Bit & Rudder

Homeschool Writing Made Easy

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Ep #15 Research Papers Part 3

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Ep #15 Research Papers Part 3

Today’s episode is the last of three parts in the Research Papers series. Be sure to listen to Part 1 and Part 2 first because they lay the groundwork for today’s discussion.

In this episode, I share with you

  • the essential prewriting step that makes writing the rough draft nearly effortless
  • how to craft effective introductions, conclusions, and body paragraphs
  • the importance of embedding research within the flow of your writing
  • one key mistake that students often make on their works cited page and how to correct it
  • plus a whole lot of examples from a model student paper so that you can “see” what I’m talking about

This is another meaty episode with a wealth of information. You probably will want to take notes, and you’ll also want to grab the free Research Paper Checklist to help you remember the steps and stay organized.

Links Mentioned

Research Paper Checklist
OWL (Online Writing Lab at Purdue)

Peer Editing Guide for Research Papers

Grading Rubric 

Example of How to Use the Grading Rubric

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How to Teach Writing to Middle and High School Students: Step 2—The Writing Process

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#2 How to Teach Writing to Middle and High School Students: Step 2—The Writing Process

Understand and use the writing process

My goal in this series is to give you—the homeschool parent/teacher—a straightforward, tactical plan for teaching writing to older students. In the last episode, I explained how easy and effective structured journals can be, especially if your child lacks confidence as a writer. Journals aren’t exactly magical, but pretty close—and so very easy to implement.

So that brings us to the next step which is all about the process of writing—and it has steps too—perfect, right? Because steps give us a pathway—from blank page to finished product.

In this episode, I talk about

  • How to help students find and explore a topic so that they never again have to say “I don’t know what to write about”
  • The crucial difference between revising and editing, and why it’s important to do both
  • Why the first version of a paper should not be the only version
  • One clever trick for proofreading

In this nuts-and-bolts episode, I take you through every step of the writing process

  • Prewriting
  • Drafting
  • Revising
  • Editing
  • Publishing

And I provide plenty of examples so you can see this powerful tool in action!

Be sure to grab the cheat sheet I created for this episode, so you can practice the writing process for each and every writing assignment.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Journal Writing Plan

The Writing Process Cheat Sheet (Episode 2)

Episode #1 How to Teach Writing to Middle and High School Students: Step 1—Structured Journal

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How to Teach Writing to Middle School and High School Students: Step 1—Structured Journals

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#1 How to Teach Writing to Middle School and High School Students: Step 1—Structured Journals

This strategy helps students practice writing without the fear of failure.

Confession: I avoided teaching my kids to write for years because I was so overwhelmed with the process. Oh sure, I had a curriculum, more than one even, and every year I promised myself that this was the year we were going to write. Usually, though, we didn’t make it past lesson 3 because it was too confusing, time-consuming, daunting, difficult. You get the idea!

If this sounds familiar, then you may find that this episode gives you exactly what you need to break through the confusion and prioritize writing this year.

Because let’s be honest, teaching writing can be tricky—there are A LOT of moving parts. If you don’t have an easy-to-use plan, it’s hard to keep moving forward.

In this episode, you will learn

  • a plan for writing so easy that you can start it today
  • a strategy that will get your child in the habit of writing
  • a way to help your child become a more confident writer
  • a nearly effortless way to get you—the parent/teacher—in the habit of assigning and grading writing

If this sounds too good to be true, I can assure you I have seen the results first hand, with my own children and in English classes I’ve taught. 

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. The tool at the center of these great results is a structured journal. The “structured” part of that is very important as I explain in the episode, because journal-keeping without clear guidelines can be a big waste of time.

But I’ve got you covered with exact guidelines for assigning journals, plus all the prompts you need and instructions on how to grade student entries. It’s all laid out in this episode, but I’ve also created a FREE Journal Writing Guide with all the information you need to get started.

So if you’re ready, it’s time to learn all about how to set up your writing classroom.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Journal Writing Planhttps://marvelous-artist-7428.ck.page/713dbe727c

https://marvelous-artist-7428.ck.page/713dbe727c

Journal Buddieshttps://www.journalbuddies.com/

https://www.journalbuddies.com/

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5 Ways to Prepare Students for College Writing

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college writing

                Have you ever wondered if you are adequately preparing your child to write successfully for college English classes?  I know that I worried a lot about that.  The first college class my oldest child enrolled in was Composition I at the local community college.  He was a senior in high school at the time, participating in the dual enrollment program.  As it turned out, college composition classes hadn’t changed that much from what I remembered teaching years ago when I was a college writing instructor.  The writing assignments were similar, and students still struggled with the same issues.  In the list below, I’ve identified five common problems that appear frequently in student essays, along with ways that you can get in front of these problems and help your high schoolers prepare for college composition.

