Jimmie's Collage » language arts

Do You Make These 3 Mistakes when Giving Feedback on Essays?

Jimmie — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Giving feedback on essays is a tough job for a homeschool mom. It’s not surprising that we make mistakes. You will probably see yourself in many of these.

Writing Feedback Mistake #1: Correcting Everything

It is best for you not to correct mistakes at all. Instead, point them out. When you point them out, the child can make the corrections.

Editing one’s own work is a vitally important skill. I know that it is easy to simply add the extra t or cross out the comma as you read over your daughter’s essay. But you will give your child more chances to learn if you mark the area where the mistake is. Make her hunt for it and attempt a correction.

Most of our grammar lessons have come out of those very situations — needing to correct a problem but not sure how.

Plus, correcting everything can be a lot of work for you. Mark. Don’t correct.

Writing Feedback Mistake #2: Marking Everything

Now you’re marking instead of correcting. Good. But resist the urge to mark everything all at one time. Instead, focus on a few key things you are working on. Maybe it’s word choice and transitions. Maybe it’s punctuation and sentence patterns.

Whatever it is, tell your child upfront what you’re focusing on during your review of the essay. Be sure to let her know that you didn’t mark all of the errors. (Otherwise she may assume everything else is right.)

Use my printable peer editing checklist when you read the essay if that helps you pinpoint things to look for. (That printable is not just for peers. It’s good for self editing and for mom to use as well.) Another advantage to the checklist is that you can make general notes on it instead of on the essay.

For example, if your child has not used any transitions at all, it may be tempting to add some in or to mark exactly where they would fit. But a better option is to make a note on the essay or checklist that her essay has almost no transitions. But the burden back on the child to do the editing. It will make her a stronger writer in the long run.

And if she knows you are going to make her work for the corrections, she will be more deliberate about getting it right instead of relying on your corrections to patch up her sloppy work.

Writing Feedback Mistake #3: Not Giving Positive Feedback

A young writer needs positive feedback. I’m not talking about feel-good compliments to build up self-esteem. I’m talking about very practical, very concrete descriptions about what the writer did well in the essay.

If you say, “It is good” or even “It is great!” you have missed a huge teaching opportunity. You must be specific about exactly what is “good” or “great.” Talk about the transitions, the introduction paragraph, the thesis statement, the word choice, the vivid details, the flawless spelling, or some other very specific facet of the essay.

Look back at the editing checklist if you need help with what to talk about.

Sharing your emotional reactions is okay too, as long as you tie it into what the writer wrote. For example, saying “Your essay is funny,” is not as helpful as saying “The story about the squirrel was so clear I could picture it in my mind! It made me laugh out loud!”

Learning what he did right is just as important for your child as learning where he went wrong. In fact, sometimes it is more valuable since it builds up a sense of confidence with his writing skill, one that causes him to savor the writing task rather than dread it.

The 10 Days Series is organized by iHomeschool Network, a collaboration of outstanding homeschool bloggers who connect with each other and with family-friendly companies in mutually beneficial projects. Please visit us on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. And of course, click the image below to visit all the 10 Days posts from these homeschool moms of the iHomeschool Network.

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Why You Should Start a Peer Editing Group for Your Homeschoolers

Jimmie — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:15:00 +0000

For several months now, Sprite has been part of a small group of middle schoolers who meet monthly to read and edit each others’ essays. It has been a wonderful experience for me just because I have a passion for teaching writing. And it has been great for my only child to get a glimpse of how her writing compares to that of other children in her age range.

For today’s post, I want you to hears the thoughts of the moms of the children in the group. I asked the them to give me some feedback about the advantages of having a peer editing group. This is what they said.

The peer editing group gives them accountability. They have to have the paper done by a certain date. Also, knowing that their peers are going to be reading and editing their paper encourages them to write an even better paper. I think that kids will write a paper better for kids their own age than they would for a teacher, especially if the kids are going to be critiquing the paper. My daughter is competitive and having these classes where the papers are passed around and sometimes read aloud leads her to want to have the best paper.

My kids loved getting feedback from another student and teacher (besides Mom). They also began to acknowledge that other people were saying the same things (both positive and negative) about their writing, confirming what they were hearing from me. The biggest advantage has been that my kids see that they are not the only ones who struggle with parts of the writing process.
My kids benefitted most from reading essays written by other students their age. It gave them a frame of reference for how they were doing, and it challenged them to remember that there was a real audience for what they were writing, not just an assignment for school.

