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How to Teach Cursive and Composition With A Fresh Perspective

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

When pioneers were going west, ruts served as a guide in following others. Ruts are not necessarily a bad thing. However, when you need to veer off the beaten path when teaching cursive and composition because your well-worn path is not working, then you need a fresh perspective.

The first shift in my mindset that I had to overcome when teaching cursive and composition is to realize that they are two very different skills. As teachers we can forget that they’re related, but different.

Cursive is a fine motor skill and requires physical dexterity while composition is a mental process.

When both work together, it is an out of body experience as my son told me one time. Okay, okay, it is a total body experience.

Bottom line is that it can be flat out hard. Telling your child to pick his pencil up and start writing can be the demise of him.

For example, a child may be mastering fine motor skill, but needs help with ideas on what to write.

On the flip side, a child may be excited to write creatively, but his fine motor skills are holding him back.

Both skills are needed for a child to be an effective writer.

How to Teach Cursive and Composition With A Fresh Perspective. When you need to veer off the beaten path when teaching cursive and composition because your well-worn path is not working, then you need a fresh perspective. Click here to read these valuable tips!

Honing both skills need to be done simultaneously as well as individually for both to emerge strong.Let me get one more idea out of the way too. Cursive is both hard to teach and to learn, but print can be harder.

As the parent, you are the only one to know if the problems you’re having with your child are because of attitude or aptitude.

Some children do better when typing, but before you give in to teaching only typing, read on about my experience.

Cursive takes patience, consistency, and fortitude to teach.

Devices today are suppose to speed up the time we have, but they don’t. They can make both children and adults overly anxious.

They also teach us to instantly master whatever it is that we’re learning.

Teaching and learning cursive rubs opposite of the educational grain being thrown at us today. It’s a slow process and not instant gratification. Parents are left wondering if their child has a special need when in fact they may be developing fine.

How to Rock Teaching Cursive

Look at these tips for teaching cursive from a fresh perspective.

1.) Don’t teach cursive later. Big mistake. I hear it all the time: “I’ll wait until my child is in 3rd grade or 5th grade.” 

The best time to teach cursive is soon after he gains control of his fine motor skills. The rule of thumb is about half way through first grade.

One side note is that your child is still malleable and willing to learn cursive the younger he is.

By the time, he is in third grade or later, he may be too embarrassed or not patient enough to learn.

I started each child halfway through first grade and had plenty of time to teach it. Later is not better in this instance. Of course, this means if your child has no developmental issues.

By 3rd grade, my kids had a good handle on cursive and of course I expected them to use it all the way through to high school. And yes, they learned to type along the way.

How to Teach Cursive and Composition With A Fresh Perspective. When you need to veer off the beaten path when teaching cursive and composition because your well-worn path is not working, then you need a fresh perspective. Click here to read these valuable tips!

2.) Don’t teach cursive and composition at the same time.

Direct teaching is very different from practice.

For example, in the beginning while your child is learning cursive don’t make him agonize in how to spell or how to be creative. Just give him the answers and move on while he focuses on the physical part of writing.

3.) Don’t teach composition or cursive back to back in the day.

Whatever you do, don’t do two back to back heavy assignments.

If your child is struggling with both of these skills then space them out in the day.

Do cursive practice work first thing in your day.

Then, switch gears and do other subjects. Add in composition later after your child’s hand has had time to recover.

4.) Strengthening fine motor skills goes beyond practicing cursive.

  • Coloring is a great way to naturally strengthen skills. And coloring something worthwhile like science pages or history pages will make learning time productive. Check out the 10 Westward Expansion History Fun Coloring Pages and 20 Ancient Civilization History Coloring Pages.
  • Copywork is timeless for teaching beautiful penmanship and again worthy of your child’s learning time. Poems, scriptures, history, or science are straight and clear prose which are practical for copywork. Look at my article, Free History Copywork – A Roundup of History Resources.
  • Drawing and writing. Be sure to not criticize, judge, or grade these fun activities. But make sure they do BOTH writing and drawing. My sons wanted to draw a picture first and then the words swelled up from the inside as they viewed their magnificent drawings.

