My Best Tip for Writing Research Papers

This tip is for the actual writing process, which can sometimes be the most overwhelming part. I mean, you’ve checked out all your books, you’ve printed online articles, you’ve taken notes, and you’ve arranged everything into chronological order. You’ve discovered a ton of new things, and it was almost even fun. But now, the dreaded day has arrived. You must actually put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and write the darn thing!

How to begin?

Here’s an activity that will warm you up and teach you how to write your paper without stress. I have all of my research paper students do this in our very first class together. I’ve named it Memory Writing, and I hope you find it useful!

Read a fairly-short, informative article at least three times over the course of one or two days. You can choose an article from a book, a magazine, or the internet. Later, put the article completely away and write about the topic in your own words, based on memory.

If there is a name, date, or some other detail that you can’t remember while writing, just leave a blank space. After you are finished, you can go back and insert facts like names and dates.

Write without stopping and without fretting too much over grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. These things can be corrected once you have something written. Sometimes, just getting started is the hard part, and that’s what this exercise will help you conquer.

Now take your research and apply this technique to it. You’ll find that writing from your head is much easier than writing from notes! You won’t have to worry about the drudgery of changing each note card into your own sentence or rearranging someone else’s words into your own. Just write down what you know, and fill in the blanks later. Happy writing!

Create Your Own Cursive Writing Worksheets

I like creating cursive writing worksheets that are educational in their own right and that contain lots of capital letters. In years past, I have created PDFs of a few cursive writing worksheets and uploaded them to my blog. I used Worksheetworks.com to create them. It’s an extremely user-friendly worksheet creator, especially compared to the other ones out there.

However, when I go there now to create and download worksheets, they only give permission to the person who actually created them. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to create a few “worksheets” for you here, on my blog. You’ll need to copy and paste this info into the worksheet generator on their website. If your individual lines are long, such as in the President “worksheet,” then it’s best to use landscape mode. If you don’t want twenty pages of content, it’s good to use a smaller font for the longer “worksheets” as well.

In addition to my worksheets, feel free to create your own. Their website makes it very easy!

Presidents:

1. George Washington, 1789-1797
2. John Adams, 1797-1801
3. Thomas Jefferson, 1801-1809
4. James Madison, 1809-1817
5. James Monroe, 1817-1825
6. John Quincy Adams, 1825-1829
7. Andrew Jackson, 1829-1837
8. Martin Van Buren, 1837-1841
9. William Henry Harrison, 1841
10. John Tyler, 1841-1845
11. James Knox Polk, 1845-1849
12. Zachary Taylor, 1849-1850
13. Millard Fillmore, 1850-1853
14. Franklin Pierce, 1853-1857
15. James Buchanan, 1857-1861
16. Abraham Lincoln, 1861-1865
17. Andrew Johnson, 1865-1869
18. Ulysses S. Grant, 1869-1877
19. Rutherford Birchard Hayes, 1877-1881
20. James Abram Garfield, 1881
21. Chester Alan Arthur, 1881-1885
22. Grover Cleveland, 1885-1889
23. Benjamin Harrison, 1889-1893
24. Grover Cleveland, 1893-1897
25. William McKinley, 1897-1901
26. Theodore Roosevelt, 1901-1909
27. William Howard Taft, 1909-1913
28. Woodrow Wilson, 1913-1921
29. Warren Gamaliel Harding, 1921-1923
30. Calvin Coolidge, 1923-1929
31. Herbert Clark Hoover, 1929-1933
32. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933-1945
33. Harry S. Truman, 1945-1953
34. Dwight David Eisenhower, 1953-1961
35. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1961-1963
36. Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1963-1969
37. Richard Milhous Nixon, 1969-1974
38. Gerald Rudolph Ford, 1974-1977
39. James Earl Carter, Jr., 1977-1981
40. Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1981-1989
41. George Herbert Walker Bush, 1989-1993
42. William Jefferson Clinton, 1993-2001
43. George Walker Bush, 2001-2009
44. Barack Hussein Obama, 2009-2017
45. Donald Trump, 2017-?