In the area of peer editing, we homeschoolers are generally at a disadvantage. A classroom teacher has abundant opportunities to read sample papers aloud and to let students see the work of others. Homeschoolers, except in the case of close aged siblings, have very few chances to read essays written by other students. Even homeschool moms often wonder if their children are on track for their age in the area of writing ability.

Organizing a peer editing workshop solves these deficiencies. I encourage you to try a peer editing group with your homeschool support group or coop. It reaps rich benefits for young writers and for homeschool moms.

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The Real Truth About Formulaic Essay Writing

Jimmie — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

I admit that my approach to teaching essay writing is formulaic. I see nothing at all wrong with that.

A Writing Analogy

I learned to cook with a combination of recipes from cookbooks and my mother’s instruction in the principles of cooking. When I cook something new, I still refer to a cookbook rather than make it up. But after some experience with a new dish, I feel confident to expriment with ingredients and methods.

Writing is the same.

We can offer our children “recipes” of essay structures. They may seem predictable. But they work. And those writing successes bring our children great confidence. Alongside the recipes, we teach them the principles of good writing such as word choice, sentence patterns, and generating specific details.

Moving Past the Formulas — or Not

As young writers gain confidence, they can leave the confines of the formulas and venture out into more sophisticated styles of writing. And if they never mature past the formulas, at least they can write a decent essay. Some people never “mature” past grandma’s meatloaf recipe, and it is still a satisfying meal forty years later!

Easing the Cognitive Load

Here is another reason to offer students writing structures, hints, and formulas: Writing is hard work, cognitively speaking. It is a task that requires layers of multi-tasking thought — ideas, grammar, spelling, punctuation, transitions, order, logic, word choice, and sentence structure. It is almost impossible to be able to consider all of those facets at once.

Formulas make some facets foolproof so that they don’t require a lot of thought. Then that brain power can be focused on something else.

The hope is that those formulas will become ingrained to the degree that they are natural and then the writer can move on to concentrate on another element in his writing.

The Real Truth

The real truth is that professional writers have formulas, too. And although they take risks and break “rules,” they know how to revert back to those classic structures that work every single time.

Essay Formula Printable: a Facebook Freebie

Speaking of formulas, here is an essay printable that shows a formula for the introduction paragraph and the conclusion paragraph. The triangles show the transition from general to specific and then specific back to general.

This printable is available as a Facebook freebie. Go LIKE Jimmie’s Collage on Facebook, and look for the “Only Likers” icon to access it.

My Essay Formula

It is a classic formula that always works. Think of it as the “little black dress” of composition.

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Transition Hacks: A Cheat Sheet for Better Essays

Jimmie — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Transitions in an essay help the ideas to flow smoothly, a quality called coherence. You don’t want your reader jolted from idea to idea without any type of connection. Transitions both prepare the reader for a mental shift as they ease the reader smoothly into it.

Many writers struggle with using transitions naturally. They revert to the boring set of first, second, last, and in conclusion. There’s nothing wrong with those words, of course, but variety is a great benefit to an essay.

Print the transitions cheat sheet linked below and let your child reference it during the revision stage.

First go through and highlight all the transitions already used. Can they be refined with a better word choice? Check the list for possible substitutes. Because they are grouped by idea, your substitute transition will probably be found in the same section as your initial choice.

Are there places where transitions are absent but needed? Key places to use transitions are

at the beginning of paragraphs
at the front of a conclusion sentence
at the addition of a new detail within a body paragraph.

Zero in on those spots and make sure that your essay flows with transition words. Encourage your young writer to use new transitions that he has not used elsewhere in the essay.

If using the term “cheat sheet” with your impressionable children bothers you, don’t worry. There is a second page without that questionable phrase.

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The Simple Secrets of Sentence Variety

Jimmie — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Sentence variety is much like word choice; it is a subtle indicator of a writer’s maturity. Even if a reader doesn’t remember the three types of sentences (simple, compound, and complex), a quick reading of an essay full of simple sentences will leave him feeling it was written by a weak writer.

Although there are only three types of sentences, for the sake of teaching sentence variety and punctuation I teach five different sentence patterns.

[NOTE: I omit compound-complex sentences altogether because in my estimation, if you have learned these five basics, you can effectively mix them up later down the road without being taught how.]