Students rely too much on the five-paragraph essay

The problem: Formulaic essays such as five-paragraph essays often stifle creativity and limit critical thinking.  At the college level, instructors expect students to investigate a topic beyond a superficial level.  Students should be asking “why” questions and then attempting to answer them. 

The fix: Encourage students to explore their ideas creatively without being constrained by the form of the essay.  Of course, they need to practice making and supporting logical arguments, but there are many ways to accomplish this outside a five-paragraph essay.

Students don’t read the assigned texts carefully

The problem: Many writing assignments require textual analysis, an exercise that is almost impossible without close reading of the text. 

The fix:  Train students to overcome their laziness, lack of interest, or poor time management so they can focus on the details of their reading.  Taking notes, asking questions, and tracing themes are all ways to stay engaged with the text. 

Students use unreliable sources and incorrect documentation

The problem: Students rarely have much experience writing research papers using multiple sources, so they have trouble choosing credible evidence.  They also depend too much on online materials and fail to consider print sources.  In addition, they are confused by what they need to document and how to write citations.

The fix:  Help students learn to use the library, so they can take advantage of the many books, journals, and reference materials that usually serve as quality supporting documents.  It is also a good idea to have students write at least one research paper in high school, so they can practice evaluating the credibility of online sources as well as following a documentation process.  The Purdue Online Writing Lab is an easy-to-use resource for learning exactly how to write citations.

Students forget to consider the audience for their writing

The problem:  Students either fail to remember that their writing has an audience, or they write to the wrong audience.  For example, they might make the mistake of a writing science report in the same casual style that they would use for an email message.  This is a particular problem for homeschoolers who are used to writing only for Mom. 

The fix:  Train students to be mindful of audience every time they write.  For example, have them practice writing about the same topic for different audiences, such as describing a vacation at Niagara Falls to someone who has never been there, and then describing it to someone who used to live there.  Lead them to discover how the writing choices (such as which details to include or exclude) change depending on audience. 

Students skip over essential parts of the writing process

The problem: The writing process has five steps—prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, publication—but students usually focus only on drafting part while ignoring the others. 

The fix: Emphasize the importance of the other steps—not just writing the draft.  Require students to show you their prewriting work which should include brainstorming ideas, developing a thesis, and arranging details to support a thesis.  If proper attention is paid to prewriting, the draft should be easy to write.  Have students write their drafts in one sitting without any revising or editing and then set the papers aside for at least a day.  At that point, they should read them again, looking for areas to improve.  Some students mistakenly believe that revising a paper means sticking in a comma or two and maybe changing a verb tense.  However, that is editing, not revision.  Revision involves rearranging sentences, adding and deleting content, and making different word choices.  Students’ revised papers should look substantially different from their drafts.  Once the revision is complete, then students can look for places where they need to insert commas or make other edits. 

                Following these tips will help students improve their writing skills and be better prepared for college-level classes. 

For more ways to help students practice writing, see the Writing Plans.

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Student Journals: Easy and Effective

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This Idea Will Have Students Writing in No Time

                When one of the moms in my co-op suggested that I require students to keep a journal this year, I was a little hesitant.  I remembered my own experience with journal writing in high school.  It was in a creative writing class, where we were supposed to make regular entries in a journal that was collected several times throughout the semester.  The guidelines were vague—no set number of entries, choose your own topics.  I think the freedom was supposed to inspire creativity, but for me it had the opposite effect. 

It resulted in paralysis, with me barely writing anything until a few days before the dreaded due date.  Then, in a frenzied panic, I would scribble furiously whatever random thoughts came to mind.  Stream-of-consciousness, after all, is a form of creativity!  At least that’s how I justified the awful prose and ridiculous verse that comprised these entries.  I’m sure my teacher wasn’t fooled for one minute by various colors of ink I used or my attempts to modify my handwriting from entry to entry so they looked like they’d been written on different days instead of in one midnight rush.  So my own experience with journal writing, to say the least, was not very successful!

                However, since then, I’ve discovered that it is possible for journal writing to be an extremely effective tool, especially for students who struggle with writing.  BUT it has to be set up with clear boundaries and guidelines.  Journals can be powerful tools—they provide students with the opportunity to practice writing frequently in a low-pressure environment.  And as we all know, practice leads to improvement.

Journal writing in my classroom

                So let me share with you how I implemented journal writing in my class this year.  I’ll give you the rundown on what worked really well, and I’ll also fill you in on what went wrong, and what I’ll do differently next time.

                Let me start by describing my class to you.  I have five students, ranging in age from 5th to 9th grade.  (Two of these are my own kids.)  We meet once a week for 45 minutes.  The rest of the time, students are working independently to complete the assignments that are due in class. 

