Bit & Rudder

Homeschool Writing Made Easy

Essays

Ep #27 Writing Dread and How to Handle It

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Episode #27 Writing Dread and How to Handle It

Things on my dread list:

—making phone appointments (I know, I know, a little bit silly, but it’s something I have to force myself to do)

—dusting (people in my house have been known to write fun messages like “dust me” on some long-neglected surfaces)

–and, at the top of the list, grading papers (I love to teach, but dread the paperwork)

We all have things we dread. For some students, writing is at the top of the dread list. So what do you do when you have a student who dreads to write? That’s what I’m talking about in this week’s episode.

In this episode, I discuss 4 reasons that students dread to write:

☑️lack of clarity

☑️not enough practice to get into a groove and develop confidence

☑️viewing writing as a product rather than as a process

☑️believing that writing is a waste of time

Plus, I provide a list of strategies you can use to help students overcome their dread of writing.

Resources mentioned:

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, by Steven Pressfield

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Episode #23 ChatGPT and Essay Writing: My Policy Statement

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Have you tried out ChatGPT or other Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI)? If you have, you know that the things it can do are pretty amazing. 

I remember my son Ty (PT major, fitness fanatic) raving about its capabilities shortly after it became freely available in November 2022, because it was able to “miraculously” create a custom-made meal plan and exercise program in about 2 seconds, saving him many hours of time and effort. 

When I finally I got around to trying it out for myself more than a year later, I was equally impressed. But also concerned, as many educators are, about the potential for students to use AI unethically in their school work. 

So I set out to learn all I could about GenAI, because I realized that I needed to have a policy statement in place concerning GenAI before my students began to work on their first essay of the year. 

In this episode, I share my findings as well as the policy statement I developed. Some of the topics I cover are 

✅Why some educators think the college essay is dead and that it’s time to blow up the current system of traditional writing and try something new

✅Why other educators think the college essay is NOT dead and that it’s more important than ever to teach traditional writing skills

✅How some educators are striving to find middle ground by combining GenAI with traditional writing instruction

✅Why students need to be careful when using Grammarly

✅The reasons that all GenAI is banned in my English classes

Now if it’s just you at home with your kids homeschooling, you probably don’t need to develop a formal policy statement. But I do think you need to think about what your stance is on GenAI and how much you plan to let your student use it, because the issue is not going away—it’s only going to escalate as GenAI gets smarter and more prevalent. You want to get in front of this issue rather than chasing it later.

Links Mentioned:

“The College Essay Is Dead.” By Stephen Marche

 “The End of High School English.” By Daniel Herman

“The Case for Writing: Competency Is Essential.” By Annie Checkitelli.

 “The College Essay is Not Dead: Using Scaffolding and Presentations to Create ChatGPT-Resistant Research Projects.”

“AI Can Mimic Students’ Writing Styles. How Are Teachers Supposed to Catch Cheaters Now?” By Alyson Klein.

“In a Brave New (Writing) World, Let’s Hold on to Some Basics: Tech tools can ease many aspects of the writing process–but we still need to teach students the bedrock skills of writing.” By Betsy L. Woods.

“Why I’m Not Scared of ChapGPT.”

“1 in 3 College Applicants Used AI For Essay Help. Did They Cheat?”

“AI and the Death of Student Writing.“

“Oxford encourages students to use AI when writing essay“

“I’m a Student. You Have No Idea How Much We’re Using ChatGPT.”

“How AI could save (not destroy) education” TED Talk by Sal Khan

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Episode #19 Writing the Body Paragraphs

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Body paragraphs aren’t as flashy as introductions or conclusions, but they make up about eighty percent of any essay.

Eighty percent!

That’s a huge percentage, which means that we had better pay attention to them if we want our arguments to be strong and convincing.

So that’s what this episode is about: dissecting a body paragraph to see how it works and then using that knowledge to develop strong paragraphs of our own.

In this episode, I discuss

  • the four essential components of a body paragraph
  • the differences between coherence and cohesion and why your essay must have both
  • how many body paragraphs an essay should have (and how long they need to be)
  • three different ways to embed research smoothly into your writing
  • eight mistakes students make in writing body paragraphs (and how to fix them)
  • strategies for teaching students to write strong body paragraphs

If you have wondered how to help your students develop their ideas into strong paragraphs, then this episode is exactly what you’ve been looking for. All you have to do is click play.

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