At a recent (free) webinar I attended with Lee Binz of The Home Scholar and Andrew Pudewa of Institute for Excellence in Writing about homeschooling high school I heard of this book: 501 Writing Prompts. I bought it immediately. I started using it today with my ninth grader in our homeschool.
501 Writing Prompts by LearningExpress
ISBN: 978-1-57685-438-9
This book explains different types of writing that schools and colleges use. Some of these are used on standardized tests.
The beauty of this book is that it gets right to the core of what a person needs to know about the four different types of writing: pursuasive essay, expository writing, the narrative method, and literary research essays. The rubric or grading chart is given to explain what teachers and test graders expect from the writing. To illustrate this more concretely there are sample essays of various scores to show exactly what they mean.
(In reading this book I realized that the way I was taught in school is not how essays are being graded today, so I am glad I didn't just rely on what I myself was taught and what I remember.)
There are no shortcuts to learning to write, everyone gets better by practice. To this end there are 501 writing prompts to use for practice.
This is the type of book that is worth its weight in gold. With a full retail price of under $15 and for a discounted price online of under $10 it gives all the information you need to know. This is a lot of help for such a low cost! It cuts to the chase and doesn't waste your time on long lessons or too lengthy explanations.
If you use this book and really practice you can't help but improve your writing skills. Once you know what the graders look for you can learn to write in that way to give them what they want.
I highly recommend this for all students.
Homeschoolers, this is an inexpensive supplement to whatever you are already using to teach your students to write. Homeschool co-op parents can use this as a basis for classes. Teens can use this book yourself to improve your skills, on your own if you are self-motivated.
As we use this book all I keep thinking is, "Here is all the information we need in one convenient place now it's up to my kids to learn it and practice".
I started using this today with my ninth grader.
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