Jenna

A Hands-on Approach to the Planning Stage

September 29, 2016 by Jenna

Helping your children master writing skills presents a challenge when working with different learning styles. When I taught freshman English, my students were allowed to choose their own approach for planning. Some just made lists of questions while others constructed graphic organizers like bubble charts or word webs. They usually found ways to adapt the process to their own learning styles. But I often wondered how I could adapt the planning stage for hands-on learners.

Maybe you’ve asked a similar question. Here’s one way you can help your child get a literal feel for the planning stage.

First, he’ll need a lot of notecards—3×5 cards cut in halves or fourths work best—and a pencil.

We’ll use the comparison-and-contrast essay and the sample brainstorming from chapter 3 of Writing & Grammar 12 as a foundation for this activity. (Example is from Student Worktext, page 64.)

Next, instead of making an ordinary list, have your child write each new idea he has about roller coasters (or whatever other topic he chooses) on a notecard.

Once he has a good number of cards (fifteen to twenty would be a good start), have him sort through his cards, putting all the items of a similar nature together in the same pile. For example, we can categorize items such as height, speed, rough, and smooth from the list above as physical characteristics.

After sorting the cards into piles according to categories, he should label the back of each card according to the category it belongs to.

He may find that one of his ideas can act like a category itself, like kinds of seats with our roller coaster brainstorming. Or he might realize that some ideas don’t fit into any of his categories. Suggest that he spend more time thinking through these cards, just in case there are other ideas that he could connect the loose cards to. If there’s nothing else, let him return to his larger categories.

With a comparison-and-contrast essay, as in our example, your child would need to sort his cards down further into the categories of the two items he’s comparing—in this case, wooden roller coasters and steel roller coasters. In a different kind of essay, these larger categories could represent different major points in the argument and would be separated into sub-points.

From here, your child needs to make sure of the purpose of his essay. If he’s decided to prove that steel roller coasters are more fun than wooden ones, then he should look through his cards to see which of his categories support his position.

Finally, it’s time to organize the cards according to their strength. In writing, we often conclude with the strongest point because information given last is what readers remember best. If he’s decided that his strongest argument rests on a physical characteristic, he should put his cards from that category at the bottom of the stack.

When brainstorming on notecards, it’s easy for your child to handle the information in a more literal sense. He can rearrange and recategorize his ideas as he needs to, without the hassle and mess of crossing out and erasing. He can also add additional notes or pictures to his cards, or whatever helps him manipulate the information.

All our Writing & Grammar textbooks include detailed explanations for the planning stage of each writing assignment, and many of them have varying suggestions for different kinds of learners. Check out our complete line here!

3 Tips for Being Research Paper Ready

September 6, 2016 by Jenna

The research paper is the most difficult part of any English course—almost universally dreaded because of its difficulty. Most students would rather avoid it. As much as students dislike doing the research paper, teaching and grading it is just as intimidating. While I was working on my MA in English, I was also a graduate assistant in the English department, and teaching and grading research papers became my life for the better part of two years. Even with my background in English, I had some of the same fears you probably have as you teach your child about research papers. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to answer my students’ questions or that I’d teach them wrong. Here are three helpful things I learned from teaching college freshmen about writing research papers.

1. Assign More Than One Paper

I always handed out questionnaires on the first day of class to ask my students what kind of writing they had already done. I liked the interesting responses to that question. Some regularly wrote on a blog while others had written short stories. Almost invariably, the students who had written research papers regularly in high school (once a year or more) did better on their first college-level research paper than those who hadn’t.

You can encourage your child to develop his thinking by assigning different kinds of research papers, and not just for English class. You can assign comparison-contrast papers in history, persuasive papers in economics, argumentative papers in biology, analytical papers in literature, or simple informative papers in science.

2. Let Them Write About What They Like

Because of English department requirements, every student in my class had to write about energy technology and policy, a topic even I found boring. It was hard to watch students who were beginners at writing struggle with both a lack of understanding about writing as well as a strong dislike for the subject. If it’s your child’s first research paper, there’s no reason he shouldn’t have some fun with it.

Letting your children pick their own topics or assigning them a topic they’re interested in can be a great way to encourage them to write, especially if they’re reluctant or young writers. Though writers also need to know how to write well about topics they aren’t interested in, it’s better and more encouraging for them if their first experience with a high school assignment is on a topic they enjoy.