Teaching composition is equally teacher intensive. There are no short cuts. Learning how to express ideas clearly doesn’t just happen. It is modeled by the teacher.

It reminds me of summers I spent with my granny when she was alive. I watched a southerner master cook whip out the most delicious recipes I fondly remember to this day. As I stood beside her, I wrote down her ideas.

I added a few ingredients to her pot under her supervision and then learned to cook delicious meals like her.

Teaching Composition that Goes from Limp to Life

Composition can be the same way. Don’t make it an event where all life goes limp. Make it a time that is memorable for the right reasons. Tears are not a good sign.

Composition starts off as a shared project when your kids are just learning.

You start the “pot”, let them stir it by adding a few key ingredients.

As you model how to write, your kids learn by watching and participating.

Look at these ways to teach composition that are out of the box.

  • Take a week and brainstorm topics instead of writing a composition. In order to have your child’s ideas flow abundantly, you take control of the physical act of writing.
  • Let your child record his ideas on his phone. Then play them back and write them down. This breaks this hard process down into two steps.
  • Have your child use his phone or your phone to take pictures of objects that might interest him. Go on a scavenger hunt. Scrolling back through the pictures is not only fun, but gets your child excited about what to write.
  • Also, I would find a funny picture or some other picture that I thought would evoke a strong emotion and muse with one of my sons about what the title should be. How many titles or ideas can your child come up with?
  • Make writing a group effort. One activity we did was to have each child write part of the story. This is not only fun, but it takes the pressure off of coming up with the whole story.
  • Another thing I did was to write story starters on a strip of paper and have each child draw a topic from a jar. Some kids like the element of surprise and challenge.
  • For one son, he loved it when I wrote as he dictated to me. He had beautiful prose, but his handwriting held him back. So I would write as he focused on his thoughts. When I finished the draft, he would copy it. Eventually, his physical dexterity caught up with his creative mind.
WriteShop

Also, there are many writing programs that I have used through the years, but one of my favorite writing programs that not only taught writing well, but gave me support is WriteShop.

WriteShop has a unique way of helping the homeschool parent because it was written by homeschooling moms.

Not only does it have a fun way of helping the littlest budding writer, but it gives you practical tips in how to teach.

WriteShop Primary

A lot of writing programs can assume that you have a professional background as a teacher. I do not.

From the time you open the curriculum and read about setting a realistic schedule and see a visual of one to how to grade upper grade compositions, WriteShop guides you in every step.

Ruts can be valuable to a routine, but they can also hem you in.

How to Teach Cursive and Composition With A Fresh Perspective. When you need to veer off the beaten path when teaching cursive and composition because your well-worn path is not working, then you need a fresh perspective. Click here to read these valuable tips!

Fresh ideas in how to teach cursive and composition need to be nurtured. Try one or two of these ideas above and let me know how it works for you.

What do you do when you need a fresh perspective?

Also, I know you’ll find these other posts super helpful!

Hugs and love ya,

3 Ways to Choose the BEST Writing Curriculum (for a Growing Homeschool Family)

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

It’s a scary feeling choosing a writing curriculum when you don’t have a professional background in education. Also, look at my page The Dynamics of How to Homeschool Easily and Smarter.

Knowing that thousands of parents embark on teaching their children each year, I too made the leap to choosing the perfect writing curriculum.

But you and I both know that perfect writing curriculum doesn’t exist, or does it?

3 Ways to Choose the BEST Writing Curriculum (for a Growing Homeschool Family)

Looking back now that two of my sons are graduated, there were some things I did right although I didn’t feel that way at the time.

WRITING CURRICULUM

Hoping to spare you the same agony I went through because of my aversion to teaching writing, I learned 3 ways to choose the best writing curriculum for a growing homeschool family.

1. There is a right way to teach writing. No smoke and mirrors are involved.

A writing program needs to give you and your children structure and sentence variety.

Short and compound sentences are only two sentence types, but a beginner writer needs plenty of practice developing them.

