The Power In Your Hands

I once gave some 11^th graders what I thought would be an interesting  assignment; read an article about Somali pirates and compare it to the entry on Caribbean pirates from their textbook. When the essays came back, most of them were gobble-de-gook. Sentences began with the word “and,” things that should have been used as a conclusion were in the middle, and sentences were written on top of each other because the student “forgot” and had to jam them in. This was an inner-city school, and while the kids were not without intelligence, they were seriously lacking in any kind of writing skill.

The Power In Your Hands give step-by-step instructions on how to teach kids to write. One of the biggest problems with high school writing is that the kids’ essays are usually all over the place, and as most teachers will agree, they have trouble putting their thoughts together coherently. This book stresses formats for essays, book reports, and other writings for kids.

The chapter Persuasion is about opinion v fact. The author tries to explain it as a kid who tries to get his friends to eat pizza instead of hamburgers. She starts with the “main idea” and proceeds  to meatier ways to build and essay. For bigger assignments, there’s brainstorming, research, creating the intro, and adjusting the body paragraphs. The section on proofreading marks might be a little too much for high schoolers, however. But the last chapter on expository writing is important for most grades. Comparisons and metaphors are covered extensively, and one cannot understress their importance if the students has any desire to prove his or her opinion in their writing.

If your students have any intention of going to a four year college, they’d better be able to write. If the assignment is “compare your family Thanksgiving dinner to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” then they’d better be able to write it coherently. The professor won’t give a damn if a 19 year old never learned to write, it’s not his problem. If your kid has an opinion, great, but if he/she can’t put it to paper, then college is not going to go well.