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Teaching Writing Skills in your Homeschool

Create your Language Arts Lesson Plans based on Literature

teaching writing skills

One part of Language Arts is teaching writing skills. Writing Curriculum can be broken down into a number of skill sets such as Handwriting and Composition, Spelling and Vocabulary and Formal Grammar. What do we want to develop in these areas in our homeschool writing curriculum? These writing skills can be incorporated into Individual Learning Programs. Find out more about Individual Learning Programs here.

Share your great idea on how to teach writing at the homeschool gallery.

Composition and Handwriting
- To correctly form the lower, then upper case letters.
- To copy words.
- To copy sentences.
- To copy paragraphs.
- To orally narrate a story.
- To copy own narrations.
- To write own narrations.
- To write narrations about literature - use these narration starters.
- To write friendly letters, notes and cards.
- To add descriptive writing.
- To write journal entries.
- To write creative stories, narratives and poems
- To revise written work, checking for punctuation.
- To write book reports
- To write summaries from encyclopedia articles.
- To write well-constructed paragraphs- formal teaching.
  - Write a topic sentence
  - Support the topic in remaining sentences with examples, facts etc
  - Vary sentence structure (begin with prep phrase etc)
  - Add stylistic elements (add phrases, who/which clauses, interesting verbs, adverbs etc)
  - Incorporate transitions
  - Conclude by summarizing and returning to topic sentence
- To write well-constructed essays- formal teaching.
  - Capture the attention of the audience in the first sentence
  - Develop the thesis statement
  - Build the introduction
  - Learn basic three point essay
  - Gather evidence to support thesis – facts, examples, experiences
  - Vary paragraph and sentence style
  - Cite authoritative sources
  - Quote from authoritative primary sources and support the use of the quote
  - Learn how to footnote
  - Create bibliography
- To use a variety of forms of writing where appropriate and across subject areas.
- Essay Writing- expository writing – essays of explanation.
- Play writing
- Persuasive essay writing.
- Biographies
- Short Stories
- Multimedia presentations
- Research papers
- Speech writing
- Debates
- Historical fiction writing.
- Literary response essays
- Compare and contrast essays
- Cause/Effect essays

Spelling and Vocabulary
- To teach phonics as a base for spelling.
- Teach the spelling rules.
- Apply the spelling rules
- Learn rules for adding endings.
- Learn to spell vocabulary and content words according to subject areas- colours, days of the week, months, numbers
- Learn spelling words in the context of own writing- develop own spelling list.
- Apply syllabification rules to aid spelling of words.
- Dictionary skills
- Revise work, edit, identify incorrect spelling and re-write correctly.
- Work with antonyms, synonyms,
- Learn and identify prefixes, suffixes, roots
- Increase vocabulary

Grammar
- Learn eight parts of speech
- Learn the relationships of the parts of speech to eachother.
- Subject and Predicate
- Noun functions
- Clauses
- Phrases
- Diagramming - see it in action in a lesson plan
- Un-complicate a sentence- identify the main point.
- Dress up a sentence- make it complex.

Time4Writing offers free writing resources which you may find helpful as well as courses specifically designed to help in teaching writing skills and mechanics.

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Teaching writing skills can be done in a developmental way and across the curriculum. Find out how you can design your own homeschool writing curriculum. Design your Homeschool Writing Curriculum

Teaching Writing Skills in your Homeschool

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