Bit & Rudder

Homeschool Writing Made Easy

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Episode #24 How to Write a Personal Narrative Essay

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Episode #24 How to Write a Personal Narrative Essay

Have you noticed that stories are everywhere? Everyone loves a good story. Stories aren’t just for entertainment though. They also help us connect with people and make sense out of the world. Today’s topic is about the personal narrative—narrative is just another word for story—why it’s important for your student to learn to write this kind of essay and the practical steps for teaching it. 

In this episode, I discuss

✅how a personal narrative is different from fictional storytelling

✅the tried-and-true formula that you can use for most narrative essays

✅the importance of descriptive language in narrative writing and a simple strategy for helping students prioritize it

✅where to go to find 500 narrative prompts and sample narrative essays

✅Plus, details on how to join me and my AP students for National Novel Writing Month


Links Mentioned:
Nanowrimo Young Writers Program

Western Technical College: List of Narrative Essay Samples

Oregan State University: 500 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing

Illustration of Descriptive Writing (Essay A, Essay B)

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Episode #20 Getting Organized for the School Year

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Do you have a plan for how your children will learn and practice writing this year or are you still figuring that out??

I want to try to help you with that today by talking about some of the ways that people sabotage themselves in their thoughts about writing, and also some specific, practical ways that you can incorporate writing into your schedule this year. 

In this episode, I discuss 

  • ✅how to find the middle ground between overplanning and not enough planning
  • ✅”I’ll focus on that next year” and 6 other thoughts that can sabotage your plans 
  • ✅why students should not be completely on independent study for writing
  • ✅a simple plan for setting up your writing classroom
  • ✅why I strongly recommend having students learn and practice the different modes of writing
  • ✅an easy curriculum to use for writing this year

It takes a minute to construct a good plan, but it saves you so much time and headache in the long run. I know you are busy, but trust me if will be worth it to come up with a good plan for your writing classroom.

To help you out with that, for the last time you can purchase my course Help Your Homeschooler Become a Confident Writer for the bargain price of $29. 

Here is some of the value you’ll get in this course:

–Step-by-step guides for teaching a variety of essays
–Instructions for evaluating student assignments
–Focus skill lessons that address specific writing problems
–Complete workbooks for students and instructors
–A special bonus on journal writing

I created this course four years ago and even though it still has tremendous value, I’ve learned a lot since then through my own teaching experience as well as from feedback I’ve gotten about the course.

So that is why I am in the process of revising and updating it. But for a little while longer you can get this original course at the bargain introductory price of under $30.

Once I revise it, and redesign it, the price will go up significantly; so if you are looking for a deal, this is the time to act. ⏱️

Link to online course: Help Your Homeschooler Become a Confident Writer

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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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Ep #11 To AP or Not to AP?

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Homeschoolers are often in a quandary when it comes to proving their excellence as students. How do you convince the scholarship committee or the college admission board that you really are a superior candidate when your mom is the one writing your transcript? One way that students can prove their merit is by taking AP courses and doing well on AP exams. But figuring out this process as a homeschooler can be little tricky and confusing, which is why I decided to devote an entire episode to this topic. In it I discuss

  • The two different AP English courses and which one to take if you want to skip college composition classes
  • How to use AP Course Audit to get your course approved and why it matters
  • The amount of time and money you save by scoring well on the AP exam
  • A key resource that AP students can access to help them succeed in the course and on the exam

I don’t cover everything there is to know about AP English, but I did pack the essentials into this no-nonsense discussion.

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Ep #6 How to Have Students Write about What They Read—Part 2: Writing as You Go

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Ep #6 How to Have Students Write about What They Read—Part 2: Writing as You Go

How often are you having your kids write? If you said, not often enough, then this might be the episode for you! In it, I discuss of a variety of ways that you can incorporate writing into your reading/literature curriculum. So whether you want your child to write every day or just once a week, you’ll find a strategy to help you reach your goals.

Here are the 10 choices I explain in this episode:

  1. Author biography (provides a short research project and develops the skills of summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting).

