Cart 0

Creative Language Arts for Homeschool High School, Interview with Julie Polanco

This week on Homeschool Highschool Podcast: Creative Language Arts for Homeschool High School, Interview with Julie Polanco.

Creative Language Arts for Homeschool High School, Interview with Julie Polanco

Creative Language Arts for Homeschool High School, Interview with Julie Polanco

Teens can have fun with ELA. Why not let your homeschool high schoolers be inspired, not tired by their English/Language Arts? That’s why we invited our friend, Julie Polanco, to talk about the creative things her teens are doing!

Julie Polanco is the mother of four but her youngest is now a sophomore homeschool high schooler and the next youngest will be a senior in the fall! It is so exciting to see the two older graduated and doing their next things in life. Since she has fewer demands on her time, Julie decided to go back to college and work on a doctorate in Chinese medicine!

One reason Julie has a bit of time on her hands is that her high schooler is one of those teens who has educational ideas of her own. One of her daughter’s ideas is that she wants to invest in creativity for her Language Arts credits.

Creative Language Arts

Julie is used to thinking creatively about credits. Her older three kids had different special needs. Unfortunately, she could not find curricula that met her teens’ writing needs. Thus, she created Blogging 101 for them and has shared it online. Blogging helps teens learn practical technical skills with shorter, meaningful writing assignments. Blogging helps teens find purpose in their writing assignments (and a life skill).

BTW- Her oldest son developed love (and skills) for writing his blogs, so much so, that he has even been published on Medium.

Other things she has done with her teens include:

NaNoWriMo

Julie’s older daughter has ADHD. Boring writing assignments did not suit her attentional challenges well. However, she loved creative writing. Therefore, Julie got her involves with NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Her daughter worked hard for that month and churned out her own novella, start to finish, as the writing portion of her Language Arts. It was great for her to see that she could set a goal and accomplish it! Then, she even had her novella self-published.

Julie helped her daughter by checking on the daily word count and the basic concept of story writing (characters, setting, plotline). She also was available when her daughter got to moments when she felt stuck- helping her brainstorm next steps.

Her family also have hosted a book club. For her teens’ book club, Julie and the teens selected classics from a variety of genres, such as:

  • Mysteries
  • Sci-Fi
  • Jane Austen (of course)

This was fun for her teens because they could discuss the things they were reading. Along with the book reading, the club also had meaningful writing assignments such as:

  • Book reviews
  • Writing a new ending for the book

They also completed Literature Study Guides for some of the books they read in the club. Julie led the discussion part of the group. (Click here for some good book discussion questions.)

Movies as the basis for Literature

Julie’s teens studied Shakespeare by watching movie versions of several of his plays. Literature study guides helped them dive into the depth and meaning of Shakespeare’s plays. (7Sisters’ Literature Study Guide for Much Ado about Nothing is a good example.)

In fact, they did a number of cinema for literature. One of their favorite discussion questions was: Where did the movie differ from the book?

For reading, they often used audiobooks (sometimes listening and reading along or just listening). (However, one thing Julie’s teens noticed when reading along, was that sometimes the audio versions of books did not quite match the print version.)

For more ideas on movies as Literature:

Blogging 101

Julie runs Milkweed School.JulieNaturally.com. Julie’s popular one-semester beginner Blogging 101 class teaches teens how to set up a blogging website. She then teaches different kinds of blog posts and how to write them, including:

  • How to posts
  • Personal story posts
  • Review posts
  • PLUS the nuts and bolts of behind the scenes to run a blog.

Once they complete the course, they know the basics of writing blogs as well as owning their own website! They also have practical writing skills they can use the rest of their lives.

Julie can be found at:

Join Vicki and Julie for an inspiring discussion on creative Language Arts credits.

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO HSHSP VIA COMPUTER

  1. Follow this link to our Apple Podcasts page.
  2. OR take this IMPORTANT STEP: Under our Homeschool Highschool Podcast logo, click on View in “…your favorite podcast source”
  3. This will take you to Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast source and our own podcast page.
  4. Click SUBSCRIBE.
  5. Click RATINGS AND REVIEW. (Please take a minute and do this. It helps others find us. Thanks!)
  6. Thanks!

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE VIA iPHONE

  1. Tap the purple Podcast icon on your phone
  2. Tap the search icon on the bottom-right of your screen
  3. In the search bar type: Homeschool Highschool Podcast
  4. Tap the Homeschool Highschool Podcast icon
  5. Tap *Subscribe*
  6. Please tap *Ratings and Review*

The post Creative Language Arts for Homeschool High School, Interview with Julie Polanco appeared first on Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network.

HSHSP_318.mp3 (19:48, 23MB)

← Older Post Newer Post →