
Something I have mentioned in other posts is I like the kids to do assignments where they are writing a little bit. This post will emphasize the more technical importance of this, particularly from the perspective of developing skills. What I try to do once a week is have the students do some sort of writing assignment where they have to write at least a paragraph of content. This can range from a creative writing assignment to researching a specific topic or topic of their choosing, but the goal is to get the kids to practice writing. As someone who just went through 4 years of college and had to write six trillion essays, I understand how important it is to be able to write a good essay. By having these kids practice writing with me giving specific parameters/structures (eg I want a paragraph to have 1 intro sentence, 4-5 fact sentences and 1 conclusion sentence) I hope to build up their ability to write. If they can write a good paragraph, they can write a good essay. If they can write a good essay, they can get a good college grade. Simple math in my opinion. While the kids certainly bemoaned this, I do hope the regular practice helped strengthen their writing a bit, though I did not do this enough to see a clear change in their overall writing quality.


