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English
6 Ways to Combat the Blank Page
Your homeschool year is about to get underway again, and with it, exciting new writing assignments. Whether your writer looks forward to learning more about writing or tries to stay as far away from it as he can, there’s one aspect of writing that he will most likely struggle with.
The blank page.
Looking at the whiteness of a computer document or the empty lines of a notebook page can be overwhelming, as if the blank page asks “Where do you even start?” How do you teach your writer to overcome his blank pages? Here are some tips for encouraging elementary and secondary students to conquer one of the most daunting phases of a writing assignment.
Elementary Writing Assignments
1. Take dictation.
A young writer often has more to overcome than just the blank page itself. He may get hung up on vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, and even handwriting. You can bypass much of his hesitation by having him explain what he wants to write about and writing his explanation down for him. From there, he can revise what you wrote until it matches the assignment’s requirements.
2. Add a visual goal.
In English 2, the textbook explains how to write a paragraph by laying out the various parts of a paragraph and underlining those parts in different colors—green for the topic sentence, orange for details, and red for the ending. By highlighting blank lines in these colors and having your young writer write in the missing parts, you can give him visual cues and goals to work toward. The different colors break up the blankness into manageable pieces.
3. Use writing prompts.
One of the simplest ways to overcome the blank page is to never let it be completely blank. You can give your writer a prompt to put at the top of his page. The prompt you give can be the first sentence of a story, a topic sentence for a paragraph, or even a question for him to answer. This works the same way as the “Apply and Write” sections in BJU Press elementary English textbooks.
Secondary Writing Assignments
1. Fill in the outline.
Papers for secondary writers often involve writing outlines. Your writer can skip the blank page entirely simply by expanding directly from his outline. Even a simple outline will give him something to work with.
2. Keep the thesis at the top.
Almost every secondary paper will involve a thesis of some kind—a thesis gives the writer’s point of view for the paper. Even a simple paragraph essay is often based on one. Once your writer has decided on a thesis, have him write it at the top of each page. Keeping it there will help him focus on his purpose as well as eliminate the blank page.
3. Take a walk.
Sometimes, if your writer really gets stuck, getting him away from the accusing stare of the blank page can be the perfect cure. Once his legs fall into the regular rhythm of walking, his mind will be free to come up with the words that will best begin his writing project—provided that he remembers them long enough to write them down.
Other times, overcoming the blank page is a simple matter of putting down words—any words. The words your writer chooses may be changed many times in the drafting process, and that’s OK. Their real function is to get him over that first hurdle so he can write the rest of the paper. The page only stays blank as long as there are no words on it.
Curriculum That Works Together
It happened for the first time during our second week of homeschooling this fall. After finishing her English lesson, my second-grade daughter pulled out her spelling book to look at the day’s assigned worktext page. “Mom,” she yelled excitedly, “alphabetical order! I just learned this in English. It’s like I’m doing English and spelling at the same time!”
Since we use BJU Press for every subject, this scenario happens a lot. Concepts from one subject frequently appear in another. Sometimes spelling words show up on our handwriting pages. Sometimes the same phonics generalizations highlighted in our weekly spelling list also get reinforced during our reading lessons. Sometimes my daughter gets to practice the capitalization rules she learned in English while she also practices handwriting. The overlapping of these concepts in different subject areas is a good thing—a very good thing, in fact—for the following reasons.
1. Repeating concepts aids comprehension
Most of us have probably heard that “practice makes perfect.” We probably even tell our kids that, especially at times when they’re struggling with a difficult skill. Repeating a task over and over usually does help people become more proficient at it. Good educators use this same idea in their teaching or writing (a method called “spiraling”). With this approach, concepts are repeated several times in different ways and in various contexts. Each time, the child understands the concept a little better.
2. Encountering concepts in multiple subjects encourages real-life application
Ultimately, we want our children to use what they’re learning in our homeschool environment in everyday life, especially in service to the Lord. We want them to be able to proofread a church bulletin, write a legible and error-free thank-you note, and research and evaluate information. When our children are exposed to the same concepts in different subject areas, they’re more likely to understand the broad application of that knowledge. No longer will capitalization rules only apply to English worksheets—as your child practices those rules in spelling, handwriting, and reading, he or she will likely get them right when writing a personal letter to a grandparent.
3. Reviewing concepts saves time
The overlap of concepts throughout a curriculum also has a big benefit for homeschool moms everywhere. It saves time. I get excited when I look at a lesson and realize that we’ve already covered a concept elsewhere. I don’t have to re-teach it. I just review it and move on, saving precious time in our homeschool day.
