Lesson Schedule

🚀 𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒 𝐒𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐃𝐔𝐋𝐄: This ongoing course builds throughout each unit, so check the schedule. Students can join late, but to get the full benefit of the course, learners should remain enrolled for the entire unit.

𝕌ℕ𝕀𝕋 𝟙: 𝔽𝕆𝕌ℕ𝔻𝔸𝕋𝕀𝕆ℕ𝕊 𝕆𝔽 𝔼𝕊𝕊𝔸𝕐 𝕎ℝ𝕀𝕋𝕀ℕ𝔾
Many students know how to organize a five-paragraph essay but struggle to generate ideas that fully support their thesis. They aren’t quite sure how to develop body paragraphs that are clear, fully elaborated, and effective. Some find it impossible or difficult to write an introduction and conclusion that are more than just a few sentences. While students will certainly learn how to organize an essay, we teach skills that equip learners to embrace any writing task with confidence and skill. This happens when they are explicitly taught how to do something, followed by guidance and feedback on their independent practice. Students must understand and master these foundational skills for high school, college, and work success.

✔ Jan 5-11–Writing genres & How to organize a 5-paragraph essay
✔ Jan 12-18–Generate main ideas that are broad and distinct and don’t read like “mud”
& the body paragraph structure
✔ Jan 19-25–Considering your audience; generating ideas using brainstorming, sorting, and two rules of thumb, & using Google Docs, MLA formatting, and how to draft the main idea paragraphs
✔ Jan 26-Feb 1–Learn four elaboration techniques, how to generate research questions, and then find answers & the most difficult component of the essay: the introduction. They learn six different techniques for hooking their readers, how to write an effective thesis statement, and how to bridge the gap between the hook and thesis statement.
✔ Feb 2-8–Students learn how to write a concluding paragraph that leaves their reader thinking by using four different techniques & how to format an essay to follow the MLA style guide, including a Works Cited page.

𝕌ℕ𝕀𝕋 𝟚: 𝔸ℝ𝔾𝕌𝕄𝔼ℕ𝕋𝔸𝕋𝕀𝕍𝔼 𝕎ℝ𝕀𝕋𝕀ℕ𝔾: 𝔸𝕊𝕊𝔼ℝ𝕋, ℝ𝔼𝔸𝕊𝕆ℕ, & ℂ𝕆𝕌ℕ𝕋𝔼ℝ
🥊 Ah, the art of argument! You may think your teen is already pretty talented in this area. This may be true! But are their arguments valid and reasonable? Do they know how to acknowledge the other side of an issue, a counterclaim, and refute it? How well are their arguments presented in writing? Most high school and college writing is argument writing, and this class prepares them for college writing, including dual enrollment. Literary analysis and research papers require argument writing, and all the required writing prompts on the AP English and AP Language exams are argument writing. Students will be prepared for the rigor of upper high school and college writing after taking this course. In fact, some of our students have reported using our writing guide, which has clear and useful graphic organizers, to write their essays in their college courses.
✔ Feb 9-15–Aspects of expository, persuasive, and argument writing as well as the effective strategies of argument. Building critical thinking and writing skills, students learn how to evaluate both sides of an issue and consider opposing points of view. They learn to counter an opposing claim.
✔ Feb 16-22–Students begin writing their own argumentative essays while going through the writing process. They learn how to conduct online research by evaluating the credibility of a website. They also learn to delineate issues, claims, reasons, evidence, and analysis.
✔ Feb 23-Mar 1–Fine-tuning their body paragraphs, students revise body paragraphs and learn to elaborate by using multiple strategies.
✔ Mar 2-8: Learners tackle the introduction and conclusion.

🦃 𝘖𝘕𝘌 𝘞𝘌𝘌𝘒 𝘉𝘙𝘌𝘈𝘒 𝘍𝘖𝘙 𝘈𝘔𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘊𝘈𝘕 𝘛𝘏𝘈𝘕𝘒𝘚𝘎𝘐𝘝𝘐𝘕𝘎

