We get asked a lot lately about how many of our products are now downloadable. Turns out that making 300 to 1600 page books into individual downloadable lessons and booklets takes a whole lot more time and effort than I envisioned! 😉
But we are doing it….little by little! This post will give you a little glimpse into what we have done so far and what our plans for the future are!
A Christmas Carol, Gift of the Magi, If You’re Missing Baby Jesus, The Christmas Tapestry, The Burglar’s Christmas, The Birth, The Luke Chronicles, Cosmic Christmas.….these are just a few of our favorite “young teens and up” stories that we read or listen to at Christmas. Just because our kids are all over twelve doesn’t mean we have to stop reading aloud at Christmas time. (As a matter of fact, we still read a favorite Christmas short story on our family decorating night and another one on our family Christmas Eve—with twelve adult kids!)
Which came first–the chicken or the egg? Or which comes first–the body or the opening paragraph? I have some strong opinions about this that I answer in today’s blog video/live class! 🙂 Additionally, this post contains a video lesson on creating opening and closing paragraphs for research reports. I teach my students (and I use this approach in my books) that there are over a dozen ways to create an opening paragraph. (See idea list below.) I also teach them that in upper level writing, they should be very specific in their opening and closing paragraphs. No more summarizing here and there (or restating everything you say in the paper!). I teach them HOW to write the various opening and closing types so that they can use them in their writing. Watch today’s video and follow along with a few pages of the text we used. (Jump Start II–coming out this month!)
With our Cottage Classes starting in all of our locations, we have been busy bees around here! Part of that has been creating teaching materials that our new teachers can use in the first few weeks of teaching (and that parents can use at home to reinforce what they are learning in our classes). So this post is going to introduce you to one of our new downloadable lessons (with a video lesson!) that you can use at home to teach Sentence-by-Sentence Outlining Over Given Material. Just watch the video with your student and have fun learning to write from an interesting given passage. Completely directed. Totally fun. Easy peasy.
Teaching writing is not for the faint of heart! It is the most subjective “subject” in school—and, consequently, can be one of the most challenging to teach. Oftentimes, materials designed to teach writing are more writing idea than writing instruction. They leave the student (and the teacher!) wondering exactly what to do to complete the writing prompt. This is one reason that after I write a book (one hundred in all!), test, test, and retest the book with real (or virtual starting this fall!) students to be sure that all of the steps are included and clear. Last week I shared a lesson from one of my books that I did with a mixed live/virtual class about writing from a given source. This week I’d love to give you another peek into my online writing classes for the fall with another cooperative “guinea pig” group!
It’s finally happening! I am finished with the Write On, Beauty and Beast books (five books; five levels; downloadable AND print books)—and they are going up at my stores!
Yay! That makes five Write On, Mowgli! books; five Write On, Beauty and Beast! books (by the end of next week); and two Write On, Peter Pan! books (with the other three coming the first of April). Check out the description of the Write On! books here.
The first one available is the Junior High book, and I love it! I have been testing the assignments with our one hundred cottage class students over the past two semesters, and it has been a blast!
