One of the best ways you can help a child become good in language arts (which carries over to all of his school work–since all school work involves reading, comprehending, organizing, etc.) is to help him become a good reader.

Over the past month, I have focused on teaching reading, reading aloud, reading instruction, phonics, and more.

(Check out some of those posts here:

Read Aloud Tips (with video!)

Reading Aloud Together…Builds Memories Forever!

Using Word Cards in Reading Instruction

Preparing a Child to Learn to Read

Phonics Program Round Up for Reading Instruction )

If your child is still learning to read, be careful that you don’t get caught up in the “do everything” part of language arts too soon. In the early elementary grades, your child’s primary focus should be on reaching reading fluency.

(This is why I have “reading” benchmarks in place for students who want to come to my complete language arts classes or purchase CQLA: (1) Pre A students should be able to read non-vocabulary-controlled picture books; (2) A students should be able to read easy chapter books.)

If you are still working on reading fluency, let me refresh you with some tips for that before I delve into teaching beginning writing:

1. Be sure he reads from a book every day. So much reading instruction nowadays is workbook oriented. This is like taking piano lessons while only doing theory books–with no actual playing time. Check out my readability info for choosing readers here!

2. Try the “you read, I’ll read” approach. Have him read a page or paragraph then you read a page or paragraph.

3. If he gets stuck on a word that you think he knows, remind him of what he knows about it:

a. Remember, this rhymes with light and bright. You had this word before.
b. Do you remember what the e at the end of the word makes the first vowel say?
c. How do you think Rabbit feels? Would that word be sad or silly based on how he probably feels?

4. If he is stuck too long or you do not think he knows a word, tell him what it is (and anything about it that might help him in the future) and move on. Do not get bogged down on each word.

5. Ask your librarian for help getting a reader that is truly at his level (or check out these vocabulary controlled readers). Do not believe those readers that say K level in the corner but contain two syllable words!

6. Read aloud to him from a chapter book or other book that he enjoys to make the reading experience pleasant for him.

7. Reward him for practicing reading–stickers, coins, candy–it’s worth bribing for!

I am going to move into beginning writing for a while here on the blog–sentences, sentences vs. clauses, writing sentences, verbs, etc.

Here are some tips for taking your child from a reader to a writer:

1. Teach him/her the five parts of a sentence—CAVES—Capital; All makes sense; Verb; End mark; Subject. Help the student find these things in his sentences or in sentences that he reads. Learn more about CAVES here.

2. Teach anything about the writing process informally that can be taught informally. Point out that a sentence begins with a capital letter as he reads to you. Ask him what the (?) at the end of the sentence means. Talk about why a word is capitalized in a sentence (it’s at the beginning or is someone’s name). These informal teaching times will carry over to his real writing.

3. Understand the difference between penmanship and writing. Penmanship is art. Pure and simple. I would almost say (but can’t bring myself to do so since I have a degree in elementary education and a two hour credit in penmanship!) that “you either have it or you don’t.” Writing is putting words together to form sentences then paragraphs, then stories/reports/essays/letters—anything! If your child has penmanship difficulties (as many young boys do), do not let this distract him from writing. Pen for him as he dictates to you. Teach him to type. Remember, penmanship is not writing. Writing is writing.

4. Show him that writing is just the spoken word written down. Have him talk slowly to you while you type. Read it back to him. Tell him that if he can speak, he can write (even if the penmanship and spelling are not there yet!).

5. When he is first learning to write sentences, do not make him sound out every word. Just tell him how to spell the tough ones and move on. There is even research out there now strongly suggesting that when it comes to spelling, “you either got it or you don’t.” Nowadays with computers and spell check, no person should be uneducated or feel stupid because of spelling problems.

6. Have him dictate sentences about anything (his day; his favorite show; his favorite game; etc.) and write them in large letters with a highlighter. Have him write over the highlighter with his pencil. Have him read the sentences back to you. Then make a big deal out of it—your child can write!