Moving from basic sentence writing to a paragraph is foundational to strong writing skills.

As your child matures, he widens out in his ability to write creatively, but the foundation is first.

Does your writing curriculum give numerous subject topics, practice with sentence variety and instructions to the non-professional educator?

2. As the moods of your children change, your writing environment can’t.

When it comes to scheduling, I could easily be known as a Nazi mama.

I’ve been hard on myself through the years so that I don’t push too hard.

But years later, I’ve learned my structured environment was key to my boys learning how to write well.

I fully appreciate now that relaxed homeschooling is not lazy homeschooling. Finding balance is key to being a good writing teacher.

A well-rounded writing curriculum should give you guidance through each step of the writing process and tips to accommodate your kids changing needs and moods.

For several years, my sons needed to write about boy topics.

Easy Writing Curriculum Tips

Getting them in touch with their warm and fuzzy feelings didn’t work for them. An excellent writing curriculum really needs to serve the needs of both girls and boys.

In my inexperience, I learned a valuable nugget which is that a structured writing environment nurtures creativity. It worked opposite of how I thought it would be in the beginning.

Instead of focusing on the grade level, a writing curriculum needs to give you a clear picture of the process.

For example, does it move from planning, prewriting, drafting, revising to editing/publish? Does it help you to teach each step clearly?

If the writing curriculum is written for multiple ages, then you can teach to the writing ability for each child.

It’s a costly mistake to buy a writing curriculum that does not give you abundant teaching tips at each stage of the writing process.

For example, just because a child is in middle school doesn’t mean he is ready to write high school essays. After all essays are just a lot of practice in paragraph writing combined to make a lengthy paper.

Practice in paragraph writing can span many grades and it’s more about maturity than age.

When you’re given clear short-term goals and long-term goals of the writing process, your child can advance based on his maturity or simmer at one level for a while.

Again, teaching writing from the novice to the accomplished is about giving kids a structured environment which should be one of the important details in your program.

Writing, like math, is a skill that needs to be practiced each day. Skipping writing for numerous days and then asking your kids to write 5 paragraphs in one setting is pure torture.

Like other skill subjects, writing quickly becomes boring if a child is not writing about what interests him.

Does your writing curriculum give you writing prompts or ideas, encourages your child to write about topics that interest him and remind you to give praise for your child’s good communication skills? It should.

3. Lessons must be geared toward ensuring writing success.

Writing programs aim for writing success, but many miss the mark.

Not having a teaching background makes me require more of a writing program than just telling me about the writing process.

Look at these key bullet points to help you gauge a top-notch writing program.

Writing Structure Gives Kids a Strong Edge

  • Equipping teachers with scripted lessons is the start to creative writing. Like cooking, not everybody needs a recipe but sometimes you need exact measurements. However, in the beginning an inexperienced cook starts with a pattern or recipe and adjusts a recipe as she hones her skill. She adjusts a recipes to fit her family’s needs. Teaching writing is similar. Learn from seasoned writers by carefully following a script and then adjust it to meet your family’s needs.
  • Providing detailed instructions for budding writers is an essential component. New writers seem to have no fear when it comes to ideas. They need structure and guidance daily. The challenges are quite different for a more mature writer.
  • A program should ensure writing success for older writers who have more experience in life but may have experienced many writing failures. They may lack confidence. If a writing program fails to ensure that each writing adventure is a success, why would you choose it?
  • Ample ideas for editing, revising and giving feedback are necessary. My boys never responded to the red pen marks on their paper. It didn’t take many times for me to do that until I realized that writing is very personal. Tips in my curriculum like discussing topics beforehand, having my child explain his thoughts to me prior to writing and having my child listen and watch me as I thought outloud while writing were key teaching points I learned.

Teaching Kids to Write Clearly and Creatively Without Crushing Them

One year when one of my sons was in middle school, I thought he was a very creative writer. At least more so than I was at his age. What I was helped to appreciate from teaching writing was that my son needed to make a point with his writing while entertaining readers.

Having eight pages of words which sparked his imagination was beautiful and creative, but honing it for meaning is equally important.

As a mom of bright boys, I refused to believe that just because boys came later to the writing table that it meant they were delayed.

They were not, they just needed more entertaining than girls. A boy’s need to wiggle, move, and use up their energy had to be incorporated into the lesson plan.

I’m not telling you that teaching writing is easy, but it can be less intimidating when you choose the best writing curriculum. Take your time choosing one and ask a lot of questions.

3 Ways to Choose the BEST Writing Curriculum (for a Growing Homeschool Family)

What is working and not working for you right now?

More Writing Curriculum Tips

Also, look at how to teach writing with these other tips.

It’s a scary feeling to choose a writing curriculum when you don’t have a professional background in education. Knowing that thousands of parents embark on teaching their children each year, I too made the leap to choosing the perfect writing curriculum. But you and I both know that perfect writing curriculum doesn’t exist, or does it? Looking back now that two of my sons are graduated, there were some things I did right although I didn’t feel that way at the time. Click here to grab the 3 tips on how to choose the BEST writing curriculum.

Don’t forget to follow BOTH of my Pinterest accounts for AWESOME pins.

Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.


Visit Tinas Dynamic Homeschool ‘s profile on Pinterest.

How to Easily Add Poetry to Your Homeschool Subjects

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

How to Easily Add Poetry to Your Homeschool Subjects @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool PlusPoetry has always been important to me during my homeschooling journey. Expressing emotion through artfully contrived words though, I feel, can be a lost art in homeschooling because of the sheer number of subjects that creep up into our day. We have savored every lesson as we used The Art of Poetry Bundle.

Beautiful words have a way of painting a conversation with so few of them. I have always admired such clear thought that can be dwindled down to a few lines of poetry. The Art of Poetry captures not just the common elements like rhythm and meter, but can lead you step by step to understanding and skillfully teaching poetry.

I have added a snippet above of the table contents for you to peek at. By breaking each element of poetry down into a chapter, you and your children have more than enough time to relish each word, line and punctuation.

Poetry unlike reading prose calls for an unhurried pace so that all the parts are analyzed for beauty and hidden meaning.

Using figurative language and metaphors is not something we always use in everyday writing. At first, studying poetry can feel strained until you realize that writers have to write with their hearts and not just their minds. So The Art of Poetry  begins by helping you to understand the importance of paying close attention to reading, then covers the elements of poetry and gives you a history and timeline of poetry.

A very useful feature and one we enjoyed  is the short biographies of poets that is in the back of the book. Helping your children to appreciate that poets are real people and their lives, their environment and opinions influences their emotions and enriches our understanding of each word. 

Whether a poem is silly, happy or sad, our children see that other poets may have experienced some of the things that we do.

When we received The Art of Poetry, both the Student Text and Teacher Editions were bound beautifully. You know my obsession by now though. I need books that lay flat on my table. So I coil bound both the Teacher’s Edition and Student Text and began our lessons.

I heeded the suggestion given right away and that is to begin by reading Chapter 8:Putting it All Together.  Using this with both Mr. Awesome who was high school level at the time and Tiny who was elementary level, helped me to get an overall pulse of their understanding of poetry up to this point.

After each poem there is a set of questions in the Student Text for you to consider. The Teacher’s Edition is a must have because of the sheer volume of teaching tips and answers to the questions. It is more than an answer sheet. More on that in a minute because I certainly want to give you more details on it.

At the end of the chapter there are activities that vary anywhere from reading a poem of your child’s choosing, to hands-on activities to writing a poem.

There were more than enough activities to choose from at the end of each chapter so that I could mix and match for both levels.  Also vocabulary words and their definitions are provided throughout the Student Text.

It did not take long for Mr. Awesome and Tiny to understand that poems are about laughter, enjoyment and they can also bring tears. They are about unveiling emotion that we only thought oral conversation could do.

We did several of the activities suggested in each lesson plan. As suggested in one of the activities, I found free emotion facial cards online so that Tiny could pick the emotion he was feeling as Mr. Awesome read the poem.

I also received Disk 1 from the DVD. The quality, sound and clarity of the lessons was superb.

I think one of the parts Mr. Awesome enjoyed the best about this program was watching the DVD as Christine Perrin teaches four students.  Mr. Awesome gave up his normal DVD laptop player and confiscated my computer with the bigger screen. Because he is high school level, he does get to use the Teacher’s Edition too if he needs it but just followed along in the Student Text as he watched her conduct the class. He felt a connection with the other kids there realizing they didn’t have all the exact words to express their feelings about each poem.

I have not forgotten to tell you about the comprehensive Teacher’s Edition. Just in case the homeschool world decides to start nominating candidates for the top of the line teacher’s editions and gives them a 5 star award, I will already have The Art of Poetry Teacher’s Edition nominated.

Previously I mentioned the timeline in the Teacher’s Edition, but I have to admit that some swooning was involved when I saw it. In our unit studies and everyday learning, I am always looking for ways to connect language arts to a history timeline.

In the Teacher’s Edition, there is a timeline that has time periods with the following four sections, except for the postmodern period: forms and genres, writers, literary value and historical context. It is a nice visual aid to enriching your language arts.

A Teacher’s Edition should equip any teacher, not just the ones who have a background or degree in that area, to explain clearly what is being taught. A teacher can’t do this if she is only given an answer sheet. Background information to edify the educator is a must too.

The Art of Poetry Teacher’s Edition contains gray bordered pages immediately following the lesson that gives detailed explications and background information where needed. That means this section clarifies and breaks down the process of teaching into the most minute pieces. We need that when we don’t know what we are doing or like me, if you want to pick up the curriculum and teach with minimum preparation time.

Here is what this Teacher’s Edition includes. I took this from the website so it is finely tuned.

  • Detailed and fascinating explications of thirty-nine poems from the student text
  • A complete answer key to accompany Anthology exercises
  • A poetry time line showing the different periods of poetry, including the period’s forms and genres, writers, literary value, and some historical context
  • A quiz for each chapter, a cumulative book quiz, and answers keys for all quizzes
  • An introduction for the teacher with tips and suggestions for teaching poetry
  • The entire The Art of Poetry student text

I have to add one more point though that is particularly valuable to me in using many, many teacher’s editions and that is how the student text page and teacher’s edition page numbers align. Though the table of contents lists the Teacher’s Edition last entry on page 271, there are well over that amount of pages in the Teacher’s Editions. However, because they retained the same page number alignment, you can easily tell your student which page you are on because you start on the same one. A small thing not so small in keeping me organized and saving time flipping through student texts and teacher’s editions that have different page numbers.

Effort counts in poetry. Turning thoughts into creative words is not an easy task, but any reader of poetry appreciates thoughts that are composed in an artistic way. Both Mr. Awesome and Tiny enjoyed the activities of not only writing their own poetry but sharing it with each other as well as their drawings illustrating figurative language. Closing our eyes and mentally reflecting on the sight, sound, feel, taste and aroma of each poem we read as we were guided along by The Art of Poetry has been some of our most pleasurable lessons so far this year.

I know you’ll love teaching poetry easily with The Art of Poetry .

Also, you can grab some free Ancient Greece Poetry, 24 Borderline Genius Ways To Relieve Language Arts Boredom and How To Teach Your Homeschooled Children Shakespeare.

Hugs and love ya,

Signature T

Don’t forget to follow BOTH of my Pinterest accounts for AWESOME pins.

Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.


Visit Tinas Dynamic Homeschool ‘s profile on Pinterest.

Teaching Cursive Handwriting Matters Style Doesn’t And Free Resources

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Should teaching cursive handwriting not be a priority in this digital age.

For years we have been told that storing information in digital form is safer than paper.

However, that process is not without problems.

Cursive Matters; Handwriting Style Doesn't and grab some free AWESOME resources @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Technology is rapidly changing.

And hardware and devices, which store vital information from paper can become obsolete.

Businesses scramble to constantly update their systems as important paperwork could become lost.

Should cursive be lost to the same vacuum of the modern digital age?

It’s not easy to answer that question unless you know how to teach cursive.

If you have never taught cursive, it can be easy to cast it off.

Or think that a child is not capable of it.

Will we be doing our kids a disservice if we skip the cursive and keep the keyboard?

You may think so, but not so fast.

Is Cursive Obsolete for Homeschooled Kids?

Look first at a few of these points of how cursive should be taught to make it easy.

And more importantly the value of it.

Also, I have some free resources at the bottom for you to use to teach cursive.

It doesn’t cost a lot to get a beautiful return.

ONE/ Teach cursive first, before print.

When I taught cursive to my first son, he already had learned the ball-and-stick method that I taught him in Prek and part of Kindergarten.

Switching quickly and teaching him simplified cursive at the end of Kindergarten and in first grade were key to him successfully learning cursive.

Teaching my first son cursive, I learned that it was easier to teach him cursive first because the letters were connected and flowing.

I also learned a valuable lesson as a teacher which is to not have my son unlearn the ball-and-stick method he had been taught.

That is not the way I wanted to teach.

As he progressed, I noticed that with the ball-and-stick method that he could get confused with letter direction.

At that point, I had him do all his work, including crossword puzzles in cursive.

By the way, fun crosswords puzzles was a fun way to teach him to practice writing individual cursive letters while his attention was focused on the fun of the puzzle.

As he progressed through the years, he quickly recaptured knowing how to print and it turned out beautiful.

Master Cursive Writing @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

(My son’s cursive at the beginning of second grade so I could judge his progress.)

When my second and third sons came along, I taught them cursive first.

Their letter reversal struggle was just about non-existent because they didn’t learn to print them until they were older.

As they have progressed through the years, I find it ironic that as they have grown, they developed their own order of how to write some numbers and letters.

For example, in writing the number four, one of my sons writes the longer side first (the part on the right) and then he writes the part on the left side last.

Of course, this is opposite of how we teach our kids to print the number 4, but it’s his handwriting style.

Of course, I remind him how to form the numbers and letter easier, but I don’t fuss too much over it.

More on that in a minute.

TWO/ Understand the three broad strokes of cursive.

To understand the simple way to teach cursive, you need to know the three broad strokes.

The first is a downcurve or sometimes called up and down, an overcurve and an undercurve.

When you see how to tame cursive, it becomes very easy to allow kids to make huge curves and loops.

For our first lessons in teaching cursive, my sons wrote real big on butcher roll paper.

Understanding that most children don’t have control over their fine motor skills until about half way through first grade, I didn’t expect them to write small cursive letters.

I did allow each child to write a lot of big strokes, up and down, loops, curves and circles, which they like to do anyway.

From there we progressed to lined paper in first grade.

3 Broad Cursive Strokes to Teach

After teaching all of my sons cursive and resisting the print first tradition, which can confuse children, I learned that when letters are connected and flowing, it’s easier to learn to write.

When a child has to decide where to place straight lines and circles as he is learning the ball-and-stick method, he can get confused and write letters backward.

Cursive built confidence in my boys because when they placed their pencil on the paper on the left side of the paper for the first letter each letter flowed effortlessly.

Instead of focusing so much emphasis on down up, around, lift your pencil up, place it back down, my sons focused on their spelling not the constant placing of where to begin and end letters or lines.

Penmanship was more legible because there was no guessing which letter faced forward or backward.

THREE/ Confusion where one word starts and stops was avoided by doing cursive.

Another battle I didn’t have to face though I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time was that my sons avoided the confusion of not being able to tell where one word ends and the other one begins.

This is not only important for new readers, but for anybody that wants their handwriting legible.

My sons’ reading and writing advanced quickly because cursive helped them to see which letters stayed connected to make words.

When my sons did start using printing interchangeably with cursive on some of their compositions, I noticed that some of the printed words ran together.

More Writing Curriculum Tips

It was hard to read when two words ran together because they weren’t spaced properly.

