by Donna | Dec 14, 2015
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.
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by Donna | Dec 14, 2015
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 →
by Donna | Nov 19, 2015
Seventh Grade: Teach your student to apply his grammar learning to writing.
While my students often groan when they are told to mark the Checklist Challenge for that week’s homework assignment, they know (and I know) that it really does help. A student just told me this week that her sister had her scan and email her a copy of her Checklist Challenge to use in college—because she had used our CC for every writing project and knew how helpful it can be in revising writing…..
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by Donna | Nov 10, 2015
Sixth Grade: Use good writing models for your student to write from.
Using good writing models for students is an outstanding teaching tool—as long as you do not use given source writing only. Students need to use a model to write from, then write that same type of writing themselves. This week’s tip focuses on how I do that with my students….
by Donna | Oct 13, 2015
Third Grade: Use a Question and Answer Template to teach this age group how to write a paragraph.
One of the biggest obstacles facing young writers is that we often do not teach them how to write. We have writing idea books galore. We study a topic in social studies or literature, and we tell our student to “write about it.” Even when we give a topic (“Write a paragraph about your dog”), a third grade student (okay, third grade boy!) will often say, “I don’t know what to write.”
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