Many have said that the United State’s Santa Claus is based on Saint Nicolas, which may be true. But did you know that there is another figure that our rosy-cheeked, gift-giving fantasy is based on?
Continue reading “Ho-Ho-Hold On a Minute: Santa Claus’ Racist Background”
Now that we have gone through the first step of the essay process (picking evidence), it’s time to analyze your evidence. As I’ve said in past posts, college writing is about creating your own insight, rather than writing about other individual’s insight (for example, writing a book report). Professors do not want a review of the reading, they want to know what you thought about it. Being able to present your thoughts in an organized, easy-to-understand manner will earn you the better grade.
“How do I go about analyzing my evidence,” you ask? In CEA format, there are three steps:
Continue reading “The College Writing Series: Translating Your Evidence”
A few weeks ago, I started the first true series of Teach Them Right, called The College Writing Series. My first post for the series gave a very brief overview of the format I will be using (CEA – Claim, Evidence, Analysis), and what to expect in future posts.
Now on my second post of this series, I would like to touch on the first step of writing a college-level essay in CEA format, picking evidence for your paragraph. By picking your evidence before doing anything else, you are able to form your argument based off of the evidence instead of picking evidence that fits your argument.
Continue reading “The College Writing Series: How to Pick Great Evidence For Your Essays”
The ever-rising costs of college tuition have caused many to rethink their education, but one subject that has gotten under many noses is college textbooks. According to the Huffington Post, in 2014 college textbooks had increased in price by 812 percent since 1978, beating medical services, new house prices, and inflation.
CollegeBoard estimated that last year’s average undergraduate spent about $1,300 on textbooks over two semesters, as seen in the image below.
I can personally say that my textbooks have cost more than that this semester. I spent over $700 on three classes and thankfully, I already had the book for my fourth class. That sets me up to pay about $1,400 by the end of the school year.
So why are college textbooks so expensive and what can you do about it to save money?
Wonder who to point fingers at when it comes to expensive books? It’s both the publishers’ and schools’ fault.
I’m happy to announce that I will be starting the first true series of Teach Them Right called The College Writing Series, aimed to assist you in teaching your child the basics of writing in college! In my last post, 7 Rules to Writing in College, I pointed out a few things that differentiate high school writing from college writing, so it is best to check out that post before reading this one.
In this new series, I’ll teach what is called CEA Format, and is essentially a method to help your body paragraph structure. CEA (which stands for Claim, Evidence, and Analysis) was taught to me in my first semester of the Early College Alliance, the college prep program I entered in the 10th grade. Over the past few years of writing for college professors, I have found that when I use CEA format my essays are generally complimented for their flow and logical progression, both of which are important for a reader. Now I use CEA in almost all of academic writing, sometimes even in short answer questions.
CEA format is extremely helpful when it comes to organization of an essay.
Continue reading “The College Writing Series: An Overview of CEA Format”
As the summer starts to wind down and supermarkets start their “Back to School” sales, that can only mean one thing… the start of a new school year.
Maybe you have a high schooler that you’re going to homeschool, and you’d like to prepare them for college. One of the biggest things that I had to learn is that high school writing is not the same as college writing. Usually, freshmen get slapped in the face because the same essays that were earning “A’s” in high school start to be labelled as “not really there yet” in college.
Here are a few rules that you can start using in your teaching to help your student prepare for college:
One question that most homeschoolers face is whether or not to test their student. Standardized testing can have its benefits and its drawbacks, but the decision is often based on the learning style of the student. For some students, taking a test can determine where the knowledge of the student is and therefore help to focus on weaknesses later on. For other students, however, taking a standardized test will not capture their whole knowledge, such as those with dyslexia.
So here are the pros and cons to standardized testing, based on my own experiences. I’ll let you be the judge on what the right decision is, whether or not to homeschool.
Take a second to think about how the school system works:
1. You step into school at a certain time every day, Monday through Friday.
2. You sit at desks with dozens of other students, learning the same thing, and taking the same notes.
3. Later on, you all take the same test, regurgitating what you “learned”.
4. Everything that you now know is based on the thoughts of the teacher and school board.
Wait, wait… don’t colleges and the workforce say that they want unique individuals? What students do in school is regurgitating what they took notes on, without actually analyzing what they’re supposed to know. What does this sound like?
An assembly line.
In my first post, I told you guys my background and how I was homeschooled up until the tenth grade, when I was able to enter this program called the Early College Alliance. If you read my post, you’d know that the program allowed me to earn 32 free college credits. No, this wasn’t dual-enrollment. I was at the university itself, taking real college classes, with real college students. In fact, if I hadn’t told them that I was 15, they would’ve seen me as a normal college student (when I actually did tell them, and they became aware that I was saving thousands upon thousands of dollars while they weren’t, the look on their face was pretty funny).
So, what am I here to talk about this time?
Simple. What does it take to be successful in college? Do you have a student who’s looking to get into college early, like I did? Here are three simple steps to being successful in college, no matter the age/grade level.
Hello everyone, I’m Reggie, the third contributor to teachthemright.me. I’m now 17 years old, and have done many things in academia that many find odd. You’ve heard from Lexi and Devin, and now it’s my turn. For my first post, I thought it would be a good idea to introduce myself, what I’ve done, and point out some facts about homeschooling.
Where do I start…
Continue reading “Aren’t Homeschooled Students just Dumb and Antisocial?”
Teach Them Right 