Many students tell me that after they do the hard work of coming up with an idea, they do not know what to put in the paragraph or even how to write the paragraph.
Is this an issue for you as well? Could you use a little help in this area?
{Looking for the MIDDLE SCHOOL version of this tutorial? >>}
You’re writing your essay and everything’s going great until you realize you need to let readers know where you got a certain fact. You aren’t using a bibliography, footnotes, or works cited page because this is just an essay, not a report or research paper.
You don’t want to plagiarize. Putting someone else’s fact or idea in your essay without any citation would definitely be plagiarism.
What are you going to do? (more…)
Once in a while, it’s interesting to look at a picture and write whatever comes to your mind—no guidance, no rules.
So, here goes . . .
Proofreading. What a pain.
You finish your essay and think you’re through with it, but, no. Now you have to proofread it.
It turns out that writing and proofreading are two separate skills. In fact, they use two different parts of your brain and should be done at different times.
To take this a step further, when I proofread, I (more…)
Students will follow along as I guide them through my experience with making stained-glass butterflies. As they read, they’ll be learning how to write a how-to and then insert transitions into the essay to move their readers easily through the process.
Suitable for students in 5th – 12th grade.
Last week I attended a class on how to make stained-glass butterflies. You know, the kind you hang up on a window with little suction cups.
My stained-glass butterfly and my mom’s. Hers turned out better than mine!
The teacher was very clear on how to do each step. We practiced cutting glass first, listening for the “hiss” that showed we were scoring the glass correctly with our cutters. After we had cut a line and a circle (both of which I messed up), he moved us to the next step.
I chose what I thought would be a simple butterfly design and found out how wrong I was. (more…)
Across the country, nearly 1 out of every 4 high school students is dropping out, according to boostup.org.
Here are some statistics about dropouts. I was the most surprised by #11. That post mentions a “dropout factory.” You’ll find the definition of that term here, along with other facts about dropping out of school.
Why do you think students drop out of high school? Here are some interesting reasons, according to the students who are dropping out.
Do you think they should stay in school and graduate? After all, David Karp, founder of Tumblr, dropped out of high school But wait, there’s more!
Writing tools for all ages!
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