Countries of the World

Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia (FYROM), Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar (Burma), Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Palestine, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, South Sudan, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates (UAE), United Kingdom (UK), United States of America (USA), Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican City (Holy See), Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Periodic Table of Elements

	1 Hydrogen H 2 Helium He 3 Lithium Li 4 Beryllium Be 5 Boron B 6 Carbon C 7 Nitrogen N 8 Oxygen O 9 Fluorine F 10 Neon Ne 11 Sodium Na 12 Magnesium Mg 13 Aluminum Al 14 Silicon Si 15 Phosphorus P 16 Sulfur S 17 Chlorine Cl 18 Argon Ar 19 Potassium K 20 Calcium Ca 21 Scandium Sc 22 Titanium Ti 23 Vanadium V 24 Chromium Cr 25 Manganese Mn 26 Iron Fe 27 Cobalt Co 28 Nickel Ni 29 Copper Cu 30 Zinc Zn 31 Gallium Ga 32 Germanium Ge 33 Arsenic As 34 Selenium Se 35 Bromine Br 36 Krypton Kr 37 Rubidium Rb 38 Strontium Sr 39 Yttrium Y 40 Zirconium Zr 41 Niobium Nb 42 Molybdenum Mo 43 Technetium Tc 44 Ruthenium Ru 45 Rhodium Rh 46 Palladium Pd 47 Silver Ag 48 Cadmium Cd 49 Indium In 50 Tin Sn 51 Antimony Sb 52 Tellurium Te 53 Iodine I 54 Xenon Xe 55 Cesium Cs 56 Barium Ba 57 Lanthanum La 58 Cerium Ce 59 Praseodymium Pr 60 Neodymium Nd 61 Promethium Pm 62 Samarium Sm 63 Europium Eu 64 Gadolinium Gd 65 Terbium Tb 66 Dysprosium Dy 67 Holmium Ho 68 Erbium Er 69 Thulium Tm 70 Ytterbium Yb 71 Lutetium Lu 72 Hafnium Hf 73 Tantalum Ta 74 Tungsten W 75 Rhenium Re 76 Osmium Os 77 Iridium Ir 78 Platinum Pt 79 Gold Au 80 Mercury Hg 81 Thallium Tl 82 Lead Pb 83 Bismuth Bi 84 Polonium Po 85 Astatine At 86 Radon Rn 87 Francium Fr 88 Radium Ra 89 Actinium Ac 90 Thorium Th 91 Protactinium Pa 92 Uranium U 93 Neptunium Np 94 Plutonium Pu 95 Americium Am 96 Curium Cm 97 Berkelium Bk 98 Californium Cf 99 Einsteinium Es 100 Fermium Fm 101 Mendelevium Md 102 Nobelium No 103 Lawrencium Lr 104 Rutherfordium Rf 105 Dubnium Db 106 Seaborgium Sg 107 Bohrium Bh 108 Hassium Hs 109 Meitnerium Mt 110 Darmstadtium Ds 111 Roentgenium Rg 112 Copernicium Cn 113 Nihonium Nh 114 Flerovium Fl 115 Moscovium Mc 116 Livermorium Lv 117 Tennessine Ts 118 Oganesson Og

 

More Cursive Writing Worksheets

So I just noticed that people are still landing on my blog looking for creative writing worksheets. Back when I wrote my first one, my son was in second grade; now he is in sixth!! Anyway, I just created some of the worksheets I promised you, so here they are. (I don’t know what happened to the old ones I made, or why I never uploaded them.) If you want to create your own worksheets, there’s a link to the website on the post I linked to above.

Books of the Old Testament

Books of the New Testament

Months of the Year

Days of the Week

Names Alphabetical

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/31124313@N02/3921162736″>cursive-letters from the Karen Whimsey in the public domain</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

Music-Themed Ideas for Core Subjects

In my last post, I mentioned a few ideas of how to work music into your homeschool day. However, all of those examples were only good for non-core homeschool hours. What should you do if you really need more core hours, but you want to work music in somehow? Here are a couple of  ideas.

