Teaching MLA Research Reports is not for the faint of heart. After ten years of writing books with this method, I have worked and reworked the systems until I have some that students truly understand and can follow. They are interactive. They are visual. And they work.
When I post a live video of one of my writing classes on Facebook, I always get those same questions: When will you offer classes for people who don’t live near you? Are you going to be having online classes soon? And I keep saying “soon”! Well, soon is now here. We are officially having our very first LIVE online writing class (remedial writing, of sorts). I will enumerate the details below.
Feeling like you need a little help with your homeschooling this fall? Wishing someone could help you out with science labs, writing instruction, Spanish, or others? Do you live in the Fort Wayne or Bluffton area? Then you’re in luck! If you live elsewhere and wish someone could help you with writing, your wish is being granted (on Thursday mornings at 9:00!).
Check out the openings we still have for this fall. Note that we do have other classes that we might be able to squeeze someone into, but these are the ones that have two or more available spots. Feel free to pass this along to friends and family!
The only thing more common in student writing than a run-on sentence is probably the run-on paragraph. Yep…run and run and run and run. And it isn’t the sweet student’s fault! (I have spent twenty years trying to help amazing kids not to be stressed about grammar—I would never blame them! 🙂 ) Paragraph breaking is often not taught well. (I know I wasn’t taught it—I can remember eye-ball measuring my text to see when I should start a new paragraph when I was in school!) This is why we emphasize deciding on what each paragraph will contain ahead of time (and why when kids in our classes do not write their Topic of Paragraph on the outlining space provided for that, they get docked one LETTER grade per missing paragraph topic line; it’s that important!).
Most local students have heard the sad news that Joshua is no longer teaching with us at Character Ink. He stewed about the decision for weeks, but he has decided to take on more responsibilities and year-round work with the paint company that he has been working for twenty years at least part time/summers, etc. (since he was fourteen!). We are so sad that we will not be teaching together, but we are happily spending more family time with him than ever before with his extra free time. (He used to be tied up most evenings preparing for classes—he was truly the most dedicated teacher I have ever seen!)
And while we’re on sad/happy announcements, Jonathan will also be leaving our cottage classes as he has just accepted his first pastorate in Fort Wayne, Indiana. These two teacher losses have resulted in no social sciences (except for Economics by Ray), literature, Greek, and some specialty writing classes. Donna continues to teach many CQLA and writing classes (including a few online live ones!) and will keep her private students going full force. Kayla (lead nurse, former missionary, M-Div student) will keep teaching our sciences/labs and Spanish. Your students will still be in great hands! 🙂
I had my first test run of an online video class with some amazing guinea pig students from Israel! We are offering a couple of select classes this fall as online live video classes—CQLA Level B, CQLA Level A, Research Reports. So when someone said they’d like to join me for a few weeks this summer online, I asked them to be my guinea pigs—and my first online class was born! This particular lesson was one from halfway through our new-this-fall (but tested eight semesters over the past few years!) Meaningful Composition: Jump Start (a remediation book). It is a lesson about writing from a given source.
