by Sharon Watson | Jan 28, 2020 | High School Prompts, High School Tutorial, Middle School Prompts, Middle School Tutorial, Sharon's Blog, teaching aids, tutorial
SHARON’S BLOG
Okay. I’ll admit it. I abhor the nit-picky rules about citing sources and making a works-cited page. The rules are tedious. They’re boring. And they’re nerve wracking.
So, if it is hard for adults (which I like to think I am), what must our children and teens think of it? After all, writing a report is hard enough without all the “extra” stuff about citing sources.
On top of that, the rules change! About a year after The Power in Your Hands was published, with its lessons on citing sources and documenting a report, the Modern Language Association changed their rules.
What is a student to do?
(more…)
by Sharon Watson | Sep 17, 2018 | High School Prompts, High School Tutorial, Middle School Prompts, Middle School Tutorial, Sharon's Blog, teaching aids, tutorial
SHARON’S BLOG
Could your students use a little help creating outlines? And what does a bowl of salad have to do with outlines?
My husband tells me he always made his outlines after he’d seen what he had written. I imagine this is fairly common.
But is an outline necessary? Not exactly. You can read about my sticky-note method here.
What is important, though, is organizing the material, and that is where students have trouble. They do not want to take the time to organize their thoughts, ideas, or material before they write.
Personally, I benefit from even a casual outline. That way, I don’t have to start with the introduction and work my way down to the conclusion; I have the pleasure of beginning wherever I like, where I feel the most comfortable. Then I can fill in the rest of my article later by using the organized points in my informal outline.
Whether your students use sticky notes or a more formal outline, they’ll benefit from these familiar outline ideas. (more…)
by Sharon Watson | Jul 26, 2018 | Sharon's Blog, teaching aids
SHARON’S BLOG
“I can’t think of anything to write about.”
“This writing assignment is boring.”
Sound familiar? It did around my house as well. My three children and I hit the wall and almost gave up on writing because it became so tough on all of us.
But I saw value in my children learning how to write, so I worked hard to figure out how we could have a successful writing class. Here are the solutions I came up with—and they really worked! (more…)
by Sharon Watson | Oct 22, 2017 | High School Prompts, High School Tutorial, Middle School Prompts, Middle School Tutorial, Sharon's Blog, teaching aids, tutorial
SHARON’S BLOG
Get a writing assignment. Look at a blank piece of paper for hours. Cry.
Is this what happens with your students?
No need for weeping. In this week’s Intro to Writing, your students will learn what ingredients to put into their introductions and conclusions. In addition, they will grade other students’ work and then write their own effective introduction and conclusion.
If you have been following along with the Intro to Writing tutorials on Writing with Sharon Watson, you likely have noticed something weird. (more…)
by Sharon Watson | Oct 15, 2017 | High School Prompts, High School Tutorial, Middle School Prompts, Middle School Tutorial, Sharon's Blog, teaching aids, tutorial
SHARON’S BLOG
Thesis Statements
A guy walks in to your living room and blurts out, “Pizza.”
You look at him and wonder what he means. Well, you know the subject matter—pizza—but you don’t know where he’s going with this. He could take it in any of these directions:
“I want pizza.”
“Pizza is bad for you and here’s why.”
“Eat more pizza; it contains all the food groups.”
“I know how to get bigger tips working as a pizza delivery person.”
“This is how to build the perfect pizza.”
“The pizza you buy here is very different from the pizza you can get in Italy.”
“With six hundred dollars borrowed from their mother, two brothers began one humble Pizza Hut, now an international chain.”
Or, of course, he could mean, “Here’s the pizza you ordered. Now give me a tip so I can get out of here.”
When you write an essay, writing about the subject matter is only the beginning. Readers need to know what direction you are taking your subject. That way, they will keep reading and will understand what you are doing. For instance, if your introduction looks like you are going to write about the founder of Amazon but you end up writing about all the cool stuff you can find there, your readers will be confused.
What’s your main idea? What’s the one thought you want to convey to your readers? Everything you write about your subject matter is going to be gathered around one statement, one main idea, so that people reading your essay know what direction you are taking your subject.
This main idea is called a thesis statement. (more…)
by Sharon Watson | Oct 8, 2017 | High School Prompts, High School Tutorial, Middle School Prompts, Middle School Tutorial, Sharon's Blog, teaching aids, tutorial
SHARON’S BLOG
Problems with Point Orders?
One of my students handed in an interesting essay on volcanic activity. She included lots of facts, dates, and anecdotes, but there was one big problem.
There was no rhyme or reason for the order in which she put her facts. Each major or historic volcanic eruption was in its own paragraph, but the paragraphs were in no particular order. It felt jumbled and incoherent.
How could she have arranged her paragraphs to have the most impact on her reader? Check below for two possible answers to this conundrum. (more…)