Rhythm worksheets: You can replace number values with notes and rests and create math worksheets for all levels. Addition and subtraction are the simplest, but there’s no reason why you can’t do multiplication, fractions, and even algebra! (Tie notes together for larger values). Be really creative, and try to make the worksheet fun. These exercises will help your child learn to instantly recognize note and rest values.

Research paper (history, social studies, or language arts): Teach your child how to conduct research, take notes, and write a paper. They could choose a composer, a musical genre, the invention of an instrument, etc. If you look up music appreciation topics, you’ll see many good ideas to choose from.

If you need help teaching your middle- or high-schooler how to get from square one to finished paper, I teach classes for that in my hometown, and would be willing to teach it via email. If you would like more information, just email me, and I will get back with you. (My email address is included on the syllabus below.)

Write an Outstanding Paper Syllabus

Writing: Write the first half of a story using notes instead of letters as often as possible. Have your child finish the story on his own. Provide him with staff paper that you can print for free online. Try to create a good mix of treble and bass clef notes.

Spelling: Have your student choose the correct spelling of a word (from among 2 or more misspelled ones). Use notes instead of letters anywhere you can.

I am sure there are tons of activities like this floating around. Can you think of any more?

FreeImages.com/St. Mattox

Research Paper Tutoring

I have recently begun to reach out to my community as a tutor in a couple of different  areas. While most subjects work best with face-to-face interaction, I think that RESEARCH PAPER WRITING, since it includes deadlines, would be well-suited to an email course. Here is my reasoning for that: I am afraid that if students realize how friendly I am, they may turn in late papers, make excuses, etc.

Part of college prep is getting your student used to working within someone else’s parameters. It is important that they learn to follow instructions for page format, source stipulations, note-taking, draft requirements, length of final document, etc.

However, in these times we’re living in, I realize it is difficult for homeschool families (or anyone else) to squeeze even one more item into their budgets, no matter how much they believe their children really need the class. So, in lieu of offering weekly classes where everyone comes together to meet, this is what I have come up with:

I can create a five or ten week course that your child can take via email. I would help them every step of the way, from narrowing down a topic, taking good notes, avoiding plagiarism, arranging the outline, all the way through to the rough and final draft. I would charge $10 per project if the parents want to help their kids correct grammar and punctuation on the two drafts, and $15 if they wanted me to do it. (I don’t mind, but it is the most tedious part.) At the end of the class, I will send you a PDF copy of my ebook, Write an Outstanding Paper, for free.

The class could be taken one of two ways: via email or Eliademy (especially helpful if you want your college-bound student to get a taste for online classes).

I would like to open this opportunity up to not only my local homeschoolers, but anyone who would be interested here as well. Folks could pay for the course via PayPal (all you would need is my email address). Let me know what you think! Comments and suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

India Foxtrot Yankee Oscar Uniform – writing prompt

I told my son to turn off the television for a while this afternoon. He started his “break” by playing the piano for a while, but it wasn’t long before he became bored.

“What should I do?”

“How about your art journal?”

A few minutes later, he returns, showing me the prompt: hide a secret message somewhere in this book.

“Can you find it?”

I thumb through the entire journal (backward) until finally landing on the title page. In very small print, in green ink, on top of his very first assignment in the journal (Write your name using large letters), he had written I_Am_Not.

“Cool,” I remarked.

“Do you get it? It’s my name: I_Am_Not.” [Ian]

So, for fun, I sat down and wrote my own version of “If you can read this…” The first attempt was pretty poor, but Ian liked the idea.

“Well, Mom, the secret message part is cool, but the sentences are too silly.”

Ok, I can do better than that. So I labored for a while, and this is the end result. I hope you like it:

I’m frightened. You opened up, crying all night: “Remember everyone always dies.” Then had I stood, yelling “onward” until…after remembering eternity, stopped mourning and returned tearfully.