This is a common mistake for the child to guess where to start the next letter in a ball-and-stick method, which is why some words look like they have a few extra letters at the end of them when they are really the start of the next word.

What I have learned is that cursive matters because it has not only built confidence in my sons, but helped them to learn to read, spell and taught them the value of being proud of something uniquely theirs.

Each son has developed different handwriting styles that are as individual as their personality, which is another myth about cursive.

Cursive doesn’t have to be uniformed among writers.

Persons who have mastered cursive can read different styles of it.

Can Homeschools Become Part of the Dumbing Down Movement If We Don’t Teach Cursive

There is plenty of room for personality and differences. Some writers prefer more vertical writing and others prefer slanted writing, which is why handwriting style doesn’t matter because we are not trying to confine kids to a mold.

I am not telling you to not keep the keyboard, but I’m telling you that cursive goes beyond the value of teaching a child how to write well.

Free Homeschool Cursive Program and Resources

Look at some of these free resources which rock because they help you to teach cursive.

Look at my articles

Don’t forget to follow BOTH of my Pinterest accounts for more AWESOME pins.

Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.


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How to Put Together a Homeschooled High School Writer’s Notebook & Free Resources

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

How to Put Together a Homeschooled High School Writer's Notebook and Free Resources

With two move overseas in the last two years, we have been slowly catching up on subjects. Tiny is still straddling middle and high school, but his writing has been at high school level. Because we had to set up his high school writer’s notebook after our move back, I am sharing it with you today along with some free resources.

WriteShop

I have used many writing courses with my boys through the years and I have genuinely enjoyed each one. One that we really enjoyed which was created by homeschool moms because it worked and made teaching writing easy is WriteShop.

In another post, I will be sharing some things we liked and didn’t like so much about writing programs because today I want to stick to showing you an easy set up for a writer’s notebook.

Really, this set up would work for a middle school kid too.

I. Outside Cover

Notebooks can be made out of anything, like a file folder, composition book or even a binder.



Your teen can design his own cover and coloring is cool now even for adults and young teens, which is why at the bottom, I listed some free and cool looking coloring pages.

I ask Tiny if he wanted to color or design his cover and he rolled his eyes. I took that as a no.

Instead, he found this handsome and dare I say elegant, houndstooth-ish looking Divoga black and gold notebook in late December when we arrived back in the states.

Handsome looking notebook 1

I believe it may have been seasonal, but you can look at this picture below to see the other ones they have.

They are pretty impressive looking if you have a teen boy or girl that wants a more professional look.

And it helps if the binders are on sale because a teen can change their mind often when it comes to expressing their individuality in their writer’s notebook.

II. Superb Writing Tools Equals a Master Writer (okay, well maybe, but it doesn’t hurt)

Next, the pen zipper pouch is important because I make sure Tiny has a variety of pen colors to work with.

When they boys were younger, we used the skip line method when writing so that there is a line to write on under the first draft and to rewrite the next draft or to change a word.

It keeps a child from erasing, which should be completely ruled out in writing, but kids have a hard time  doing that.

WriteShop Junior


If they learn to eradicate erasing when they are young, then as they grow to a teen writer, it helps them to learn the writing process faster because writing is the culmination of many mark ups and deletions.

superb writing tools 2

As the boys get older, they get the choice of whether they want to keep skipping lines and/or use different color pens to identify the different stages of writing like initial draft, revise and final draft.

Tiny likes black ink for writing and red ink for correcting. If it is needs to be completely rewritten as a draft, he can choose another color, like blue or green. I think Tiny keeps the pencil in his zipper as a good measure.

Tiny and I both tend to like the Zebra z grip, medium point.

And Z grip has the other colors too.

He also likes keeping highlighters in his zip pouch because when he has finished his thoughts, he can return later and substitute a more colorful adjective or word. At the time, I encourage him to keep his ideas flowing. He will highlight real quick and keep moving.

He loves the Yoobi highlighters like I do and grabbed mine, but we have been eyeing these mini yoobi highlighters.
A few paper clips  for keeping his pages together and some post it notes and he is set up for referencing his pages the way he wants to.

