Tagged: homeschool writing program

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Note Taking and Research Skills in Our Homeschool

How are we introducing note taking and research skills into our homeschool? One skill that middle and high school students (and beyond!) need is the ability to take notes–either by picking out important key points from books and resources they read or from listening to a speaker or lecturer.  In the elementary years, I’ve slowly been trying to help the kids build these skills. I wanted to write this post...

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Writing Workshop: Conflict in Literature (Man vs. Man, Man vs. Self, etc)

We absolutely love our homeschool writing workshop. We don’t use any special homeschool writing curriculum, instead we’ve designed a writing routine that works really well for us. (In fact my reluctant writer now really loves writing! More about that in How/Why we needed a change in our writing program!)  Today, I wanted to share a mini-lesson series I did with the kids on the literary device, conflict.  I learned these...

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How do I Help the Kids to Start Writing?! 5 Lessons Ideas for the Writing Workshop (Day 1)

You’ve set up a good writing space, have your supplies – pencils, journals, resource materials. Now what?!! This is the first in a series of 5 posts with lesson ideas to help young writers get started on their writing journey. Introduction: Writing Workshop Mini-Lessons I have spent a lot of time writing about why we use a writing workshop, how we set up and structure our writing workshop, and even went into...

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Wonderful Free Writing Resource for Young Writers

I was so excited to come across the Young Writer’s Survival Kit by Melissa Forney. It has been an amazing resource for our writing workshop. UPDATE: Sorry to say, the resource below (Young Writer’s Survival Kit) is no longer available.  You might want to check out our Writing Resource Packet. It is currently free. At times when it’s writing time, I haven’t thought of a writing mini-lesson for the day....

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Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop — Post #3 (Mini-Lessons and Useful Resources)

In the first post in this series, I explained how we had dabbled in writing, but had never found a “program” or curriculum that worked well for us.  I found some expert advice from primary classroom teachers, though, and set about creating a workshop that works for our family. I learned about the 6+1 writing traits (the basic qualities that make writing work and include: ideas, organization, word choice, voice, sentence...

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Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #2 (Creating a Space)

Getting the Writing Workshop Area Ready One of the things that jumped out for me from all the reading I was doing about writing workshops is that it is important to have a space, routine and materials completely ready to go.  We had always fit in writing pell-mell whenever it fit in to our homeschool day. I wanted there to be a designated space (both physically and mentally) for our...

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Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1

For the past six months, I’ve been alluding to the fact that we have really changed the way we approach writing.  Part of me has been wanting to write a post for ages, but I just wasn’t quite sure where to start.  Time to jump in! First, a little background.  LD has always been a reluctant writer. When he was K-1, we worked a lot on handwriting and copywork. We...