Growing Writers
One of the questions I am most often asked by other homeschooling parents is how I teach writing, especially academic writing. I plan to write several blog posts this year focused on the teaching of writing in the home school as well as provide very specific lessons and units of study to anyone who would like to explore them. How do we grow a writer? Do we get out the red pen? Get a book of writing prompts? Assign topics? Alas, no. Writers grow from love. Writers grow from trust. Growing a writer takes time and patience. Before we get much further, I need to share a bit about the way we organize our learning time with our children. The Workshop Model We use the workshop model in our learning as often as possible and in all subject areas. This model for learning is an approach, a teaching strategy, not a curriculum. It’s an approach you can use given any set of learning objectives. In our home school, we use the Common Core standards to guide our curriculum choices. I