How to Help Your Teen to Find the Best Words for His Ideas

Next, I keep a heavy duty top loading protector page with fresh paper in it. It is by Wilson Jones.

This just keeps fresh paper in the front and he can easily see when he needs to fill it up again.

Then,  we set our tabs up in a variety of ways.

So we set up some of the tabs the same way, but not all of them. Remember, your teen still needs your help in organizing their notebooks.

III. But It’s the Inside That Matters.

We have five sections and they are:

One| Outlines/Compositions.

This is where Tiny keeps his outlines and drafts. He likes keeping his final compositions at the very end of the notebook. He also likes to keep the model he is working on here under this tab and not under a separate tab.

Two| Structural Models.

At this point, I want you know how important the order of the tabs are because it helps your teen to go through the writing process in a logical order.

For example, some teens like to correct spacing and grammar before they are finished writing their content. This is not only exhausting to do, but can be both stressful and a waste of time when their focus needs to be first on content.

This is an important part in helping a teen organize his thoughts. Your teen needs to understand that before he focuses on the mechanics of writing, he has to clarify his thoughts.

Put models in this section which you want your teen follow.

Three| Style Charts.

Put words or lists here that help improve his technique of writing. We like list of adjectives and adverbs.

Again, these three tabs helps a teen writer to not forget the very basics of writing like having a beginning, middle and an end, that writing using noun and verb is solid writing and wordiness is a waste of good writing.

Four| Banned Words.

Though this section for me could be part of Writing Helps, it is a section that Tiny needs to focus on this year. Keeping it a separate tab reminds him to narrow down his word choice carefully. Banned words, however, could easily fit into the Writing Helps too.

Five| Writing Helps

Tiny needed help with the details of his writing so we named this part Writing Helps. Placing this at the end of the notebook he is reminded that punctuation and grammar helps can now be focused on after he has made his choice of ideas.

That is the strength of making each writer’s notebook to fit their unique and immediate needs.

Because we have had many interruptions with our writing, I need to be sure that he has some of the basics like parts of speech that he learned in his younger years.

In addition, he needs to expand the way he connects thoughts so I have printed off a transitional words list.

parts of speech 3

Instead of constantly reminding him about them, it is his job now to check his work for that.

These helpful sheets that are free and that I list at the bottom are nifty for shoring up any weakness of a teen writer.

Free Homeschool Writing Helps

This is just an awesome site. I have referred to it often throughout the years. It has a number of free printables and helps for kids ages 3 to 13, but I think some of them can be used as a reference for older kids too.

Then I love this site because we have used some of her printables and they are especially for teen writers. I like the story brainstorming questions and it helped my boys to hone some of their thoughts.

A plethora of free helps and downloads here. I like the 475 Writing Prompts (be aware I have not read all of them, but a lot of them) and the templates for printing.

If you want to make your own notebook, your child can color a picture for the front of their notebook and glue it on a composition notebook or print the character sketch template.

Check out the wonderful graphic organizers and journal topics.

Then this site has been around for years and I have used it at various stages of my boys’ writing to help them visualize and organize their thoughts. It works fine for an older student too and especially if they are a visual learning.

The Worksheet Place, under the category Writing Worksheets, also has very helpful sheets. Under persuasive worksheets is where I found the transitional words worksheet, which I printed off for Tiny.

As I mentioned before, each one of my sons had things they struggled with or needed help remembering. I want their notebooks to be a place that not only helps creative thought processes flow, but to be especially helpful.

A writer’s notebook should reflect each writer’s personality and making the notebook feel personal helps.

The grading process stays with me, but as Mr. Senior 2013 did more writing he wanted to see how the paper was graded and so I added helpful rubrics for writing to his notebook. You can grab them here.

Right now, Tiny is not interested in that as he is beginning high school and he has different goals for this year.

Does this give you a good starting point for your homeschooled teen writers’ notebook?

You’ll love these other helpful tips:

What else do you like to include?

Hugs and love ya,