I really had a lot of fun writing this, so here’s my writing prompt for you all: Take your favorite quote, scripture, or phrase, and write a story using each letter of the phrase as the first letter of each word in your story. I think it would be particularly entertaining to combine dissimilar elements with this prompt. For example, try hiding a secret message about murder inside the description of a fairy-land. Or better yet, hide a message about your best friend’s betrayal inside a story about how you became friends in the first place.

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/17261684@N00/6104388950″>I hope all the trouble with vinyl will be worth it! In progress</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

Coming Soon: A Prompt Disguised (for Kindle)

For anyone that is enjoying my prompt disguised series, I am in the process of formatting the prompts for Kindle. I should be finished sometime this week, so you should see the book appearing in the Kindle Store by the end of the month. The book will contain my first 31 prompts. Why 31? Is it because I cleverly designed one for each day of the month? Um, no, that’s just how many I’ve written so far. 🙂 Although that might be a good marketing strategy. Hmmm…

One of them is a new prompt that will be coming out here on June 29th. Should I add something exclusive to the book? A bonus for purchasing it? If I do, what should it be? I’m new to this whole publishing thing.

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/100943746@N04/16871404898″>DSC02792</a&gt; via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

Writing Club

The other day I mentioned our new writing club and how much it has affected me. Well, I thought it would be fun to upload an excerpt or two from our short little writing sessions. The very first time we all got together, we all created several writing prompts and put them in a jar. My 10-year-old even got involved! He surprised me by grabbing a sheet of paper and asking, “How do you spell ‘insignificant’?” (Can’t wait to use some of his prompts!) Anyway, every time we meet, we draw from the jar randomly and write for five to ten minutes. Then we take turns reading our little creations. I knew from the beginning that there would be a lot of variety from us ladies (we are all from very different backgrounds), but I am always blown away by the depth of the ideas!

Anyway, here’s the one I wrote during our very first session (a month ago now). I have not edited it – with the exception of a spelling error – so it’s a little raw and underdeveloped. What stands out to me the most about my own writing (compared with the other ladies’ pieces) is my lack of descriptive detail. That’s something I need to be more aware of, I think. I will also try to get permission to post some of the other ones, or at least link to where you can read them:

Jenna peered through the portcullis into the night sky above. Something was happening up there. What could it be? Whatever it was, it was noisy. She could hear what sounded like big, short bursts of thunder as she tried to get a better view. 

Her nurse wasn’t in the room at the moment, so she decided to try standing. Moving through the pain, she first rolled herself into a sitting position, and then with all her effort, knees shaking as she grabbed the bedframe, she pulled herself to her feet. 

How long had it been? Months? Years? She had been content to lie in bed while nurse tended to her and brought her food. But Daddy had left with a handsome young woman a couple hours ago. They had seemed excited. Now something was going on, and she wanted to know what.

She leaned toward the portcullis, which was now eye level. She could see hundreds of people milling about on the shore. But more importantly, she could see more of the sky, and the bursts of color that were lighting up the harbor.

The writing prompt for this one was “fireworks over the harbor,” courtesy of my writing buddy over at https://bluepictureframe.wordpress.com/

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/72182050@N00/2654851160″>Fireworks Show</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

 

A Prompt Disguised as Architecture

Find or print some graph paper, and design your dream home. Or a haunted house. Or the floor plan for a passenger spaceship. Imagine what life would be like if you lived there, and begin to build a plot and characters based on your sketch. Years ago, my son and I drew a floor plan for a castle, complete with surrounding farms and businesses (blacksmith, herbalist, etc.). This exercise in creativity became the launching pad for a story that we began, based on the life of one of the castle’s occupants. It was the first time I had ever witnessed my son enjoying the writing process, and I still have the floor plan and the story to this day. I blogged about it here.

A new idea for teaching spelling

It’s important to me that Ian become a pretty decent speller someday. In this day and age, he especially needs to know his homonyms apart, because most spell-checkers can’t catch them.

