Preposition Check Sentence  reads like this: “The boy played XXXX the break.” This check sentence accommodates the propositions that have to do with time: during, after, before, in the middle of, etc. 

#4

 

Don’t Rely on Songs or Rhymes Alone for Teaching Prepositions

Many students, myself included, have learned prepositions with songs or rhymes that have 30 or 40 prepositions in them. These lists are oftentimes  in alphabetical order, which helps with those many many propositions that begin with the letter A. However, since there are well over 200 preposition possibilities if you consider two or more words prepositions, compound prepositions, and prepositions that are used as other parts of speech at times, learning only thirty of them in a rhyme or song is not useful enough.
The other problem with learning them in only song or rhyme is that the song or rhyme has nothing to do with the usage of the propositions. While I use all types of songs, rhymes, mnemonic, jingles, and more to teach parts of speech, it is important that we use a mechanism that actually teaches students that use of that part of speech. Check sentence (for prepositions and for subordinators) teach students not only these lists of words, but they teach them these lists of words in the context of how they are used. In other words, they don’t just learn a list of prepositions, but they learn them in a spatial relationship sentence, which teaches them HOW they are used AND gives them a lengthy list of them in their repertoire. 

#5

 

Teach Students the Reason They Are Learning Prepositions As Early As Possible

As soon as students have an ample list of prepositions memorized, I teach them the reason that they are learning prepositions. The transition from learning a list of prepositions to finding prepositional phrases is a fairly easy one for students who have learned prepositions with a Preposition Practice Pal and Preposition Check Sentences. Just like in the Check Sentence when I asked the student “The plane flew in WHAT?” or “The plane flew around WHAT?” I do the same thing to teach prepositional phrases. First, students highlight prepositions in a paragraph, then we go through and put parentheses around prepositional phrases. We do this by my asking the question “Preposition WHOM?”  or “Preposition WHAT?” For example “By what?” (by the store) or “To who?” (to Joe). 

Once students can spot prepositional phrases easily, they learn that prepositional phrases are needed for two specific reasons. First, they are used as sentence openers. They learn that a prepositional phrase opener is often followed by a comma. They also learn prepositional phrases with in sentences are not followed by commas. Secondly, they learn to isolate prepositional phrases all throughout their sentences so that they can ignore the words in a prepositional phrases and match their subjects and verbs easily. For example, The girls (in the class) have straight A’s (not class HAS but girls HAVE). 

Thanks for Joining Donna to Learn About Grammar and Writing!

Check Out Other “5 Tips From Language Lady” slideshows!

5 Places to Find Language Lady/Donna Reish Teaching Grammar and Writing

Resources for This Slideshow:

1) Start With Object Lessons: https://characterinkblog.com/teaching-prepositions-with-facebook-live-teaching-video/#more-5345
2) Use Rhymes and Mnemonics to Teach the Basics of Prepositions:https://characterinkstore.com/product/beauty-beast-preposition-packet/
3. Use Preposition Check Sentences to Teach the Spatial Relationship and the Time Relationship of Prepositions: https://characterinkblog.com/preposition-practice-packet-product-intro-video/
4. Don’t Rely on Songs or Rhymes Alone for Teaching Prepositions:https://characterinkblog.com/beauty-and-beast-preposition-practice-new-digital-product/
5. Teach Students the Reason They Are Learning Prepositions As Early As Possible:https://characterinkblog.com/learn-teach-prepositions/

Short Story Character With Limited Senses – Video & Free Download!

 

In my experience, students either love story writing or hate it. They either have ideas floating around in their heads, waiting for the next story writing unit–or they feel that they have no ideas and hope for a stomach bug that week! This is one reason I use the Directed Writing Approach in my books–so that each step of each type of paper is laid out incrementally.

 

One common problem that students have when story writing is telling “first this happened; then this happened; after this, that happened; later on, this happened” by students. What could be an exciting, action-packed story becomes a narrative/retelling–or worse yet, an essay. Have you ever wondered how to help students from the start with this rambling problem?

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Slideshow: Five Tips for To, Two, and Too From Language Lady

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Five Tips for To, Two, and Too From Language Lady

#1

 

Start By Teaching the Numeral Two. 

This seems simple enough, but I am amazed at the programs that teach homophones in large groups or even with all of a word’s “confusing counterparts” to first grade students. 