Teaching sentence patterns in this way gives children a way to zero in on sentence variety while reinforcing correct punctuation. For the entire set of lessons, download the Sentence Patterns eBook on my freebies page.

How to Use Sentence Patterns for Better Essays

During the revision stage, have your child look at his sentences. Choose a paragraph in the body of the essay and label each sentence with a number indicating its pattern.

Now look at your numbers. Do the paragraphs rely heavily on the same pattern?

If so, encourage your child to inject variety. Try to mix up the sentence patterns evenly throughout the essay. Using a semicolon to create a compound sentence is a very mature style, but using it every other sentence is overkill.

Use the free printable chart linked above as a guide. Once the sentences are written in a draft, it is easy to simply rearrange or reword them to create more sentence variety. The chart helps you remember what the possible sentence patterns are (and even reminds you to add a comma where necessary).

A list of subordinating conjunctions is helpful when making complex sentences (patterns 4 & 5 in my chart), so have that handy as well. (See the freebie page for a list.)

When joining sentences together into more sophisticated sentence patterns, you may inadvertently reduce your sentence count below the accepted minimums. If that happens, simply generate more details so that you have more material to work with.

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Word Choice Lessons for Better Essays

Jimmie — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

The words your child uses to write can make him seem a grade above (or below) where he actually is. Sophisticated words say “mature writer.” Building vocabulary is a primary way to improve the words used in essay writing, but there are other activities you can do to encourage writers to choose the best words.

Brainstorm Word Replacements

There are some words that are dull enough to be on the list of unwanted words:

good
bad
thing
very
really

Those words are imprecise, lackluster, and immature. I typically ban those words from essays, forcing my daughter to select a better fitting term that is more descriptive and sophisticated.

Likely your child has a few pet words that she likes to use repeatedly. My daughter is in a phase right now where she uses the word awkward for a myriad of negative situations. Although awkward is otherwise a quality word, her misuse of it makes me add it to her banned word list.

Help your child with word choice by doing some brainstorming activities on my free word choice printables. Of course, the thesaurus is your friend for these kinds of activities. List possible alternatives to boring words and keep those lists handy during revision.

If you have room, you might even want to make some fun word posters like Amy did.

Source: milkandcookiesblog.com via Jimmie on Pinterest

Banish Boring Words!: , a Scholastic book for grades 4-8, looks like a wonderful resource for building a child’s word sense.

No Boring Words Day

Practice replacing boring words like good and bad with more interesting, more precise words in your daily conversations. Choose an outlawed word for the day. When someone says the banished word, he receives a “punishment.” Or keep points throughout the day to see who is the best at avoiding the forbidden words and replacing them with more colorful ones.

This kind of activity works best after you have done the word replacement activities above. By using the listed synonyms in your daily speech, the words will become a natural part of your vocabulary and will spill into essay writing.

Editing for Word Choice

You really can’t expect superior word choice on a first draft. It takes a devoted reading of the essay to analyze the vocabulary without thinking of anything else. That means that working on word choice is something that happens during the revision stage of writing.

I suggest you give your child a highligher and ask her first to look for any of your word outlaws — those on the list above and any others you have added. Then have her look through the essay for additional words that could be replaced with more mature and precise choices.

One danger with this kind of activity is that your child will go overboard with the thesaurus and turn her essay into something very pedantic sounding. The words need to be natural and flow nicely with the tone of the essay. Do choose words that create mental pictures, that are descriptive and powerful. But don’t make an essay that sounds stilted or awkward. (I just used the word awkward! It is on my daughter’s outlawed word list but not on mine.)

One key rule of thumb is if your child cannot pronounce or express the meaning of a word, he probably should not use it in an essay.

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Foolproof Essay Conclusion Tricks

Jimmie — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Writing compelling conclusions is very challenging. (I personally struggle with it — still!) But the good news is that a conclusion can follow a set pattern that is a meager three sentences. Just three sentences!

Start with a restatement of the thesis statement, in different words, of course. Then add at least two additional wrap up sentences, using the suggestions below.

There is overlap among these ideas, and that is deliberate. Different methods will work for different children and at different times for various topics. Having multiple tools at your disposal is to your benefit.

So What?

If you can answer the question “So What?” at the end of an essay, you will have a strong conclusion.

Now that the reader has read all of your ideas, ”So What?” Why should he care? What difference does it make? How does it apply to him and to every person on the globe?

