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Ellen Redsax

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Everything posted by Ellen Redsax

  1. Whenever I find an example “in the wild” of writing that needs to be improved, I save it to show my 8th grader. On Facebook, you can find infinite examples of people mixing up their, there, and they’re. But I also come across writing that’s awkward or just plain wrong in my local newspaper and the online edition of national magazines. Often, the problem is subject-verb agreement, when the writer has tried to put so much information into one sentence that the subject and verb are too far apart for the writer to remember what he was talking about. (Feel free to have your student try to improve that last sentence!) You can also look for examples of student writing and have your ds try to improve them. He might learn to recognize his own shortcomings by seeing them in other students’ writing. Try showing him lower-scoring examples from the AP Test website, or search for examples of college application essays. Michael Clay Thompson has a book of student essays meant to help parents figure out how to grade essays. Reading the essays and Thompson’s comments, and trying to fix the essays, might help your ds. https://www.rfwp.com/series/writing-program-by-michael-clay-thompson#book-opus-40-a-resource-for-grading-academic-writing Hope you get some more ideas! It would be great to find a source with tons of helpful examples of writing samples that need improving.
  2. Hi! I live in North Carolina. I’m homeschooling one 14 year old daughter. My 19 year old daughter, a homeschool graduate, is a freshman in college. How do you stick your kids’ ages on the bottom of all your posts? Thanks!
  3. We're having fun with a book called Reinvent the Wheel. In each chapter, they explain a problem, then guide you through the steps to build an invention that solves the problem. Then there's an inventor's challenge, where they give you hints about how to improve your invention, but don't give you all the answers. It starts with the potter's wheel and goes through inventions based on simple machines, inventions using chemistry, and inventions you can live in. There's probably more stuff I'm forgetting. We've only done the first few chapters so far. Check out our marshmallow catapult video, but bear in mind that we didn't actually knock over the enemy soldiers with marshmallows, we just edited it to look that way. http://redsax.blogspot.com/2008/03/reinvent-wheel.html http://www.amazon.com/Reinvent-Wheel-Inventions-Problem-Solving-Inventors/dp/0471395390/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204857226&sr=8-1
  4. So, is there anything you can recommend for chemistry? I was thinking of doing RS4K Chem Level 1 with dd next year, but your comment makes me want to look around some more. She will be close to 9 next fall.
  5. cool stuff, thanks! we also like TMBG's version of Istanbul, Not Constantinople. We put it in our playlist when we first read about Constantinople, and now every time we read about someone trying to attack Constantinople, we have to sing about it.
  6. When my second one was born, I refused to put her down on her tummy, thinking if I didn't give her the chance to develop her muscles, I'd have more time before I had to baby-proof the house. Didn't work. She crawled even earlier than her big sister.
  7. I used to be Ellen in Ft. Lauderdale, and for a while I was Ellen from Ft. Lauderdale in CA, or something like that. DD 8 is great with languages. We're doing Elementary Greek 1 this year, and Spanish with La Clase Divertida. She loves to read, play the piano, and draw. DD 3 likes to play Barbies, or with any kind of dolls and stuffed animals. The dolls act out fairy tales and such. She's not as bothered by big bad wolves as her sister was at that age, so we can read lots of fun stories.
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