TOP
Best Purchases Educator Resources Writing

My Best Purchases for Homeschooling High School: They Say/I Say

I’ve spent more money on essay writing resources than I care to acknowledge. All in the spirit of turning out articulate and proficient teen writers by the end of this homeschooling gig, right? Still, though. I’ve wasted money on products that didn’t help all that much, and no one likes wasting money. So I’m sharing what I’ve purchased that has actually worked for us at the high school level.

So let’s get back to turning out those competent teen writers. Do you know what I’ve noticed about teen writers? They have a lot of opinions. Some stronger than others. But instead of eloquent ideas coming from teenagers, it’s more like…

Example from a teenager rough draft

Yeah, it’s what they do – they start forming opinions about the world, sometimes not all that positive. Criticism is one of the first signs of a teen’s new complex thinking skills, so we want to see this evidence of growth. It’s a stage we home educators have to wade through, yet we also want to balance our responsibility to train our high schoolers in academic writing.

We need to coach them towards academic-toned insights in essays, not teen-toned opinions. It’s been a challenge in our homeschool, particularly paraphrasing a source without inserting their own judgment. Sure, they can disagree with a point of view, but they can’t say the point of view is stupid in a formal paper. Our goal is to grow beyond such black and white critiques.

It’s the high school tightrope: accepting who and where our teens are while also stretching them to grow.  

So how do you get a teenager to ratchet down the intensity of their opinion without discouraging critical thinking skills? 

Enter They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing.  

You guys, this book has saved us countless hours and effort in figuring out how to word teenage ideas into academic style.

How do you disagree without being a jerk? In the book.

How do you agree with someone but still add something to the conversation? In the book.

How do you frame and introduce a quote in your paper? In the book.

How do you articulate the significance of your point? In the book. 

They Say/I Say provides sentence templates to help students new to academic writing set up their ideas and commentary on their topic.

…the templates offered here are learning tools to get you started, not structures set in stone. Once you get used to using them, you can even dispense with them altogether, for the rhetorical moves they model will be at your fingertips in an unconscious, instinctive way.

(Graff and Birkenstein 14)

The book is a lifesaver and worth every penny I paid for it. I purchased the high school edition in the picture, and we use it every time we write an essay. Not only do we pull it out for our essays, we also use it for mini-lessons and skill building in between essay projects. Most chapters come with exercises to practice the particular skill addressed, and the book also includes sample readings for you to use to practice responding to what They Say, along with crafting commentary for subject-specific papers (sciences, literature, etc.).

Teen writers don’t automatically know how to write academically or in response to another author’s point of view. We have to coach them. They will possibly form strong and critical opinions, especially if we’ve created a safe environment for risks in our home (one way risk shows up in teens is through controversial opinions), and then they may struggle with appropriately framing their opinions in formal papers. Our high schoolers need tools to learn these new writing skills and They Say/I Say has been a useful one for us.

Heather

«

»

Leave a Reply to Anonymous Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *