Planning Ahead!

I am amazed at how many parents are already discussing plans for the next school year. Like seeing Valentine's gifts in the store the week after Christmas, it seems that parents request information about classes earlier and earlier. For that reason, I spent part of the holidays completing revamping my CBB website. Many thanks to my sweet son, JP, who was such a tremendous help. He is like having my own personal Geek Squad. I do understand the need to feel like you are moving forward. 

Often in January, I found myself, as a homeschool mom, realizing that the "long" semester was ahead. The first half of the year is so nicely broken up by holidays, but the second half seems to go on and on!

I also tended to feel a bit of panic at what hadn't already been accomplished. If you feel that way, some tips for handling the upcoming semester might be helpful. 
1. Take a few minutes and evaluate the previous semester. Don't dwell on what wasn't accomplished but focus on what you and your children did together. You can't get the time back, so lamenting it won't help.
2. Set a few reasonable goals for the coming semester. Try not to overdue it. Pushing too hard will probably only result in frustration. Try just finishing up a project you started with your child, evaluate that first draft that has been sitting on your desk over the entire holiday season or finish reading that novel together. Don't give up on what you started the first semester, but finish some things that will give you and your child both a sense of accomplishment.
3. Don't jump over skills and move on. Sometimes we're behind and we just think that we need to be writing well developed paragraphs rather than finishing up those parts of speech. Don't move forward until it's time. Mastery is more important than a checklist. 
4. Go ahead and plan for the upcoming year. Don't forget what you want to accomplish now, but if it gives you peace to know that you're working on future goals, then definitely do it!

Most importantly, enjoy your time with your children. As I watch mine return to work and college, I delight in my memories of having schooled them. While they may not always think it was the perfect experience, I know that we would've missed out on so much if we hadn't homeschooled.

As this new year arrives, God bless your family and your schooling! I am eager to help parents with teaching writing, literature and history, so be sure to contact me if you have any questions. Answering questions in blogs often leads to helping out more people than you realize!

In Christ,

What is Relevant Writing and How Do I Teach It?

Many of my students' parents and readers of my blogs have commented on a phrase that I use "relevant writing."  This idea encompasses the thought that relating writing to what children are already learning makes the most sense. It's the difference between treating writing as a life skill rather than an academic subject. 

I taught first grade in a private school for several years. Although it's a wonderful age to teach, I was often frustrated by the writing assignments from our language arts curriculum. I wondered if the authors ever actually worked with young children. The assignments often required students to think of original material with very little direction. Children at that age have lived a very limited life. How many original ideas could a first grader possibly have? The way I solved the problem was to adapt the writing assignments so they related to other material that we had been reading and experiencing. I used the same method when I taught my own children, and others, to write as a homeschool mom.

Relevant Writing Strategies You Can Use in Your Homeschool

• As you plan activities in other subject areas, such as science and history, combine writing with specific concepts from those subjects. Have your child retell a historical event in writing or explain a science concept. 
• Utilize activities such as field trips, family vacations and other special events as writing opportunities. Be sure to create specific assignments rather than general ideas like "Describe the field trip" or "Write about our family vacation."
• Choose assignments that are developmentally appropriate for your child.
  
• Make sure you and your child have a clear understanding of the goals of the writing assignment before starting. Writing assignments make more sense when students know what is expected.
  
•  Vary the length and depth of writing assignments. Every written assignment doesn't have to be a report or essay. Shorter writing assignments can often serve the purpose, cause less student stress and make it easier for you to grade.
• When assigning longer assignments, such as reports, break it down into parts such as notes, thesis statement, outline and multiple drafts.
• Consider giving your child multiple options for writing assignments. Students often feel more empowered and eager to complete work when they have choices. No more than three choices will alleviate undo pressure for most students.
• Give your student's written work as much attention when grading as you expect him or her to give it when writing. Discuss the writing, both positives and negatives, and allow for more than one draft, if needed. Encourage your child to improve his or her writing without demanding perfection with every assignment. Keep in mind that writing is a process that improves with practice and additional skill level.

If you view writing as a life skill and not a series of lessons or an academic subject, you'll transfer that perspective to your child as you teach. If it is a burden and hardship for you, if you can't see it as an essential life skill, your child will view it that way as well.

Happy Teaching!

Writing Questions Parents Ask

I often receive emails from homeschool parents with questions about writing. In my classes, I encourage my students to ask questions in front of the whole class because often other students benefit from the answers. With that philosophy in mind, I thought I'd devote my early blog posts, starting today, to sharing the answers I have given to parent questions. I have adapted some of my answers to be more beneficial to the general parenting public and of course, I am not revealing any personal information about parents doing the asking.

If you have a question about teaching your child to write, please don't hesitate to ask. I don't have all of the answers but I'll be happy to try and help!

Diagramming Sentences - Is this a valuable writing skill?

This question came from the mom of a middle school student. She tends to be literature based in her teaching and I think she was struggling with work that might seem more like "busy" rather than fruitful. Good question in my book!