Organization plan:

Introduction–Summary statement about the author including birth/death dates and what the writer is most famous for

Body paragraphs–Childhood and early life; writing career

Conclusion– Anecdote/interesting story/or several interesting things to know about the author

  • Research a historical event related to the novel
  • Pick a quote from the chapter and explain why you think it is important
  • Character analysis—pick five details about the character and explain what they reveal about the character
  • Point of view—write from a different point of view
  • Tone—identify the tone of a passage, and then rewrite the passage to create a different tone
  • Symbol—explain how the symbol functions in a particular chapter
  • Imagery/Metaphor/Simile/Allusion—close reading—pick 3 to 5 examples and explain how they enhance the meaning of the passage
  • Theme—(topic and significance of topic) within a chapter
  • Conflict—Describe the conflict and identify the type of conflict as internal (individual versus him/herself)) or external (individual versus others, the environment, or the supernatural)

You can use these strategies over and over again with any kind of longer fiction.

Links mentioned

The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/55618025

Tone Charts

Tone and Mood Examples | Free Printable PDF

https://vocabularyhome.com/general/tone-vocabulary-list/

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#5 How to Have Students Write about What They Read—Part 1: Writing at the End

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#5 How to Have Students Write about What They Read—Part 1: Writing at the End

This year I get to teach so many incredible works of literature: Beowulf, Macbeth, and To Kill a Mockingbird to name a few. And of course I want my students to be totally enraptured by everything I assign. (If only!) I know that one of the best ways to get them to engage deeply with the texts is to write, write, and write some more. Sure, they may grumble a little from time to time—literary analysis is exhausting work after all—but the more they fatigue those brain muscles, the stronger they grow as thinkers and as writers. They learn to build better arguments and examine complex issues more deeply.

Because I know writing is so important, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to integrate it into my reading assignments. In this episode, I’m going to share with you some of the elements I return to again and again. These ideas are by no means original with me. In fact, if you’re looking for wildly creative, outside-the-box writing suggestions, then you’ve come to the wrong place. Instead, I’ve put together a selection of tried and true ideas that have been used by many an English teacher throughout the years. Most of them will work with a variety of texts and all of them are homeschool friendly and easy to use.

This episode focuses on writing that you can assign after a student has completely finished reading a text. (In the next episode, I’ll share ideas that you can use as the student reads each chapter or section.)

In this episode, I discuss

  • How to set a goal for different writing levels
  • How to turn your student’s dislike of a text into an essay
  • An easy method for doing a character analysis
  • Six writing options to use after students finish reading a text

Links mentioned

Teachers Pay Teachers

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/

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How to Teach Writing to Middle School and High School Students: Step 5—Evaluation

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#4 How to Teach Writing to Middle School and High School Students: Step 5—Evaluation

Step 5: Have a plan to evaluate student writing

Would you rather grade a math test or an English paper? I bet you said math paper, right? With its very convenient answer key and one correct solution for each problem. No sweat.

Grading essays is a whole other story. Because there isn’t just one correct way to write an essay—there are so many variables, and what standards are you supposed to use anyway? How do you tell the difference between a “good” paper and a “bad” one? And then how do you explain to your student what they need to work on to improve for next time?

If you are nodding your head because you can identify with the struggle, then you are going to love this episode because I explain how to use a simple grading rubric to evaluate most kinds of writing. Don’t worry if you aren’t familiar with the term “rubric.” I’ll let you know what it is it and tell you exactly how to use it.

In this episode, you will also learn

  • The big mistake most homeschool parent/teachers make when grading essays
  • Why you shouldn’t mark every grammar and spelling mistake
  • The specific criteria you can use  to grade nearly every essay your student writes

If that sounds good, you’ll definitely want to download the two PDFs that go with this episode:

  • A blank grading rubric that you can use over and over again
  • An example of a filled out grading rubric

I’ll be referencing those documents during the episode, so you’ll want to grab them ahead of time if you can.

That brings us to the end of the four-part series on how to teach writing to older students. Here are the steps one more time:

Step 1: Have students keep a structured journal (episode 1)

Step 2: Understand the writing process and help your students apply it to their writing (episode 2)

Step 3: Learn the main types of writing (episode 3)

Step 4: Plan out your writing calendar—how many papers and which kinds of assignments (episode 3)

Step 5: Have a plan for how to evaluate student writing (episode 4)

Remember, it’s not enough to have a good plan. You have to get in motion. You don’t have to wait for the beginning of the school year to start. You can start today, or at least tomorrow, with the journal writing plan.

I hope you feel empowered and ready to make writing a priority. You can do it!

Links mentioned in this episode:

Journal Writing Plan

Writing Process Cheat Sheet

Grading Rubric

Grading Rubric Example

Writing Course

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