The beauty of starting with TWO is that children as young as kindergarten are writing their first five or ten numbers in word form in their math books, penmanship programs, and spelling curriculum. (Yikes! Spelling programs for young students with spelling words based on common meanings {i.e. number words, beach words, food words, etc.} are not optimal.) However, young students who are non-readers have seen the word TWO quite often by kindergarten or first grade. 

#2

 When You Teach TO, Start With It as a Preposition. 

Have students learn that the word TO often shows position and comes before a THING. (Don’t worry about the technical terms of prepositions and nouns yet unless student is familiar with them.) This way, they can practice TO with phrases and short sentences–to the store, to town, to Mom, etc.

When you put TWO and TO together, do not use phrases for students to practice. It is rarely a good idea to teach parts of speech with phrases or words only. Parts of speech show FUNCTIONS of words within sentences. Thus, having students circle all of the verbs in a list of words is a VERY bad idea (ring, text, bike, watch, play—nouns AND verbs!). So…with the TWO and TO practice, have students fill in the blank or circle TWO or TO in sentences for practice. 

#3

 

Teach Tricks for Too for Older Students.

The word TOO can mean in excess (too much, too many, etc.) or in addition to (also). You can tell students that TOO means in excess when it has TOO many O’s!

Older students may be helped with the trick that AlsO has two vowels–and tOO has two vowels. (Whenever using tricks or mnemonics, if that trick is more confusing or not helpful to the student, drop the trick rather than causing further confusion.)

#4

 

Teach TO as the Beginning of an Infinitive (Verb) as Soon as Possible. 

When I start to teach second and third grade students simple preposition lists, rhymes, mnemonics, jingles, songs, and check sentences, I teach TO as the beginning of an infinitive right away. The purpose of learning those lists of prepositions is to spot prepositional phrases. The purpose of spotting prepositional phrases is to determine what a sentence’s subject and verb are. (The main subject and main verb are seldom found in a prepositional phrase.) 

Students are tripped up immediately in spotting prepositional phrases because of infinitives (to+verb). If we teach that TO is a preposition when it has a thing following it but is a special verb called an infinitive when it has a verb following it (to run, to jump, to be, etc.), they will be less confused when they encounter these (even if it takes a while at first to get used to looking beyond the TO for a thing or a verb). 

#5

 

Divide Practice for These Into Two Steps. 

First of all, have students practice writing V for Verb or P for Preposition beside infinitives and prepositional phrases that are bold fonted in sentence. You want to do the chunking of these for them. (Don’t ask students to do too many skills all at the same time–start with just telling whether each one is a V or a P in sentences such as The girl went to the store and The boy wanted to jump longer. 

Once the numeral TWO, the adverb (usually) TOO, and both TO’s are mastered, bring them together for final practice within sentences. (When they are all three together, I just have students fill in the blanks with the correct TWO, TOO, or TO—not tell each one’s function or type).  However, I continue to practice TO as a preposition and TO as an infinitive on into junior high in my books. It can be very confusing and elaborate in lengthy sentences. 

Thanks for Joining Donna to Learn About Grammar and Writing!

Check Out Other “5 Tips From Language Lady” slideshows!

5 Places to Find Language Lady/Donna Reish Teaching Grammar and Writing

Resources for this Slide

1. Start By Teaching the Numeral Twohttps://characterinkblog.com/the-spelling-notebook/

2. When You Teach TO, Start With It as a Preposition: https://characterinkblog.com/teaching-prepositions-with-facebook-live-teaching-video/

3. Teach Tricks for Too for Older Students: Learn how to use all kinds of Tricky Tricks to teach—https://characterinkblog.com/tricky-tricks/

4. Teach TO as the Beginning of an Infinitive (Verb) as Soon as Possible: https://characterinkblog.com/3-verb-types-tricks-to-teach-them/

5. Divide Practice for These Into Two Steps: https://characterinkblog.com/video-use-preposition-practice-packet/

Writing Boxes: Beauty & the Beast [Video]

Writing Boxes: Beauty & the Beast

Writing ideas. Writing prompts. Writing suggestions.

These are the things that cause children who do not know *how* to write to hate writing.

And it is often what we do to kids in an effort to get the writing. But they do not work for these kinds of kids.

So what works?

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