I am sorry that there haven’t been any new posts on the blog, but I am writing a new book on how to teach writing and I am about three fourths of the way through. I hope to have it ready by fall, so suffice it to say, it is consuming me. I am also setting up my 2010 schedule of home school conferences and workshops. It looks like I am going to have a pretty busy season from April through the first of September. If you are interested in where I will be this year, including a great cruise the end of July that you could go on, check out my schedule on the home page.

I have had wonderful feedback from the parents and teachers that I met and talked to in 2009. They are making good use of our products because they are student directed and find their students and children like being independent learners and writers.

A good writing assignment for students as we head into spring is to ask your students or children to go back over some of the papers that they have written throughout the year or even from previous years, and pick one to totally rewrite. It doesn’t matter which one they pick, let them decide. The objective is that they write. Encourage them to improve on every aspect of the paper including adding new and interesting details to the content and correcting any format and convention errors. Almost always it is surprising how much better the new paper will be.