Conclusion Triangle

I like to think of a conclusion as triangle.

You start specific by restating the thesis statement for the essay and then make some general or universal statements related to your topic. This transition is reflected in the shape of the triangle. It is narrow at the top and broadens to a wide base.

So think in categories. Take your essay topic, and mentally expand it, asking yourself what category it would fit into. Then try to think of a universal statement about that general category.

Here are some examples of essay topics & broad categories that they fit into:

essay topic: the three best pets — broad category: animals
essay topic: why children should have household chores — broad category: the family
essay topic: the achievements of Marco Polo — broad category: explorers
essay topic: paintings by Monet — broad category: Impressionism

Thinking in terms of broad generalizations is difficult for many children and is not developmentally appropriate until later middle school or high school.

Revisit the Attention Grabber

What did you use for a hook in the introduction? Was it a startling fact, a question, or a story? Consider returning to that idea and wrapping it up in the conclusion.

Stories are perfect for this, especially if you can leave the story somewhat unfinished in the introduction. Now in the conclusion, you have a chance to revisit that story and neatly tie up any loose ends as you make some statements related to your essay topic.

Present a Call to Action

What do you expect or want the reader to do with what you’ve written? Is there an action the reader should take or a belief the reader should now have? Express that in a call to action at the close of your essay.

Free Printable Graphic Organizer

When drafting a conclusion paragraph, this graphic organizer can help students remember what it needs to include, how long it has to be, and some reminders about the foolproof endings.

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Generating Details with SARQS and FIRES

Jimmie — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Generating sufficient details is hard for many young writers. It does require a certain level of creativity to think of new ideas. And some children have not had a lot of life experiences upon which to draw support for their paragraphs.

Simply telling them that their ideas are not adequate is not helpful. They needs tools for thinking up fresh ideas.

Mnemonic Devices for Generating Support

FIRES & SARQS are tools that help children come up with their own ideas.

FIRES

Facts
Incidents
Reasons
Examples
Statistics

SARQS

Sensory details
Anecdotes
Results
Quotations
Steps

Sarqs is a nonsense word, but just go with it for the sake of the mnemonic. It’s a place you can insert some humor into the writing lesson. Have your child illustrate the mnemonic by drawing fire and sarqs on the printable page. What’s a sarq? You decide!

Printable Page for Generating More Details

This printable can be used for language arts notebooks to help you remember the mnemonic device. Or it can be a graphic organizer on which to brainstorm additional details.

It can be used in conjunction with a prewriting page or instead of it.

Probably the best use of this page would be to use it after doing some general prewriting. When you discover that you are lacking detail in a certain area, pull out this page and brainstorm some FIRES and SARQS.

Or use it as a daily writing lesson to teach children ways to think up more details related to a particular topic.

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Foolproof Essay Introduction Tricks

Jimmie — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Every writer is different. Some are compelled to write an essay from start to finish. Others are fine with writing the body paragraphs first and then going back to write an introduction and a conclusion. Either method is fine, of course.

But if your child struggles with starting an essay, even after doing quite a bit of quality prewriting, encourage her to skip the intro paragraph until after she has composed the body. After all, how can you introduce what doesn’t yet exist? In a sense, it is quite logical to first write the body and later write an introduction for it.

Whenever the introduction writing comes, here are some tips to make it a bit easier.

Bare Necessities of an Introduction Paragraph

An introduction paragraph at a bare minimum has to be three sentences. The first two sentences are there to grab the reader’s attention. And the last sentence is the thesis statement that tells what the entire essay will be covering.

Writing a thesis statement is not difficult, but those two sentences before it can be a challenge. Remind your children that all they need are two additional sentences. That’s not a lot!

Attention Grabbers

Some people call those first two sentences a “hook.” The idea is that you start your essay with something catchy to grab the readers’ attention and keep them moving on through the essay.

These are classic, foolproof attention grabber techniques:

ask a question
tell a story
share a startling fact

1. Asking a Question

Avoid simply rephrasing your thesis statement into a question because that makes your introduction boring and repetitive. Instead, look at the topic from a slightly different angle and ask your question in that way.

If you can come up with a question that really makes your reader think, you’ve got a winner.

2. Tell a Story

Stories are powerful. And stories don’t have to be long. A story can be told in a few sentences, especially if you jump right into the relevant action with your very first sentence.

