BJU Press Blog

language arts

6 Books for Curious Preschoolers

by

Since we have a little one on the way, I decided to get a head start and shop for some books that my son and I can read together over the next few years. I found some great options for curious toddlers and preschoolers. I like these books because they cover everyday things that children interact with and love to learn about. They’re simple—the kind of book you can go back to over and over again and never get bored.

Freight Train by Crews

Less is more. Modern illustrations and minimal text leave the door wide open for mom or dad to inject their own “choo choo” effects as the train barrels down the tracks toward its destination.

Amazing Airplanes by Mitton and Parker

Planning a trip? This fun book about airports and airliners will make your preschooler an expert before check-in. I would have loved this as a curious kid who was fascinated with the baggage-claim carousel.

City Signs by Milich

The title says it all. This book is nothing but phtographs of signs, signs, and more signs. Ever wonder how some kids figure out what they all mean before they can read?

Hands: Growing Up to Be an Artist by Ehlert

This very creative book focused on making things by hand has photographs that show raw materials, tools, and finished products of various crafts. It explains (in simple terms) how the object was made. A great learning tool!

Meet the Orchestra by Hayes

If you’re like a lot of parents, you probably play some classical music for your kids. This book identifies a wide range of musical instruments and the sounds they make. It’s perfect for reading while listening to your favorite compositions.

If Everybody Did by Stover

This one is a favorite among parents around our office. It answers that age-old question, “What would happen if everyone did that?” Silly illustrations teach valuable life lessons. A must-read for every child.

I’m looking forward to reading these books with my child to capture the many benefits of reading together. I hope my sharing them will help your family find many hours of enjoyable reading time.

Have book recommendations? I’d love to hear them! Drop them in the comments below.

Image Source

Teaching Elementary Poetry Writing (Printable)

by


Have you ever read a poem and felt like what you were reading was a Jackson Pollock splatter painting in words? All that most of us can remember about studying Emily Dickinson’s poetry in high school is reading a bunch of words that are somehow supposed to make sense together but don’t—or perhaps the teacher’s explanation of how the poet’s choice of a certain color expresses her sorrow over a particular event in her life that seems completely unrelated to the poem.

If you’re about to start teaching your child to write poetry, you may be looking back at your past experiences with poetry and asking yourself two questions: why and how?

Why should I teach elementary poetry writing?

Writing poetry teaches your child to use creative description.

Forget splatter paintings and layered meanings. In its simplest form, poetry is about description. It’s using words to express a feeling or an idea in such a way that readers can’t help but say, “Yes, that!” whether or not they’ve experienced that feeling or idea before.

This kind of description is by nature concise and precise. It’s concise because using fewer words eliminates distractions, and it’s precise because in order to create the clearest pictures, words must rely on their exact meanings.

How should I teach elementary poetry writing?

There are hundreds of poetry forms to choose from, in addition to free verse, but one of my favorite forms and one of the easiest to start with is the diamante. Using it encourages your child to start mastering the conciseness and precision necessary in poetry. You can find examples of the diamante in chapter 6 of English 5 Student Worktext.

The diamante is a shape poem that highlights similarities and contrasts. Though it is seven lines long, it only has sixteen words—six nouns, six verbs, and four adjectives. The first line gives a noun that contrasts with the noun in the last line. The second line gives two adjectives that describe the first noun. Line three gives three verbs (ending in –ing) that show the action of the first noun. Line four gives four nouns, two of which rename the first noun, and two of which rename the last noun. Lines five and six mirror lines two and three, except they describe the last noun, not the first. So it comes out looking something like this:

Fire
angry, orange
glowing, snapping, blistering
tongues, ashes, flurries, icicles
glistening, cracking, aching
sad, blue
ice.

Have your child create her own diamante poem that hopefully looks more like a diamond by using this printable template.

Find more diamante poems in the English 5 Student Worktext.

How to Create Your Own Grading Rubric for High School (Printable)

by

Grading Rubric

Grading a high school writing project can be more than a little confusing. Outside of simple grammar problems, there are a lot of different things to look for in an essay. A grading rubric is an invaluable assessment tool that gives you objective standards to assess your child’s writing. Teacher’s editions for BJU Press writing and grammar textbooks do provide general rubrics for all high school writing projects, but you may have other more specific goals for your student’s writing, such as

  • strong verb usage,
  • greater sentence variety,
  • natural sentence flow, and
  • avoiding passive voice.