When starting to read and starting to write, a child needs a great measure of success to keep going and feel confident in what he is learning. Making the reading and writing connection in the elementary grades can help do that for your child.

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It has been said that when a banker or a counterfeit money “agent” learns about counterfeit money, he or she begins by learning what the real thing looks like.

I use this same approach to teach about sentences, clauses, and phrases in my language arts and writing books (Character Quality Language Arts and Meaningful Composition): teach the students what a real sentence looks like—and then teach what are not real sentences.

I teach what a sentence contains using a simple acronym: CAVES

Once a student learns what a real sentence is and can spot real sentences (and “non-sentences”), the possibilities for writing, sentence structure understanding, advanced sentence combining technique use, and more are endless!

Work on CAVES first—then your student will be able to do any and all of the following:

1. Tell the difference between a real sentence and a non sentence
2. Fix comma splices (since it will be obvious that this is a real sentence and that one is too)
3. Match subjects with their verbs in tense and number easily
4. Write with sentence openers clearly and in sophisticated manners
5. Combine sentences for all kinds of conciseness techniques and fancy shmancy writing

CAVES—it is what a sentence contains!
If you write a sentence and you are unsure of whether it is a “real” sentence, use CAVES.

When a sentence is not a “real” sentence, the culprit is usually the A one—All makes sense. And that “A” one will take us into sentences vs. phrases and clauses…on another day. Happy writing!

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1. They use my Directed Writing Approach!

In my Directed Writing Approach, every detail of every project is laid out for your student. None of my writing projects are “writing ideas” or “writing prompts.” Every writing assignment contains step-by-step instructions with much hand-holding along the way. The student is “directed” in how to write and what to write at all times—from brainstorming to research to outlining to rough draft and finally to revising.

My Directed Writing Approach takes the best methods I have discovered in order to teach each type of writing—color-coded research for research-based projects, “Topic of Paragraph” commitment for teaching paragraph breaks, The Three P’s of Persuasion for persuasive writing, the “section-paragraph-sentence” method for longer papers, story writing mapping, Paragraph House for young writers, 1-3-1 essay outlines, my Checklist Challenge for revising, and much more. Each Directed Writing Approach “method” is tried and true after fifteen years of my writing one hundred books and over fifty thousand pages!

Click on the picture above to view free samples of these books!

2. They contain a combination of projects—those with “given material” to write from and those that are completely original (in which student finds material on his own to use as his source).

Students are taught a wide variety of outlining methods in all of my books—Key Word Outlines From Given Material, Directed Brainstorming, Persuasive Mapping, The Paragraph House Outline, Split Paper Technique, Sentence-by-Sentence (S-by-S) Outlining from original sources, Q and A Outlines, Five W’s outlines, Scene Outlines for Story Writing, Formal Outlines for research, and much more.

I teach most writing types/projects by giving the student source material to take notes from first—then having the student branch out and write that same type of writing finding his own source. It is this combination of “given material” first followed by student-found material that gives the student confidence to write that type of paper or story. This method keeps the student from becoming too dependent upon given source material while at the same time helping him learn to find source material (or create his own!) after using given passages first. It is a win-win method.

Click on the picture above to view free samples of these books!

3. The skills that are needed for each writing project are taught within that writing project.

To ask a student to write a paper using three sources and two quotations without teaching the student the skills to complete those steps is cruel! When a project is being taught in my books, the student is also taught whatever skills are needed to complete the project.

 
For example, if the student is writing a story about an animal escaping, he will be taught words and vocabulary that describe various sizes and types of animals as well as how to use onomatopoeia to describe animal sounds. If a student is told to write a persuasive paper, he will be taught the elements of persuasive writing first. If he is writing a research report in which quotes are to be cited, he will be instructed first in how to use quotations (in an earlier lesson) then in how to cite them for that particular paper. These many “how to” lessons give students the tools to write whatever they are assigned easily and with confidence.

Click on the picture above to view free samples of these books!