I have a history with diagramming sentences, so I may be carrying some baggage here. :) I remember spending much time in grammar class working on those diagrams. I even vividly remember the textbook cover and the page layout. I dreaded those assignments although I generally aced them. Honestly, I dreaded most grammar lessons. Probably sounds funny coming from a professional writer and educator. However, if I hadn't taken creative writing in 10th grade, I would've left high school despising English. Once I realized the value and beauty of putting words together in a manner that flowed and demonstrated my ideas, I loved writing. All of that grammar never really translated over for me. In fact, I am not very good with grammar rules to this day. I have to use a grammar resource for tough student questions. Yet, I do know when writing is right and when it's wrong, in most cases. It just makes sense to me because I had a teacher who made it make sense.

As an educator, I am not a fan of diagramming sentences except in the rare case that it helps a specific child visualize how to use different parts of speech and construct various sentences. I do think that particular case is rare because I have found that my students who spent time diagramming before attending my classes are generally no better at constructing intelligent sentences than students who did not diagram. It's like memorizing the parts of speech and reciting their definitions. You might understand that an adjective modifies a noun, but if you don't practice using adjectives and reading well written literature utilizing adjectives, that definition won't help your writing.

I sort of think of diagramming sentences as a way of turning writing into math. Writing is one of the most unique skills you can learn. It involves both subjective and objective evaluation. That is the main reason most parents don't enjoy or feel confident evaluating their children's writing. Diagramming sentences have a right or wrong answer, they're easy to grade (assuming you can read your child's diagrams) and may demonstrate some level of skill. Unfortunately, they don't demonstrate whether your child can or will be able to effectively create a sentence.

With so many "writing" programs out there focusing on completing grammar pages, including diagramming sentences, I think that parents are astonished to find that after years of practicing such skills in isolation, their children still don't write well or want to write. That is due to the fact that you can understand grammar without understanding how to utilize it in writing. Few children naturally make the transition from workbook page to paragraph development.

I know there are plenty of educators and home school parents who disagree, but my experience, over twenty years of it, supports my point. I learn to teach better from watching how my students learn and I never used a grammar workbook, worksheets or had my children or students diagram sentences. Amazingly, many of them have turned out to be outstanding writers. I don't believe in luck, so praise God for His blessings on my classes.

Next blog...if not worksheets and workbooks, how do I teach writing? This is one of the most common questions I receive. See you next time with the answer! 

God bless,

Five Mistakes We Make and How to Overcome Them

As parents, we can't expect perfection from ourselves. However, having raised two children, it's much easier now to look back and see where I made mistakes. I am sure that's true of most parents. When it comes to writing, we have so many opportunities to mislead our kids without even trying. Having worked with many parents and their children to overcome rough writing beginnings, I've found that certain mistakes are very common.

MISTAKE #1

Start writing with our children too early. I'm a big fan of developmental learning. For example, my daughter was reading at 4 years old and my son didn't read until the end of first grade. I read extensively to and with both of them, but developmentally they were just moving at different rates when it came to academics. Many parents believe once a child is reading, writing follows quickly behind. That's not true for many children. Reading isn't near as abstract as writing for most children. Unless a child expresses a serious interest in learning to write, the best time to begin serious writing education (parts of speech, sentence structure, paragraph design, etc.) is 3rd grade. 

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

If you have a young child, use the books you're reading as examples to emphasize specific writing concepts. For example, point out how authors always end statements with periods and questions with question marks. Talking through writing concepts from a young age utilizing books will make writing more relevant to your child. Copy work also provides an excellent starting point for young writers. Select a passage (a few sentences to a full paragraph) from books you're reading together and have your child copy it. Then point out the various writing skills used in the passage (capitalization, punctuation, parts of speech, etc.). Third grade offers an ideal time to begin working with parts speech, strong sentences and even paragraph development.

MISTAKE #2

We expect grammar workbooks to produce strong writers.  Often parents spend tremendous time on grammar, spelling and vocabulary workbooks and then wonder their children don't translate those lessons into effective writing. Many children take spelling tests, score a 100% and then misspell those same words in a written assignment. Relevancy is essential for proper learning. If a student doesn't understand why grammar connects to writing, then he won't apply anything he's learned from those grammar workbooks. Teaching skills in isolation rarely produces a strong writer. Few children naturally make the transition from workbook to independent writing, although we often expect them to do so.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION

It's important to provide opportunities for students to use the skills that they're taught in the workbooks. Personally, I prefer skills lists. You can begin by using an editing checklist, such as the one on Helpful Tools page of this blog, to insure that you've taught your student the necessary skills. I never used a workbook with my children. I simply went through the list of writing skills, demonstrating them and then having my children practice them. I might teach a lesson on nouns, but rather than have my children fill out a worksheet, I worked with them to find the nouns in their own writing or in books we were reading at the time. That makes sense to them. So, if you're relying on workbooks to expose your child to grammar, spelling or vocabulary skills, make sure you take the next step to demonstrate how they should apply those skills to actual written work.

MISTAKE #3

We neglect teaching writing because of our own fears. I meet parents regularly who find writing fearful and unfortunately in most cases, they transfer their fears to their children, although it's not usually purposeful.  This fear can seriously stilt a child's overall education since writing is such an essential skill. 

