by Sharon Watson | Apr 30, 2017 | High School Prompts, Middle School Prompts, Sharon's Blog, Writing Prompts
SHARON’S BLOG
Life is about making decisions, and you’ve got some large ones in your future.
Big ones include your future education or training: Should you pursue a college or technical degree. If you do, which one? Will you make the best choice? Will you change your mind several times?
What about marriage? Starting a family? Will that be in your future? Will you travel?
I’m sure you’ve heard your parents say, “If I knew then what I know now!” and understood them to mean that they wished they had some of their current wisdom to help them make decisions when they were younger.
What if, instead of looking backwards, we encouraged our future selves? You may not have all the wisdom you’d like to have now to inform yourself twenty years from now, but you know you better than anyone.
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by Sharon Watson | Apr 23, 2017 | High School Prompts, Literature, Middle School Prompts, Sharon's Blog, Writing Prompts
SHARON’S BLOG
All this month we’re celebrating National Poetry Month with famous poems worth knowing. Be sure to check out the many links at the end of this post for more poetry appreciation and practice!
What is today’s poem? Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees.” Here are the first two lines:
I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree
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by Sharon Watson | Apr 17, 2017 | High School Prompts, Literature, Middle School Prompts, Sharon's Blog, Writing Prompts
SHARON’S BLOG
Have you ever come across something unusual and wondered how it got that way?
Robert Frost in his poem “Birches” does just that. He finds some birches in the woods that are bent down and wonders what happened to make them curve down. Did a boy come by and climb them, bending them down? Did an ice storm overwhelm the branches?
Then he remembers swinging on birch trees when he was a youngster, and he misses the little boy he once was. He misses the enjoyment of being young and swinging on birches.
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by Sharon Watson | Apr 9, 2017 | High School Prompts, Middle School Prompts, Sharon's Blog, Writing Prompts
SHARON’S BLOG
Are you looking for a way to focus your students’ minds and hearts on the meaning of Easter?
Our special Easter prompts will help your students think deeply on the events and meaning of our dear Savior’s death and resurrection.
These 7 prompts are arranged chronologically from Jesus’ Triumphal Entry through Thomas’s epiphany a week after the resurrection.
Included are prompts with poetry, story writing, definitions, opinions, and more.
Suitable for students in grades 7 – 12.
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by Sharon Watson | Apr 2, 2017 | High School Prompts, Literature, Middle School Prompts, Sharon's Blog, Writing Prompts
SHARON’S BLOG
Has something traumatic ever happened to you or your family?
When Anne Bradstreet’s house burned down, she was heartbroken and wrote a poem about it. Read her poem below in which she pours out her grief, her pain upon losing everything, and what she learned from this terrible situation.
What is unusual about this poem is that Anne’s house burned in 1666, at a time when many people did not value poetry and did not take the time or have the time to write it. Also, it is very unusual that a woman of that time would have been recognized as a poet and have her poems published.
Anne was the wife of Simon Bradstreet, a governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Her work became so famous that her poems were printed in London as well. High praise, indeed, for a Puritan woman of that era.
Here’s her poem titled “Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 18th, 1666.” You’ll notice that some of the capitalization and spelling is different from ours today:
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by Sharon Watson | Mar 26, 2017 | High School Prompts, Middle School Prompts, Sharon's Blog, Writing Prompts
SHARON’S BLOG
Jonathan and David. Anne Shirley and Diana Barry. Calvin and Hobbes. Those are some epic friendships!
The Bible has a lot to say about friendships. It warns us against foolish ones: “Do not be misled: Bad company corrupts good character” (I Corinthians 15:33). Scripture encourages us that a “friend loves at all times” (Proverbs 17:17).
Friendship is important to God. How important is friendship to you?
If we want to make new friends, we have to show ourselves friendly. As Dale Carnegie, the famous philanthropist revealed, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” That’s a challenge in a new group or situation, isn’t it?
Whether you have a new friend or a friend you’ve known since kindergarten, communication is important to the relationship.
A fun way to keep communication open is with a friendship journal. It’s a simple concept: You both answer a question in a journal and share your journal back and forth. You can make your own journal from a spiral-bound notebook or make your own book.
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