A Writing Tip for Every Year: Ninth Grade

A Writing Tip for Every Year: Ninth Grade

Ninth Grade: Teach pre-writing skills that are needed for the type of writing your student is doing.

Besides the aforementioned “writing idea” problem we sometimes create when we do not direct our students in their writing, another difficulty is that of not equipping the student with the skills necessary in order to write what we are asking him to write. It is so difficult for a student to complete a project if he has not been given/taught the skills that are needed in order to write that project well.

(more…)

A Writing Tip for Ninth Grade

A Writing Tip for Every Year: Ninth Grade

Ninth Grade: Teach pre-writing skills that are needed for the type of writing your student is doing.

I cringe when I see a writing project that requires various skills without the lessons on those skills as well. (Check out our Meaningful Composition samples to see how skills should be taught with every writing lesson, especially involved skills such as quotations, dialogue, scene setting, researching, and citing sources.) This next tips explains this more fully…. Read more →

Know How You Learn

Recently, my son and I were meeting about our novel. Joshua started to describe the changes he thought we should make to a particular scene and told me I could just jot down whatever I thought I needed to. I told him to hold on for a minute while I got a blank sheet of paper, then I promptly did the following:

1. Numbered each note as he spoke
2. Put sub notes under the note with the character’s initial and the motivational changes that Joshua thought we needed (M: Needs to begin this scene….)
3. Drew arrows to and from things as he spoke

Then when I was ready to rewrite that scene, guess what I did? I typed those notes all up–complete with the numbering and sub-numbering, etc.

Why am I telling you this? If you are a student, pay close attention to HOW you learn. I could not have written from paragraph notes. I could not have written with a word or two for each point. I could not have written from my handwritten notes–I needed to type it up in order to further understand it.

Whatever you do as a student to learn tells you a lot about how you learn! Utilize this information for test preparation, writing projects, and more. And like I always tell my students: “You know more than you realize you know!”

Pin It on Pinterest