POSSIBLE SOLUTION

If you find yourself in this position, you really only have two options: overcome your fears or hire someone to teach your child to write. I have tutored and guided parents who longed to teach their children to write but didn't want to use an outside teacher. I've had parents sit in on my classes with their children so we made the process a combined effort. Often, parents prefer to just put their children in my classes. The funny part is many parents overcome this fear even as their children learn from me because the child's growing confidence affects the parent's as they work together on homework and class assignments. Whatever you do, don't ignore writing with your child because putting it off after 3rd grade only makes it more challenging for your child later.

MISTAKE #4

We give difficult assignments without prior instruction. Homeschool parents love to assign writing assignments. I am amazed at parents who tell me that they asked their 4th grader to write a story without ever examining the components of a story or explaining the steps for writing a story. We want our children to succeed but sometimes we set them up to fail. Scripture speaks to us as parents about frustrating our children and requiring assignments without instruction will do just that! It's better for a child to write a single well developed sentence than a poorly developed paragraph. With writing, quality always supersedes quantity.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION

Before you give an assignment, examine which skills your student will need in order to complete it successfully. If necessary, break the assignment into steps to insure that you've covered all necessary skills. For example, just coming up with a topic can cause great consternation for an inexperienced writer. Walking your student through possible topic ideas can ease that stress.  Writing is a process whether it's informational (topic selection, researching and note taking, creating a thesis statement, outlining, writing drafts, editing, re-writing drafts)or fictional (topic selection, brainstorming, outlining, story develop, writing, editing, re-writing). If you skip steps in the process, the job becomes much more challenging. Rather than making a single writing assignment, consider breaking up the job up into multiple assignments.

MISTAKE #5

We don't properly evaluate our children's writing. Often because parents feel inadequate to evaluate their children's writing, they just don't do it. They assign writing work but never really grade it. I have met many moms who have stories, essays and more stashed away in a folder because they just don't feel confident grading their children's written work. Other parents don't grade writing because of the time and energy it takes. As a writing teacher who works with many students on varying levels of ability at the same time, I know that grading written work requires patience and endurance. 

POSSIBLE SOLUTION

A couple of options exist for dealing with this problem: if you're not willing to take the time to grade your child's work, you shouldn't assign it or give your child the assignment, but hire someone else to evaluate it. I do offer hourly evaluation services, reasonably priced, for all levels of student writing. I began to offer these services when more and more moms came to me guilt-ridden over having not evaluated their children's written work.

There are plenty of other issues related to teaching our children writing, but overcoming these five basic mistakes provides a firm foundation for success. Are there issues that you have concerning teaching your children to write? Leave a comment on this blog post or email me, and I'll be happy to provide any help that I can to make your teaching life easier!

May God bless you as you strive to raise writers!

 

I've Been Where You Are!

Okay, maybe I haven't been where ALL of you out there are right now, but I've raised two writers. I've raised two very different writers and through my classes, I've helped raised many more! 

My oldest, Ally, tricked me into thinking that homeschooling meant obedience, organization and achievement. Then my sweet son came along, John Paul, to teach me that every child is different! :) Ally wrote easily and to be honest, during those years, I struggled to understand why parents found teaching writing so challenging. John Paul despised writing...he disliked how long it took, the way it required him to think and the idea that even after he finished an assignment, he would most likely have to make corrections and submit it again! However, John Paul taught me how to really teach writing and helped me develop patience, a least a little, with students, often boys, who don't see the value of writing. 

I worked for many years with my son on his writing and after multiple angry sessions, tears (often mine) and finally, a resolution that I would only raise one writer despite the fact that I was a professional writer, I started to give up. Just about the time I decided to focus on the my son's gifts and not his shortcomings, right between 8th and 9th grade, John Paul started writing. Not only was he willing to write, he had apparently listened to me a little over the years and wrote fairly well. He then shocked me by editing and correcting his own work! The fruits of my labor became like sweet nectar. Today, as a junior in high school and a part-time college student, John Paul writes well enough to stay on honor roll.

It is doubtful that either of my children will ever write for a living. Ally, as a PA grad student, is headed for the medical field and John Paul's dreams revolve around art, but both of them will be able to effectively communicate as writers and that's all I really desired. I just wanted my children to develop the life skill of writing, just as I wanted them to speak articulately, comprehend well and understand how to do a load of laundry.

I've been frustrated, ready to pull my hair out, wishing there was some magical formula out there to teach my children to write. Although that formula never appeared, God graciously provided me with an understanding of the process of writing and the ability to evaluate other people's writing. He shared with me a love to spend my life writing, helping others learn to write and assisting parents who just want their children to write. Honestly, I have been where some of you are right now. Let me just tell you that there's hope, truly there is!

I designed this blog to bless other families in need of encouragement and direction in raising up writers. My hope is that my post topics will be derived from your questions and your needs. So, please don't hesitate to post a question at any time.

If you're in immediate need of writing classes or evaluation services, visit my website, Classes by Beth, and see what I have to offer there as well.

God bless you as you teach your children,