Paint a word picture that draws the reader into the essay. This technique is great for your creative writers who resist the structure of an expository essay. At least in the introduction (and later in the conclusion) they can exercise their creative writing skills.

Take your essay topic, and picture a situation that exemplifies it. Now describe that scene.

3. Share a Startling Fact

In general, people love statistics. They make us feel smart. Shocking facts that go against what we would have expected also have the power to grab our attention. So use them to your advantage.

This technique is great when your child has time to research and find a shocking fact. But if the essay is an on demand assignment, it is acceptable to make up a shocking fact or statistic for the sake of the essay. (I consider this creative license, but if you consider it lying, then you’d best allow for time to research or suggest one of the other methods.)

Printable Introduction Paragraph Planner

Here is a free printable page you can use with your students. It outlines the three foolproof attention grabbers mentioned in this post and reminds writers that they need only three sentences.

Be aware that some students will misunderstand the graphic organizer and write the thesis statement separate from the attention grabber. Remind them that the printable page represents a single paragraph — indented once, and all together.

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How to Use Prewriting to Make Essay Writing Easier

Jimmie — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Welcome to my 10 Days of Teaching Writing Series. These posts will run today, April 16, through April 27 (only on Monday through Friday).

Today I start at the beginning of teaching writing which is teaching how to think about writing, often known as prewriting.

Before your child puts pencil to paper to write a paragraph or an essay, she really needs to think. Planning what to write is critically important for writing well. Research has confirmed time and time again that students who spend more time prewriting write better essays.

And because much of the planning has already been done, the writer can focus on other areas during drafting such as punctuation, transitions, or word choice.

Of course, planning can be done in many different ways. Until you discover your child’s preferred method, try a variety of different strategies. If the first technique bombs, don’t give up. Prewriting is too important to skip. Try another method until you find what works for your child.

Methods of Prewriting

outlining
listing /brainstorming
mind mapping/clustering (see these fantastic examples)
graphic organizers

Paper Folding Method

Another method for prewriting that is great for concrete learners (elementary age) is to fold paper into however many sections that you want to write about.

Fold your paper into thirds for three body paragraphs. Fold it into fourths for four main ideas. Then title each of the four areas on the paper and fill in as many ideas as you can think of.

The physical act of folding the paper helps students remember that they are dealing with three (or four) distinct topics. The creases on the paper are tangible reminders to keep the ideas separate.

Putting it into Practice

The graphic organizer pictured is a free printable from The Notebooking Fairy, by the way. During our latest peer editing session, I gave the middle schoolers the three different graphic organizers in that set. Not all of the children chose to use one, but many did. The others preferred their own method of clustering or listing.

I encouraged them to use whatever felt most comfortable and whatever helped them to organize their thoughts.

During prewriting, the idea is to get all of your ideas down on paper without evaluating them. Even if it seems silly, write it down. Sometimes a bad idea leads to a better idea later. Often the very act of writing “primes the pump” so that more ideas come.

How long should prewriting take? For an on-demand essay that in total lasts 45-50 minutes, 10 minutes is not too long for prewriting. For every day writing assignments that have no time restraints, prewriting should certainly take as much time as 10 minutes and possibly up to 25 minutes.

The longer and more in-depth you prewrite, the easier the drafting stage will be. If most of your ideas are already fleshed out in your prewriting, you can devote more brain power to things like spelling, sentence structure, and transitions.

Analyzing the Prewriting

After prewriting, some writers plunge into their draft a bit prematurely. Just because you have a jumble of ideas does not mean you are ready to write. It is important to finish the prewriting stage by then evaluating and organizing your ideas.

Ask youself these questions about your prewrting:

Do I have enough for a complete body paragraph here?
Is everything focused and on topic?
What are the weaker ideas? (Eliminate them, replace them, or position them in the middle.)
What are my strongest ideas? (Elaborate on them and begin & end with them.)

Your answers can guide you to add to or delete your original ideas. This stage can occur directly on the prewriting sheet or on another piece of paper.

Impatience to begin writing is counterproductive. Investing in this stage makes writing a draft so much easier because you have a fairly well planned road map to follow.

Resistant Prewriters

Some children are highly resistant to planning. If they refuse to write down their thoughts before writing a draft, encourage them to at least plan out their ideas mentally. If your child can articulate those ideas with you orally, he will be a step ahead of doing no planning at all.

Prewriting truly is pre-thinking, so talking it over can fulfill this step in the writing process.

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