Parents

How to help with homework:

Ask open ended questions:

• What genre are you working on?
• What is your topic, and why did you chose it?
• Would you like a writer’s conference with me?

Have a writer’s conference:

• What is the big idea of this piece? What is the one thing you want the reader to know?
• What is your goal for this conference? What do you want help with?
• Did you print off the rubric from the website and self-score yourself?  What areas were your weakest?

Read aloud to find and fix mistakes:

• Have you read your paper aloud (word for word) to yourself?
• Have you read your paper aloud sentence by sentence from back to front?
• Would you like me to read your paper aloud to you?

If you still see errors that your child does not notice:

• Have you run spell check and Word tools?
• Where are your notes on what skills/techniques you learned in class for this assignment?
• Can you explain them to me and show me paragraph by paragraph how you used them?
• I’m not sure I understand what you mean in this sentence (paragraph, section), can you tell me more?
• I see several grammar (or punctuation, or usage) errors in this paragraph; can you find and correct them?

Last, but not least:

• Have you emailed your drafts to Ms. Leeds?
• How many writing conferences have you had with her?
• Why don’t you check your schedule and email a conference request to her right now?