Planning English class (7th and 11th grade combined)

With Bee home next semester, and Bug no longer taking English at his co-op. I am coming up with a plan to teach them both myself.  The truth is that I really don't like teaching writing.  It's the subject I am most qualified to teach and also the one I actually have professional experience teaching (college writing lab).  It comes very easily to me, however, and I find it frustrating and tedious to try and teach it.  When I write something, I often start at the beginning and end at the end, with minimal planning and revision.  I have a process for writing research papers which involves a bit of writing notes and quotes, but it is mostly internal and difficult to explain to an overwhelmed young writer.  

The most enjoyable curriculum I have used has been WriteShop.  It breaks the process of writing down in ways that I honestly can't.  So, I will continue with Bee where we left off in the program a couple of years ago and start Bug in WriteShop I.  

I will also be working with them both on some basic skills with writing research papers.  I ordered a book of citation exercises to use with Bug, and a book of help for writing a research paper for Bee, but I may just use both for both.  We will see.  I've learned that too much advance planning tends to backfire.  It's best to be loosely prepared and go with the flow.  

But the part of their English classes that I'm truly excited about is POETRY.  This is the perfect thing for us to study because poems are short.  I can choose a poem, we can read it together, discuss it, do some analysis, and be done.  Very little preparation is required.  And poetry is so important and so understudied in high school and college.  I hope to have them take turns choosing poems at some point.  I'm excited about this new adventure!