3. Require Them to Make a Good Outline

An outline can make or break a research paper. If the writer has a solid outline, he’ll have a solid paper. But if his outline is faulty, the paper won’t work. With fifty or more students, I couldn’t make sure every student had a good outline before I let them start writing the paper, but in a homeschool situation you can.

An outline is like a snapshot of the entire paper. It should quickly show the reader the overall structure of the paper—the argument, the reasons for that argument, and the support for those reasons. For most papers, the main points should all explain why the thesis is true. The subpoints all explain how the corresponding main point is true. If the outline includes sub-subpoints, these should show research that supports the how’s of the subpoints. If the main points and subpoints follow these guidelines, then the thought behind the paper should be accurate, and your child can focus on style and grammar as he presents the content. If the outline doesn’t follow these guidelines, then he isn’t ready to write yet. So make sure your child has the outlining done properly before writing the rest of the paper.

BJU Press’s Writing & Grammar courses put a strong emphasis on research paper writing and suggest many options for research papers in different subject areas.

Do you have any other research paper writing topics you’d like me to cover or tips you’d like to share? Feel free to comment with your questions or suggestions!

Applying Bloom’s Taxonomy

July 19, 2016 by Jenna

As parents, you want your children to succeed in every area of their lives, and as home educators, you especially want them to succeed in their education. A good way to visualize your goals for your children’s education is through Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Dr. Benjamin Bloom described what he believed to be the best processes for learning. Though he identified three different domains of learning, we are all most familiar with the cognitive domain, which has to do with knowledge. Understanding his process can help you to fulfill the greater purpose of education—education isn’t just about learning facts and figures. It’s a process that continuously encourages children to grow and think critically. Bloom’s Taxonomy verbalizes the process so that we can aim for a clearer goal in education—being able to master concepts so that we can create new concepts.

Since the best way to learn something is to see it applied, here is Bloom’s process for the cognitive domain applied to learning nouns. (To keep it simple, we’ll focus on the rule that says nouns are words that refer to persons, places, or things.)

Level One: Knowledge/Remembering

The first level focuses on facts and recall. It has nothing to do with what the rule means, implies, or suggests, it only focuses on knowing what the rule says. Our rule is “Nouns are words that refer to persons, places, or things.”

Level Two: Comprehension/Understanding

Comprehension is one step beyond simple recall. It demonstrates that you not only know what the rule is word for word, but you also know what those words mean and you can put the rule into your own words to express the same concept. To understand the “noun as a person, place, or thing” rule, you have to know what a person is, what a place is, and so on. Putting the rule into my own words, I might say that people’s names, specific or general locations, and objects are all referred to with nouns.

Level Three: Application/Applying

Level three begins the step where textbook practices and exercises come in. Here we take our rule and look at something it applies to. That means taking a sample sentence and finding and labeling all the nouns, based on our rule.

For example, “Amy (person) wanted to move back to Scotland (place), but her aunt (person) didn’t have enough money (thing) for the move (thing).”

Level Four: Analysis/Analyzing

Analysis involves grouping information into parts. It’s a question-and-answer process that might reveal more about our rule. When I put the rule into my own words, I changed things to objects because I felt that objects better indicates the tangible nature of things. But in the example sentence above, I’ve identified the second move as a noun, not a verb. Why is it a noun and not a verb? When we’re analyzing, we need to recognize that some words may be nouns that refer to persons, places, or things even if they’re normally used as a different part of speech. While we’re thinking about it, we may notice that we can classify the second move as a noun, but not the first one.

Levels Five and Six: Evaluation/Evaluating and Synthesis/Creating

Originally, Bloom’s fifth level was synthesis, and his sixth was evaluation. But a group of Bloom’s former students revised his original process in the 1990s. Under the revised version, evaluating became the fifth level, and creating became the sixth.

Evaluating involves forming conclusions based on new and prior knowledge and being able to support those conclusions with that knowledge. Here we should be able to look at what we discovered in our analysis step and explain why we came to the conclusion that we did. In the example sentence above, we know that move usually indicates an action, like when we first used it, but the second time it’s used in a tangible, countable sense, not as an action.

This step marks the end of most forms of practice exercises in many textbooks. But we need to go on to the last level in order to demonstrate true knowledge of a concept.

The final level in the revised model is creating. Creating requires using all prior knowledge in order to form a new idea. It goes beyond reading a new sentence and identifying parts of speech. Creation demonstrating a mastery of nouns would require putting together a new sentence using nouns intentionally and naturally. For example, in the following sentence, I’ve created a situation to use words that would often act as verbs (love and traveling) as nouns in order to show what we discovered about things.