4. Books are tested with over one hundred students each semester!

My books are not written by grammarians behind closed doors or even by experts who seldom work in small groups with students. (While my undergraduate degree in elementary education and my master’s work in reading specialist do help me occasionally, it is homeschooling for thirty-two years and testing my books every year {and writing and rewriting!} that give me my writing credentials.)

 
Character Ink books are written by teachers who write meaningful lessons then take them out and test drive them for two to five years with over a hundred students each semester. (My new 10 II: Four Research Reports has been tested for six years now—and took over a hundred hours to write and perfect the MLA/quotation citation methods lessons alone!)

 
Every year Character Ink has local cottage classes for homeschooled students in which small groups of students (six to ten per class) take either our complete language arts (Character Quality Language Arts) or our composition-only (Meaningful Composition) classes. As we test our books, we make notes in the margins, discuss them with our students (why was this one so hard for you when the last one was easier?), talk among the teachers, then go back and fix the books, tweak the lessons, and even drop lessons that are too confusing or uninteresting to students. You can’t possibly know if a lesson or project is a good one until you have sat across the table from eight junior high boys to watch their expressions (and/or glossed over looks in their eyes!). This is how we know our programs work!

Click on the picture above to view free samples of these books!

5. Student writing samples are provided for all original writing projects and portions of samples are provided for smaller assignments.

Our books have a little extra something that is seldom found in textbooks and certainly never found at the level of ours—student samples! Each of the original projects have a full-length student sample of that project. As a matter of fact, we use the student samples in our books to teach from—starting with Thesis Statements, Thesis Statements “Reloaded,” and other LINK sentences on to paragraph breaks, proper quotation use, scene development in stories, and much more.

 
Students understand the writing project so much better when there are models for them to look at and when they see what the expectations are for the project. Parents love our student samples because it helps them measure their student’s skills in following the instructions for each project (and gives the parent confidence to know if her student is completing the assignment correctly).

 
Our student writing samples are provided in all types of projects—expository essays, biographical reports, research reports, short stories, twice-told tales, persuasive essays, and more. Your student will know from the beginning what each project involves as the book takes him through a sample to see what great project he will be doing! Student samples are invaluable!

Need further evidence? Go to our blog and print off two weeks of free Meaningful Composition samples at each level (or several pages of the downloadable books). Try before you buy! You will be amazed at how quickly your students become accomplished writers—and how pain-free teaching writing really can be! 🙂

*Write On downloadable and print books (Write On, Mowli; Write On, Peter Pan; Write On, Beauty and Beast); Meaningful Composition; Character Quality Language Arts; and other downloadable e-books.

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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?

Very specific, detailed writing instruction! (See Cathy Duffy’s review of MC here…)

One of the tools that we use in grades two through six or so is Joshua’s amazing Writing Boxes.

Check out the video of me teaching from our new ones that will be out in our Write On, Belle and Beast books at the end of February!

Books that contain Writing Boxes:

Write On, Mowgli — Level I

Write On, Mowgli — Level II

Jungle Book Writing Boxes

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I was fortunate to teach my senior high school class of young high school boys how to write an Expository Essay. Since a couple of the boys were sick, I did a Facebook live so that those students could watch it at home and go through their book as I taught. So… I thought I would share it on here and give you some essay teaching tips for young high school students.

Watch the video here!

1. If you are new to teaching writing, I highly recommend starting with essay writing.

The range of difficulty and “fun” in essays can’t be beat. An essay can be fun (three reasons someone is a good super hero), hobby related (three best pies to make for holidays), personal (your three favorite vacation foods), straightforward (three colors of a rainbow), more formal (three quotations), or research-based (three reasons smoking should be banned in public buildings). It requires fewer advanced skills than story writing or research report writing.

Check out a two week sample from one of my intermediate essay books, Meaningful Composition 6 II.

2. If your high schooler has never written five paragraph essays before, I recommend that you start out with what we call our three topics and three paragraphs for the body (P’soB).

This is a simplified way of teaching students how to write multiple paragraphs when they are not used to it. In this approach, the student writes about three different things, such as three different favorite foods or three different beaches or three favorite novels etc. 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. We use this method extensively in our junior high writing books to teach students how to move into multi-paragraph writing painlessly.