Your child might benefit from a rubric specifically designed for him that focuses on what he struggles with in his writing. Being able to create your own grading rubric gives you control over what is emphasized in each assignment.

For example, your ninth-grade student has difficulty with sentence variety even though he has a good vocabulary. You’d like him to use his personal experience essay in Writing & Grammar 9 to practice before he writes his research essay, but the suggested rubric is designed to evenly assess a variety of different concepts, including sentence variety. You would like to change the rubric so that sentence variety is worth more points. Though you could switch out a few categories, you’d prefer to use this assignment to emphasize only a few ideas.

Printable Rubric

How do you create your own rubric so that you can focus specifically on the few ideas your child struggles with?

Creating a Grading Rubric

Rubrics follow one simple rule: the more general the rubric, the more subjective the grading will be. But the opposite is also true: the more specific and detailed your rubric, the more objective and straightforward the grading will be.

While it may seem easier (and faster) to make a grading rubric with three categories worth seven points each for a twenty-one point assignment, you might get stuck if you try to grade with that rubric alone.

You can get a little bit further by separating the number of points and assigning them to a rating. An excellent paper might get seven points, while an average paper might get four or five.

Download these grading rubric templates for ideas on how you might make your rubric more specific and detailed.

But how can you decide what makes an excellent paper excellent? Adding descriptions to the values of each category that separate good from excellent turns subjective grading into objective grading. Additionally, the descriptions will give you something to point to if your child questions his grade, and they give your child something to aim for as he’s writing. If he keeps in mind what you’ve described as excellent as he’s completing the project, he’s more likely to achieve it.

So for your ninth-grade student, you could lay out your rubric like this:

Alternate Rubric sample

This sample rubric is a customized version of the same rubrics you’ll find in all Writing & Grammar courses. See more ninth-grade writing assignments and their rubrics in the Writing & Grammar 9 Teacher’s Edition.

Image Source

Learning About the Big Story in Reading

by

The world is preparing for yet another Christmas. My family enjoys a lot of things about Christmas—the lights, the food, the special family time, the gift-giving—but I don’t want us to become preoccupied with those things to the extent that we forget about why we celebrate the holiday in the first place. I want my children to understand how the Christmas story fits within the storyline of the Bible. BJU Press reading curriculum is helping me reach that goal.

(Image use) WP 12/2016

One of the things I love about the third edition of Reading 2 is the Bible retellings. When BJU Press revised the curriculum, they added four Bible retellings (one in each reader) in order to help develop a child’s biblical worldview. These selections recount the main storyline of the Bible (Creation, Fall, and Redemption) and challenge the student to apply these worldview-shaping truths to other selections as well.

The first Bible retelling at the end of the first reader deals with the first two major parts of the biblical storyline—Creation and the Fall. Honestly, this was one of my favorite selections in the entire first reader, and I felt that it was one of the most profitable. My second-grade daughter has heard this story countless times at home, at church, and during the first couple of weeks of our Bible curriculum. But covering it during “reading class” was different because we were able, with the help of the Reading 2 Teacher’s Edition, to dig deep into the narrative. The questions in the Teacher’s Edition not only deepened my daughter’s understanding of the significance of Creation and the Fall but also paved the way for some needed spiritual conversations.

During this Christmas season, we’ll have the opportunity to read the second Bible retelling that’s located at the end of the second reader. This selection recounts the birth of Jesus and highlights how God fulfilled His promise to Adam and Eve by sending mankind a Redeemer. Again I’m impressed by the questions in the Teacher’s Edition. They will help my daughter understand the significance of the incarnation as well as its connection to the Creation/Fall narrative in Genesis. I’m already anticipating some good discussions about the evidences of true faith and the sovereignty of God. What wonderful truths to have on our minds throughout the Christmas season!

Later on this year, we’ll continue learning about God’s redemptive plan by reading two more selections: one about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and one based on future events foretold in the book of Revelation. Again, these selections cover material familiar to us. But they’re a vital part of my daughter’s education. They explain the big story of the world. They teach her to value the things God values.  And they help her think biblically and rightly about the world around her.

Interested in learning more about this reading curriculum? View some sample pages from the student readers and the Teacher’s Edition of Reading 2.

Curriculum That Works Together

by

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.

Curriculum That Works Together (image)

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.

Watch this video to see the curriculum we’re using in our homeschool.