Hello! I am bad at getting my kids to write thier Essays. WE have studied them, in the past ds even has done a couple of reports on countries etc but it has been pulling teeth. This year we are behind in actual reports, and essays assigned. Some we used the verbal style of report where he took notes then talked to me about it for some work on his reading comprehension... I was testing him on that and he totally gets it, just hates the stuff he is learning about I guess from time to time and so he complains he cant remember it. Okay, so aside from the main points etc, is there anything you do to creatively teach , step by step essay writting? Is there a specific book? Both BJU and AOP are workbook forms, but I want to give him guided lessons with lined paper and have him come up with the essay following the steps. He is 14, and bright and actually can write quite well when I get him going but usually there is something to get him started. And me breathing down his back. Helping my little friend with her kids while she fights through essay writing I am finding she has the points system down, and what is supposed to go where too but is afraid of how it will sound. So is this common among adults or teens? I find the more I read the more I sound like the person I am reading or listening to. I was never more pleased than when my dh said I sounded like Charles Stanley in one of my studies once! lol!
Ugh! The dreaded Essay writing! I know what you're going through and I wish I had some advice. Seems like all the "helpful tips" on writing an outline or web makes writing the essay itself more complicated. Wish writing was a bit simpler....and more fun.
I bail out by sending my kids to a retired English teacher who spends a whole day teaching homeschool kids English. His "first" class is an essay/grammar class. And the youngest he accepts in it is age 12. He also teaches speech, research, British and American Lit, entymology.
I just remembered a curriculum that was created by some friends of mine. It was recommended to me by yet another homeschooling friend. I haven't looked at it extensively, but the friend who recommended it has 10 children all homeschooled and she has seen a lot of variations over the years! She says she much prefers it to Abeka and BJU. Her words were: "It's a tedious, but VERY thorough writing curriculum and far better than BJU or Abeka overall, though they are good". Anyway, here's the website: http://thewritefoundation.org/
I love Igniting Your Writing for teaching step-by-step how to write well. They start where so many programs don't: the sentence. The curriculum starts at learning to write a solid sentence and builds out from there. I wish I'd had this program when I taught English. I had secondary level students who'd been taught any number of horrible writing habits in elementary that I ended up having to break. The nice thing about this program is that you can use silly sentences to learn important writing skills. Learning to make words specific rather than vague, learning to combine short, choppy sentences, and learning to pare down rambling sentences are vital writing skills that don't necessarily require dry sentences to work with. Adding in a little silliness can make this part of the process more palatable.
mkel this looks god. Maybe next year I could start with this for part of his English if I keep him home. I am looking for something that I can use right now, actually too, that I can print off, I looked up the samples and may use a few of them to keep him flowing along with writing work, Or I may go back and pull out last years Writing Strands, I don't want to cause he hit a road block with them when he missed a day. I could start him out at the beginning and get him working in a separate note book though maybe... Is there anything else out there that I can print up the teacher stuff for? I really liked the way that write foundation has it set up, I know they are good but the samples make it really good! If we do co op next year I will for sure use it, then I can just have the parents pay for their own copy of the worksheets and get thier own binders and such .... I am wondering if your friend has a discount for groups?
JUST found this fun little website from Elements of Language that "models" different forms of writing for middle and high school.