Check out a two-week sample from my upper level high school essay book, Meaningful Composition 10:I.

3. Always have the student outline before he writes.

My books provide outlining spaces, topic of paragraph lines, link sentence lines, etc., to ensure that the student has all of the elements that are needed in an outline. Even without these, however, you can still ensure a complete paragraph by insisting that a student outline his paragraph thoroughly before he writes.

4. Do not expect a student to include too many unusual or “in-progress skills” and one essay.

For example, rather than saying research for this essay, you can simply say “put one piece of research information in each paragraph” rather than expecting a student to include unlimited quotations. 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. Don’t expect research based persuasive quotations, if he hasn’t learned how to research thoroughly or include quotations. In every project, a student should know how to do the skills that are expected of him in that type of writing.

(Have you gotten your free Write On downloadable book yet? There is one freebie for each level: Beginning Elementary, Upper Elementary, Junior High, Beginning High School, and Upper High School.)

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.

P.S. What are your essay-teaching problems? I would love to help you solve them by writing a blog post about that topic!

Love and hope,

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I’m excited to announce a new downloadable product that is super user-friendly and effective!  And…..it’s based on the story of Beauty and the Beast, so it’s super fun too!

I’ll give you the details of the product in a little bit, but I want to let you know how you can get your hands on this resource first.

If you are a subscriber of Character Ink blog, you will automatically get it in our Freebie Friday! (How cool is that?) Yep, I’m giving you a fifty-plus-page e-book to use with your students completely free (for a limited time!).

If you are not a subscriber and/or you are reading this blog post after the freebie has ended, you can still get ahold of this product at Teachers Pay Teachers, CurrClick, or Character Ink Store!

So now for the deets….

Beauty and the Beast Checklist Challenge is a downloadable e-book that walks students (and teachers!) through the first three-fourths of Language Lady’s effective Checklist Challenge. The Checklist Challenge is a “challenging checklist” of tasks that help students go through their writing, one task at a time, and revise, edit, add to, embellish, and improve.

The Checklist Challenge has the following characteristics/benefits:

(1) Each task is given separately (i.e. not just a big master list with no explanation). The tasks are explained and samples are provided.

(2) The checklist has check boxes (one per paragraph) for each essay/report/story that you can customize to a certain project. It is clear that a paper has four paragraphs, so most of the task should be done four times— once per paragraph.

(3) The tasks are skills learned in grammar. Once a child learns how to use quotations, he should practice them immediately by putting them in his writing. The Checklist Challenge marries grammar and writing in a way that other programs do not.

(4) Coding instructions are given so that a student can be taught to code his additions and revisions for easyteacher-grading.

And so much more.

This book is chock full of learning! There is a thorough sample essay that has all of the CC revisions penned into it and coded to teach you and your student how this is done. There is an essay given for the student to use to complete the Checklist Challenge. However, there is also instruction in how to write your own Beauty and the Beast essay to complete the Checklist Challenge on (if desired). Finally, there is an extra Checklist Challenge for you to print off and use with future essays, stories, and reports.

This book will teach you how to use Language Lady’s Checklist Challenge to improve all of your writing. It will show you step-by-step how to make changes that improve your writing drastically. It is very directed—meaning that you will not have to guess what to do next or how to change something or how to improve something. You will become a pro at the Checklist Challenge (for the essay in this book as well as future essays) after you finish with this book!

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The class: Senior High Composition. The place: Union City Community High School. The teacher: Mr. Leahey. The year: 1981. The student: Me….formerly straight A student for the last two years of high school…on the brink of breaking that perfect streak.

Until….it snowed.

Yep, it snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed.

And this girl, who had let herself get behind on creating two hundred index cards of information for her senior paper on Robert Kennedy, had a chance for redemption.

I can still remember the back ache at the end of the day.

But more importantly….I remember that at the end of eight hours of a “day off” due to inclement weather, with dozens of books strewn around me on the floor, I got caught up.

