What's Your Method for Teaching Writing Skills? Part I

This summer I've been posting reviews of our writing products as well as some articles about writing. This is an article that I wrote last summer that I thought you might find helpful.

When I first started homeschooling, I decided not to buy a Writing Curriculum! Why? Because all the programs I reviewed were activities I could do on my own. I taught fifth grade for six years and most homeschool writing lessons were like my public school writing curriculum, teaching students "what to write".

I was firmly convinced that this was the best approach to teaching writing, at least until I discovered the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW). Its founder, Andrew Pudewa, has created a fascinating product called Teaching Writing: Structure and Style. His program does not focus on helping students develop ideas to write about. Instead, he focuses on teaching students how to write. This seemed contrary to all my training - my students, like all others, were most concerned about finding a topic to write about.

Here's a review of one of our writing products, "Windows To The World".

Andrew's approach to writing solves the "what to write about" problem by simply telling the students what to write about. His program spends more time teaching "structures" or outlines for a variety of writings, offering lesson plans for writing process. Depending on the type of writing and your purpose for writing, you can use different outlines to organize your thoughts.

Once a structure is defined, the program teaches students how to develop their own "style". By selecting strong verbs and adverbs, descriptive adjectives, and various clauses, students learn to dress up their writing and experiment with their writing style. They learn effective ways of opening and closing a sentence for maximum impact.

In my next article (part 2), I will share a simple activity you can use with your own children this week (or the first week of school). If your older students struggle with writing, this is a great place to start.

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Copyright Kerry Beck, 2009 You have permission to reprint this article, as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below. Kerry Beck encourages homeschool moms and classroom teachers with writing skills. Go get her free mini-course about Teaching Writing Easily at http://www.howtoteachwriting.com today.