                At the beginning of the school year, I established these requirements for journals:

  • A separate notebook for the sole purpose of journaling
  • 2 entries per week
  • Minimum of 100 words per entry (but no maximum length)
  • A date and title for each entry

I then informed the class that I would be checking their journals for completion each week, although not actually reading the entries.

Finally, I told them that they could write about whatever they wanted to, OR they could choose one of the prompts from the list I handed them and write about that.  This was my way of addressing the real difficulty of not knowing what to write about, which always comes up and is a legitimate concern. 

The list of prompts I gave them was compiled from the huge list I found on a website called Journal Buddies.  This is a great resource that has thousands of prompts for all different ages.  I culled through the lists I found there and selected the prompts I thought were suitable for my group.  There were about 60 different prompts on the list I handed them, which I decided was more than enough to get them started.  We read through the list together so they could get a sense of the possibilities.  Overall, students were positive about the prospect of keeping a journal and seemed confident that they would be able to complete the task. 

                When the next class meeting rolled around, the first thing I did was have students pull out their journals, and then I dutifully went around and checked to see that everyone had two entries which met the requirements.  I did have to warn at least one student that showing up with an incomplete journal was unacceptable.  That was the last time for a while that people came to class unprepared.  However, as the year wore on and I became less vigilant about checking for entries, some students started skipping the assignment occasionally. 

                After I checked to make sure journal entries were complete, I asked for volunteers to read one of their entries.  I was pleasantly surprised that almost everyone wanted to share, and some students even wanted to read both of their entries.  The class also enjoyed listening to one other.  If someone didn’t volunteer to read, I asked them to give me a one-sentence summary of their topics.  For example, a student might say, I wrote about my dog and the fight I had with my brother. 

                This enthusiasm for sharing entries lasted about a month, and then gradually people stopped volunteering.  When I asked why they didn’t want to share, students said they couldn’t think of anything very good to write about. 

                But what about all those prompts I gave you, I asked beseechingly.  The answer I usually got was something along the lines of I didn’t like any of those prompts or those prompts weren’t very good.  For a while, I was willing to blame their lack of inspiration on the poor prompts too.

                But when I finally got around to re-examining the prompts, I realized that there was nothing wrong with them.  In fact, they were great prompts.  The real problem, I concluded after mulling it over a while, was that I had given students too many prompts from which to choose.  Most students were unwilling to read through a long list of prompts to figure out what they wanted to write about.  My son, Aaron, for example, who has a policy of not reading even one extra word that he doesn’t have to, of course was not going to read through this mega-long list.  So he was paralyzed right from the start.  And even the students who were willing to read the list found themselves crippled by too many choices.  The problem of what to write about had not been solved after all.

                So one week after a particularly lackluster showing of journal entries, I announced to the class that I was assigning the topics for the next week.  I picked two prompts from the list that I thought would be inspirational.  I was not disappointed.  The following week, I had plenty of volunteers wanting to share their entries.  The key had been to limit the options. 

Improving the plan

                Overall, journal writing turned out to be a great idea, and I definitely will be assigning journals again next year, but I do plan to make several changes based on what I learned.  Here are some of the highlights of my new plan:

  1. This is a small change, but I will not require titles for entries, but instead have students put the number of the entry alongside the date.  The titles became too burdensome for most students.
  2. I think that two entries per week is a good number, so I’m going to stick with that.  Also, setting the minimum length at 100 words per entry seemed to work well.
  3. I’m going to do a better job of monitoring my own children so they work on their journals throughout the week rather than doing both entries at the same time the day before class.  Spreading it out will go further in helping them develop a habit of writing, and it is likely to improve the quality of writing as well.  I’m going to suggest that the moms of my other students do the same, if possible.
  4. I’m going to stay vigilant about checking journals each week to create more accountability.
  5. The biggest change I will make has to do with the journal prompts.  Instead of giving the class a huge list at the beginning of the year, I will give them 3 prompts each week.  One of their entries must be in response to one of the prompts.  The other entry can also be in response to a prompt, or they can write about a topic of their own choosing.  This solves the problem of what to write about plus allows students to generate their own topics if they so desire.  In addition to Journal Buddies, the Daily Teaching Tools website is also a good resource for journal prompts.  It has a robust list of 180 prompts for each day of the school year.

Finally, you may be wondering if it is possible to use this method of journal writing if you have just one student.  Absolutely!  You only need to make a couple of adjustments.  First, I think it is a good policy to check journal entries only for completion rather than reading the entries.  This allows students to write freely without fear of the teacher’s red pen or of their privacy being violated.  At the end of the week, ask your child if she wants to share one or both of her entries.  If so, she can then read the entry to you.  If not, ask her for a sentence summary.  Inform your student that at the end of each month, she will be required to select her favorite entry to read aloud to you.  If she is already sharing her entries regularly, you can skip this.  Otherwise, it is a good way to make sure the student is making sufficient effort to complete the journal assignments. 

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