Composition: College Application Cover Letter

 The kids are writing College Application Cover letters with Google Docs letter templates.  We’re creating a packet: college application, college resume, cover letter, and essay.  The cover letter should explain why the student wants to go to a particular college and why the college should enroll the teen.  Use this link for a sample letter.  

Composition: Write a Resumé

 We worked on writing résumés for college.  We used templates from Google Docs.  Here is the sample I used from the University of Virginia.  The kids added their skills and interests.  Most of the class has participated in Work Camps through their youth groups.  The youth groups have tool trainings, build and raffle furniture, and participate in huge Work Camps, that help families in need with repairs.  The teens can replace a window, build a ramp, paint walls, or repair a deck.  The kids have a wide variety of skills: piano, animal husbandry, speech, karate, choir, care-giving, cooking, etc.  I share my resume with the kids.  Next we are working on cover letters.  A college résumé and cover letter with the college application can distinguish a student from other applicants.

Composition: Grab and Go--- Five Senses Writing

 The Co-op Composition class used this Grab and Go Exercise to launch a workshop using Five Senses  to write a paragraph.  Below is the image we used as inspiration.  The kids are writing sample lessons for their grant proposals for a Montessori school.  The kids wrote descriptions for baking bread, making jelly, and felting wool.  Next they made concept maps to organize their descriptions.  Lastly, the kids wrote descriptive paragraphs.  This exercise is part of each student's sample lesson included with the proposals.  The class is assembling the materials for the proposal in class, Tuesday.

Cheap and Easy Study Aid

 Are you familiar with concept maps?  It’s a way to organize ideas.  I used this list of ecological terms and wrote them on to index cards.  The kids organize the cards into a map.  I ask kids to explain their maps.  With index cards, teens can make adjustments.  Basically, I want the kids to understand how things fit together or whether they understand the terms.  Below are a few examples.  Concept maps are a tool I use for assessment.

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Coping with Chaos

 This year’s theme is chaos.  I’m teaching three classes with the local Co-op.  I’m coping with the logistics of conflicting schedules, illness, and family emergencies.  I have to punt when I get last minute requests to log-on to class remotely.  The solution is to put the daily lesson and links into one question in Google Classroom—every single day.  I need to have all of the materials assessable digitally and on paper.  I toggle between the kids meeting remotely and the kids live in the classroom.  One benefit is that the kids who miss class entirely can see the missing work.  

Here are tomorrow’s topics with the links to the exercises and notes.

Most of my class resources are already organized into folders in Classroom.

Write a Review!

Tomorrow my composition class is going to write a review.  It can be a product review, hotel experience, or service assessment.  My class includes practical writing exercises.  My husband and I spent the weekend in Pittsburgh.  One night at a hotel was disastrous.  A local football team treated 20 middle schooler to an overnight in the hotel.  The kids swamped the tiny pool, threw furniture in the pool, and monopolized the waffle machine at breakfast.  They ran up and down in the hall until 11:00 pm.  Once locked in at 11:30 spent the night yelling and playing rambunctiously in their rooms—right next to ours.  The hotel, itself, was no prize.  I wrote the review below after we checked in.  Trust me, I added more details about our trip in a second review.  

Write your own recommendation!

 Hear me out!  As an educator, I get many, many requests for recommendation letters.  I review portfolios and write college recommendation letters for admission departments at colleges or scholarship applications.  Here  is a generic, student recommendation.

Ask your teen to describe his or her attributes: a thirst for justice, a heart for service, joie de vivre, or attention to detail.  What skills does your teen have?  Is she a competitive athlete?  Does he volunteer with the thrift store or annual work camp?  Now for the hard part: write your own recommendation.  Rewrite this three different ways.  Now you have three templates to offer teachers, pastors, and youth group leaders when you ask for recommendation letters.  These adults are free to write their own letters.  However, many, many adults will be happy to have some help writing a letter for your teen.

Composition Exercise: Ghost letters

My niece, Kayla, and several students are planning to go to college next year or the following year.  Each year, I write several recommendation letters for colleges or scholarship applications.  My niece attends a large charter school in PA.  Her teachers get many requests for recommendation letters.  She should write ‘ghost letters’.  A ‘ghost letter’ is a template.  Kayla needs to write three different recommendation letters in a document.  She can give these to he teachers and ask them to read and edit the template.  

I use ‘ghost letters’ for grants, too.  I write recommendation templates for people who partner my projects.  These people often do not have extra time; many folks hate to write.  Tuesday, we are going to add ‘ghost letters’ to May list of activities.  If your teen is going to college next year, now is the time to get started writing his or her own recommendation.