Welcome to Our Homeschool Course Elementary Writing with Structure

Course Sample for Our Homeschool Course Elementary Writing with Structure

Elementary Writing with Structure
By Melissa Williamson

Unit 1: Informational Writing
Week 1: Writing Basics

Objective: Help students discover joy in writing by giving them the building blocks for writing

Day 1

A. Read a piece of non-fiction material in a traditionally written format. Allow your student to choose a non-fiction topic which interests them. Avoid choosing a book with a lot of charts and graphs. Some suggestions might be:

1. Biography
2. History book
3. Magazine or newspaper article
4. Encyclopedia entries
5. Scientific topic

B. Complete Part I of the writing unit outline after reading the assigned literature.

Day 2

Choose a journal prompt and write one to five sentences in response.

Day 3

A. Allow student to choose a topic for their non-fiction assignment. Encourage them toward subjects which are of interest. Choose three locations to research. Try to limit the Internet as only one source for research and look into other areas like books or articles.

B. Complete Part II of writing unit outline while reading for research.

Day 4

Choose a journal prompt and write 1-5 sentences in response.

Week 2

Day 5

A. Review your research about area 1.

B. Complete Part III of the writing unit outline.

Day 6

Choose a journal prompt and write one to five sentences in response.

Day 7

A. Review your research about area 1.

B. Complete Part IV of the writing unit outline.

Day 8

Choose a journal prompt and write 1-5 sentences in response.

Week 3

Day 9

A. Review your research about area 1.

B. Complete Part V of the writing unit outline.

Day 10

Choose a journal prompt and write one to five sentences in response.

Day 11

A. Encourage students to read over each section and look for anything they want to change. Strongly fight the urge to tell them what they should fix. Ask them to look for at least three things they want to make better. They can add a word, change a word, take out a word, etc. Give them a colored pencil or ink pen to make changes so they can see them easily.

B. Remind students that each sentence should have a capital letter to begin and punctuation to end. Review the capitalization rule for proper nouns. Students should look at each sentence for these types of errors and mark them.

Choose a journal prompt and write one to five sentences in response.

Week 4

Day 13

Handwrite or type a final draft of the work. Make sure to correct any of the items you marked on the Writing Outline.

Day 14

Choose a journal prompt and write one to five sentences in response.

Day 15

Share your work in a creative way with someone other than your teacher. Present it as a speech, illustrate it, or even decorate your paper. Make it fun for you.

Day 16

Choose a journal prompt and write one to five sentences in response.