Welcome to "Tea with Julie," a weekly missive by me, Julie Bogart. My wish is to give you food for thought over a cup of tea to enhance your life as an educator, parent, and awesome adult. Glad you're here. Pinkies up!
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Cincinnati, June 8, 2024
Hi Friend,
What I’ve noticed over the years of home educating five kids myself as well as the thousands of students we’ve now taught through Brave Writer is that the best education for the mechanics of writing is reading real writing.
Some parents complain, however, that their kids read a ton and aren’t making the connection between what they read and what they write. It worries them! And of course it does! These are your kids.
That's why it's important to feature language arts elements in the context of great writing! Your kids naturally come to adopt the mechanics of writing in English through the soothing, repetitive practices of:
The Power of Methodology
The power of this methodology came clear to me when my then 14-year-old son, Liam, who struggled a lot with writing (has dysgraphia and was delayed in writing), suddenly blossomed. Copying passages from Redwall (his previous obsession) bore fruit! As he started writing his own reviews of novels he read, the flair to his natural writing voice, his “knack” for punctuation, and his spelling were startlingly accurate. Sure he had some run-on sentences and occasional fragments. We would address those later. But the heart of his writing was pure flair and personality, mixed with terrific spelling and a reasonable grasp of basic punctuation.
I did no formal teaching of grammar with him. I just continued to trust the process of:
- reading aloud,
- reading to self,
- talking about the novels and stories,
- then copying passages from them.
We hadn't even graduated to dictation yet! Still the results were impressive.
If you need more help using literature to teach the mechanics of writing, join me for free webinars during the month of June. Bring your questions!
Warmly,
P.S. If you missed our Big Book Reveals, here are the themes and titles plus the replays!
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Julie Bogart
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