“Amy decided that her love of traveling was more important to her than her love of Scotland.”

Bloom’s process relies on a widening foundation of knowledge, and BJU Press homeschool curriculum references the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, especially in math and vocabulary. Check out our math curriculum or vocabulary curriculum to see how we do it!

Dates to Remember in July

June 30, 2016 by Jenna

Even though I’m not overly fond of summer, July has always been one of my favorite months—my birthday being in July probably has something to do with it. Besides the obvious holiday in July, there are many other notable events to remember.

July 1, 1863, began the three-day battle of Gettysburg, a desperate attempt by General Robert E. Lee to relieve the strain on his own Confederate troops by invading the North. The battle became the turning point of the Civil War, in favor of the Union. I’ve always wanted to visit Gettysburg because being there and seeing it would help make history—which is not my strongest subject—come alive for me. Visiting the park could make a great field trip. Learn more about the events leading up to Gettysburg in American Republic.

July 8, 1776, four days after the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, was the first public reading of the Declaration. The National Archives and Records Administration displays a complete transcript of the Declaration on its website. Reenacting that day from 240 years ago by reading the document to your children would be a great way to celebrate our nation’s independence. Or you could imagine with your children what it would have been like to live through those events.

July 16 to July 20th, 1969, was the historic space journey of Apollo 11. There are many activities you can do with your children to celebrate Moon Day, but I’ve always wondered what it would be like to stand where Neil Armstrong stood and contemplate the vastness and the silence of God’s creation.

July 28, 1866, marks the birth of Beatrix Potter, English author and illustrator of The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Potter wrote and illustrated more than twenty children’s books. Interestingly, a previously lost Beatrix Potter book entitled The Tale of Kitty in Boots was discovered in 2013 and will be published this coming September.

Also on July 28, in 1858, William Herschel—a British magistrate in India—began using people’s fingerprints to authenticate documents. His use of fingerprints eventually opened the door for the use of fingerprints in solving crimes. For a fun hands-on experiment with fingerprints, try this activity!

On July 31, 1790, Samuel Hopkins was issued the first patent in the United States. Hopkins had developed a process for creating potash, an ingredient in fertilizer. Since Hopkins’s patent, more than 6 million patents have been issued—that probably includes several kitchen sinks!

What other event would you add to this list? Comment and let us know what else is going on in July!

Are You Asking the Right Questions?

June 7, 2016 by Jenna

Much of your child’s success in learning depends on the questions you ask him and how you ask them. Research shows undisputed benefits from asking questions to develop reading comprehension. These questions help children of all ages put what they’re learning into a context that they can discuss, and those who answer comprehension questions learn more subject matter than their peers who do not. Asking your child questions also helps him discover his own ideas. It also gives him an opportunity to explore his creativity and to sharpen critical-thinking skills.

But like most homeschooling parents, you already know the need to ask questions to ensure that your child is learning. In order to teach effectively, you also need to know that you’re asking the right kind of questions. Consider these steps to improving your questioning method.

1. Develop your child’s thinking skills by asking questions that go beyond content.

Use questions that require comparing, evaluating, and discerning. (Why? What if? What is the evidence? What are the alternatives? What are the implications? What do you think is right?)

2. Give your child time to answer.

Don’t expect an immediate response. Five or six seconds of silence is not much time to allow for a well-developed response.
Be willing to accept an unconventional answer. Don’t dismiss an answer simply because it didn’t use the terms in the way that you wanted. Your child may be thinking along the right lines but maybe unable to express the answer in the correct terms. Take the time to help your child restate his answer.

3. Help your child think toward the right answers.

If your child doesn’t understand the question or answers incorrectly, ask simpler questions that help build up to the question you asked initially. If your child has trouble explaining why a sentence is grammatically incorrect, ask about the functions of the words in the sentence (which word is the verb? Is it transitive or intransitive? If it’s transitive, doesn’t it require a direct object? Is there a direct object?).
Demonstrate for your child how you arrive at conclusions by walking him through your own questioning process (how you decided to make a difficult purchase or what leads you to endorse a particular political candidate).

If you help your child by demonstrating good questioning practices, he will not only learn course content but also learn how to ask questions in order to arrive at the answers for themselves. And isn’t that the whole point?

For more insights on questions, consider the discussion sections in our BJU Press curriculum Teacher’s Editions.