Lately however, we have completely ditched spelling as a separate course. It just didn’t seem like it was clicking for us. I remember a conversation I had with my husband about the topic. The fact is, there are only a couple of words that I remember the spellings for because I learned them from a list. They are (drum-roll, please): calendar and separate.

I think that’s it.

Now, I am usually a pretty good speller (although this particular post will probably be full of errors, just to make a liar out of me, lol). The thing is, I don’t actually remember learning the spellings of words. I just know how they’re spelled. In an effort to figure out a better way to teach Ian, I had to ask myself, How? How did that happen?

And then it hit me: I was an avid reader as a child. I saw commonly used words spelled over and over and over again. I’m no expert on teaching spelling, but I am pretty convinced that reading lots of books has more impact on a person’s ability to spell than any spelling curriculum.

So, part A of my method, if you’d like to call it that, is lots and lots of reading.

Part B is spaced repetition, and here’s how it came about:

After a while, reading, with no other review, began to seem like the lazy way out. I was still afraid that maybe I wasn’t taking an active enough role in helping Ian become the speller I want him to be. The beauty of being a homeschool mom is the fact that I love my child more than any other teacher ever could. So when I find myself second-guessing his future, I am quick to analyze our habits and make changes if need be.

Then we started dictation exercises. I have written about this before, but here it is in a nutshell: To help him improve the actual physical skill of writing (which is the hardest part for him), I used to read three sentences to him every day from a book that is slightly below his reading level. He wrote the sentences down as I read them aloud. I thought: here’s my chance to help him with his spelling! When he came to a word he didn’t know, he would attempt to spell it, and I would help him. Then, if there were any spelling rules that would help him understand better, we would review them immediately (such as the difference between hoping and hopping).

This method worked for months, and he has accumulated pages and pages of a hand-written copy of “Little House in the Big Woods.” However, being the kind of mom that I am, the kind that wants to over-prepare for life, maybe, this method still seemed to be lacking. Even though his spelling was improving as time went on, I felt drawn to a more traditional approach to spelling.

But I hate the traditional approach! Why? Because, you learn a list of words, whether you know them already or not, you study them for a mere four days, and end by taking a quiz on day five. Study is usually accompanied by mind-numbing oral repetition and hand-cramping copying of 5 times each. Then, poof! The word disappears. And, magically, you never have to spell that word ever again. Sorry, but I just think it’s a waste of time. His and mine.

Three or four days ago, we sort of stumbled upon the solution. It was actually more Ian’s idea than mine. He had missed a fairly simple word that day during dictation. It was a word I was sure he would remember if only he had a little more exposure to it. So, as the day progressed, I asked him how to spell it. I interrupted his dinner, his video game playing, his exercising – I made myself very annoying, lol. But he didn’t mind too much because I was only asking for 5 seconds of his time, three or four times for the rest of the day. (That’s what we have been doing with any difficult math facts he encounters every day, and it really works.)

The next day, right before dictation, I asked him again – he still remembered the spelling. Ian said: “I really like spelling, but I like spelling out loud.” Then I felt guilty. I thought I had been saving him from unnecessary repetition, but he truly enjoys being able to spell. He enjoys the feeling it gives him when he does it well. So, we stopped short at only two sentences that day, and reviewed the words he had just missed. We have been adding to the “list” every day, reviewing spelling rules as we go along. Some words he only has to review once, and he spells them right after that no matter how many times I ask him. So I don’t ask him those every day. I mark the ones that are particularly difficult, and I have been asking after those throughout the day, just like on the first day. And here’s the beauty of it: we only ever review words that he misses. No wasting time with things he can figure out on any given day.

Now we have both been using flashcard programs lately, and the spaced-repetition system is really working for both of us. We are both learning Spanish, and Ian is firming up his times tables. So I have decided to work out a spaced-repetition system, where he reviews words that he misses every so often, spacing the words out farther and farther with each successful spelling. Who knows, I might even create my own Anki or Memrise deck for him.

Wish us luck!