Writing and Grammar—Two Halves of One Whole
For a busy parent, with everything that has to be completed in one homeschool day, teaching writing and grammar is a lot of work. It might seem to make more sense for you to handle these two related subjects as separate classes, or to spend one semester on grammar and the next on writing. So why does BJU Press put them together in the curriculum? Because writing and grammar are two halves of the same whole. Studying grammar helps your child become a better writer, while studying writing helps your child understand grammar. Here are a few reasons why.
- Writing Skills and Grammar Skills
Writing assignments give your child a place to apply the grammar skills he’s just learned. It’s easy for a student to recognize and fix a problem he’s just learned about when looking at a list of sentences that follow a certain formula. The real test of understanding is expecting him to recognize and correct the problem in his own writing. But the reverse is also true—grammar skills improve writing. Writers need a certain level of grammatical understanding in order to be able to communicate effectively. For example, punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence entirely, as in the old joke about the trigger-happy panda that “eats, shoots and leaves.”
- Analytical and Conceptual
People tend to be either analytical or conceptual. Grammar is an analytical skill, and children who favor logical processes tend to do well with grammar. On the other hand, writing is highly conceptual. There are fewer hard-and-fast rules for writing, and children who tend to be conceptual thinkers are likely to succeed in writing. Studying writing and grammar together gives both kinds of thinkers opportunities to use their strengths and improve their weaknesses.
- Objective and Subjective
Since writing is so conceptual, it can also be frustratingly subjective to assess, but this subjectivity leaves room for leniency in grading. When I was teaching writing, I would often ask myself whether lack of sentence variety or overuse of weak verbs really deserved a lower grade even though everything else was well done. But you know your own child’s strengths and weaknesses. If your child enjoys writing but doesn’t excel at spelling or grammar (the objective part), you can choose to value the writing section (the subjective part) of the rubric over the grammar section. If your child does well grammatically but doesn’t write as well, then you can choose to emphasize the grammar section of the rubric. This gives you the flexibility to evaluate your child based on his strengths rather than his weaknesses.
At BJU Press, we teach writing and grammar together all the way from grade 2 through grade 12. Check out our whole line of English-Writing and Grammar textbooks!
Teaching Grammar the “Write” Way
Do your children dread the part of the day devoted to writing and grammar? Maybe they have trouble seeing the correlation between grammar and good writing, or maybe they view grammar as boring, impractical, and repetitive. Before college, I felt the same way. So how did I end up with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in English? It all started with a different approach to the subject.
English was my least favorite subject in high school. It was hour after hour of workbooks, rules, and more exceptions than rules. Once I turned in a short story that I had spent hours writing and was disappointed in my grade, not because it wasn’t higher but because it was based solely on the fact that I hadn’t made many spelling errors. In contrast to the drudgery of English, math class was exciting, fun, and challenging.
I left for college excited about being a math major. Reluctantly, I also signed up for the first of three required college English classes. In that class, I began learning some new things. I found out that I could arrange paragraphs in a way that made my argument more convincing. I realized that I could replace linking verbs with action verbs to give my essay strength and vitality. I caught on that writing poetry was more than just finding words that rhymed. My papers were graded on content as well as spelling. I started to love English, and I discovered that I was actually more competent in that area than in mathematics.
Maybe your children share my pre-college feelings about writing and grammar. But the good news is that by using two helpful teaching methods, induction and integration, you can interest your children in English and improve their long-term comprehension of grammar.
Induction
Deduction starts with a general rule, from which you make specific applications. For example, you can give your child a list of auxiliaries (helping verbs) and tell him that be, have, and do can also be used as main verbs; then he can underline all the auxiliaries in an exercise.
Induction, on the other hand, is examining specifics and then creating a general rule. To teach inductively, you would give your child several sample sentences with verbs and auxiliaries and then let him generate his own list of auxiliaries. Using this list, he would determine which auxiliaries could also be used as main verbs. Induction allows children the opportunity to investigate or discover something themselves, stimulating their curiosity and their eagerness to learn more.
Integration
To give the facts of grammar a real-life context, integrate your grammar lessons with writing, vocabulary, literature, and speech. Your child could compose a piece of writing and then revise it, changing the passive-voice verbs to active voice and noting the difference in tone. Ask your child to explain why some sentences should remain passive and why others sound better in active voice.
Maybe your child does not like grammar, or maybe he learns quickly and becomes bored. With inductive activities and creative writing assignments, you can spark interest and improve long-term comprehension. Remember that language is a gift from God, unique to beings created in His image, so it’s important to understand it and use it well. Using a fresh approach to grammar might even reveal some hidden talents. Who knows? Your reluctant grammar student could turn out to be an English major or a writer someday.
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Written by Dana G.