My 4.0 for the last two years would remain intact….because I had gotten caught up on my snow day.

Through that experience, I developed an incredible empathy for my future curriculum users and “book-testing” students.

I know first hand how difficult writing a research paper can really be for students. I understand how impossible it can feel to get caught up when you fall behind in the research process. And years later, I knew that I wanted a better way, an easier way, in my books.

(Thankfully, I had a terrific English teacher who truly helped us through those dozen sources and two hundred cards with compassion and lots of hand holding.)

Teaching research writing is not for the faint of heart. That is why I have detailed my Overview Source, Color-Coded Research, Bibliography Cards (with MLA Citation spots), and Notetaking Cards so fully in my books.

And tested, tested, tested these methods, tweaking the books (don’t ask my husband how much THAT cost me in editors and typesetters!) until I knew the approaches worked.

So where can you find these lessons (besides the two videos below of me teaching them to upper junior high/beginning high schoolers)?

Well, lots of places!

Specifically, Books IV and V of Write On, Beauty and Beast; Write On, Mowgli; and Write On, Peter Pan usually have at least one research report in them. (See the Tables of Contents and Projects Included at our store.)

There are also research reports in every first semester Meaningful Composition book (along with many other types of writing). You can find these at our store too—Meaningful Composition 5 I; Meaningful Composition 6 I; Meaningful Composition 7 I; Meaningful Composition 8 I; and Meaningful Composition 9 I. (There are two week samples of each MC book available to download, print, and “try before you buy”!)

For incremental, detailed learning of these skills throughout an entire semester, however, you will likely want one of my research-report only books:

Meaningful Composition 8 II: Junior High Research Reports

Meaningful Composition 10 II: Four Research Reports

Meaningful Composition 12 II: The BIG Research Report (Very challenging—do not start with this book!)

I hope you enjoy watching the teaching video (FB Live video) as much as I enjoy teaching these amazing kids! And as much as I enjoy teaching “the color-coded research” method!

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I recently had the misfortune of seeing a sign outside a chicken franchise that read hot, juicy, chicken. You can imagine my outrage!!!

It, of course, took us here at Language Lady to Comma Clues #2: Use Commas to Separate Two or More Describers (But Not Between the Describer and the Word Being Described!).

Two benchmarks that I teach for inserting commas between describers:

1. If you can reverse the order of the words that you are placing a comma between, and the phrase still makes sense, use a comma:

a. She had on that bright, beautiful dress. (She had on that beautiful, bright dress—YES…comma is needed.)

b. She had on that, bright dress. (She had on bright that dress–NO…comma is not needed.)

2. If you can put an AND in between the two words you are placing a comma between, and the phrase still makes sense, use a comma:

a. She had on that bright, beautiful dress. (She had on that bright and beautiful dress—YES…comma is needed.)

b. She on that, bright dress. (She had on that and bright dress—NO…comma is not needed.)

For those who like technical explanations, we teach that commas go between DESCRIPTIVE adjectives (bright, beautiful) but not between CLARIFYING adjectives (that, five, this–which are usually called something else anyway, like pronouns, etc.).

Watch me teach adjectives in my previous post!

For more on descriptive writing, creative writing, etc., check out my Write On, Mowgli; Write On, Peter Pan; or Write On, Beauty and Beast downloadable books!

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Students writing stories this week? Parents/teachers helping kids with stories this week?

Follow this “describing tip” we use with our student to help with the descriptions in your writing:

“Only use an adjective that will cause your reader to have a different picture in his mind than he would have without the adjective.”

For example, do not write “small, wooden, isolated cabin.” The picture that a reader gets when reading that is not much different than he would get if he just read “cabin.” By their nature, most cabins are small, wooden, and isolated (or at least we picture them as so).

Only use an adjective if it creates a different picture of the noun than the noun alone paints. Use specific and vivid adjectives–or omit them altogether.

I did a Facebook Live this week of me teaching adjectives and book reports to an amazing group of middle schoolers. Hope you enjoy it! (More on the book report later!)

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