𝕌ℕ𝕀𝕋 𝟛: ℙ𝔼ℕ 𝕋𝕆 ℙ𝔸ℙ𝔼ℝ: 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕃𝕀𝕋𝔼ℝ𝔸ℝ𝕐 𝔸ℕ𝔸𝕃𝕐𝕊𝕀𝕊 𝔼𝕊𝕊𝔸𝕐
In high school English classes, students read a novel or piece of literature, and they are told to write an essay. They may have a few class discussions of the literature, and they may get some help with a thesis statement, but usually, they don’t get the instruction they need. They need explicit teaching! High school students must read literature, think deeply about the essential ideas, and synthesize all of it into an essay. 😳 This is no easy task!
🧠 They have to know how to:
-do a close read of a literary text.
-understand the text
-analyze and evaluate a text
-synthesize background information with an interpretation of the text
-organize all of these ideas
-prepare evidence, analysis, counter-arguments, and rebuttals
-present the ideas in a broad, relevant context
-write a beautiful essay
Students deserve more explicit instruction and support. This is a better way. We break all of this into digestible components, so students can master the concepts, thinking, and skills. We know what they need to have success.
✔ Mar 9-15–Using a short film, the instructor models the literary analysis paragraph. Then, building critical reading skills, students read and discuss a short story, analyzing it for the theme and the way the author developed the theme. After doing some pre-writing and thinking, they write a practice paragraph. The class reads a short story and learn the most difficult component of the essay: the introduction. They learn various techniques for hooking their readers, how to introduce their broad topic and then how to narrow it, and how to end with an effective thesis statement that stakes a claim while giving a concession.
✔ Mar 16-22–Students learn how to develop a body paragraph. It is here they delineate evidence and analysis. They learn to integrate their evidence, which are quotes from the literature, in a way that is coherent and flows with the rest of the text.
✔ Mar 23-29–Students learn how to write a concluding paragraph that leaves their reader thinking. They mirror what they did in the introduction. In the conclusion, they will broaden their topic so that their essay has a larger significance. Then, it’s time to revise and edit the essay for word choice and sentence fluency.

🌺 𝘚𝘗𝘙𝘐𝘕𝘎 𝘉𝘙𝘌𝘈𝘒

𝕌ℕ𝕀𝕋 𝟜: 𝕋ℍ𝕀𝕊, 𝕋ℍ𝔸𝕋, & 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕆𝕋ℍ𝔼ℝ: 𝕋ℍ𝔼 ℍ𝕀𝕊𝕋𝕆ℝ𝕀ℂ𝔸𝕃 ℝ𝔼𝕊𝔼𝔸ℝℂℍ 𝕋𝔼ℝ𝕄 ℙ𝔸ℙ𝔼ℝ
🥸 What in the world is an argumentative research paper?!
An argumentative research paper is harder than researching a topic and presenting findings, which is typical of lower-level research essays. In this class, students learn to research an event and then develop an argument about the significance of that event, based on the facts. They learn to follow the facts and present their findings in an argumentative research essay. Students begin by learning the steps of research: how to get organized, ask research questions, search smart to find resources online, read informational texts, and take notes so that they avoid plagiarism. Then they learn to synthesize it all together into a research essay with an annotated bibliography page. This class includes workshop time, which we have found increases student success in writing the paper.
✔ Apr 6-12:
AN INTRO TO HISTORICAL RESEARCH–Students will learn how to get organized for historical research. Students will learn the difference between primary/secondary/tertiary sources. We start with an informational text to build some background knowledge. After reading their first article, they start to ask research questions that guide their efforts.
HISTORICAL RESEARCH & NOTE TAKING–Students learn how to choose a reliable source and how to explore their topic further, answering basic questions about their topic. This includes how to search smart and how to evaluate sources for bias and reliability. They will learn reading strategies and tips on how to read their sources while taking notes. Avoiding plagiarism, they will take effective notes, cite sources, and paraphrase their information.
✔ Apr 13-19:
Workshop Days so students have their instructor to guide them along in the hard work of research.
✔ Apr 20-26:
HISTORICAL CONTEXT–Students will research the important people involved with the topic, create maps, and construct a timeline. Students understand what historical context is and begin studying the historical context of their topic using accurate and appropriate references to the time period by specifying the political, economic, social, and cultural influences—events, ideas, people, places, and objects. Includes a workshop day so students have their instructor to guide them along in the hard work of research.
✔ Apr 27-May 3:
DEEP RESEARCH— The instructor teaches the importance of doing balanced research, where they look at all sides of an issue to understand other opinions, points of view, and controversies. For example, they will ask questions such as: who suffered? Who benefited? What about women? Children? Men? People from other racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic groups? What about people in other geographical areas, those with different values and motivations? Includes a workshop Day so students have their instructor to guide them along in the hard work of research.
✔ May 4-10:
Workshop Day so students have their instructor to guide them along in the hard work of research.
ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION–This is when students begin asking and answering “why?” and “how?” questions on their topic to think deeper and discover more. Students will explore the historical impact on a deeper level and write the rest of the essay.
✔ May 11-17: Workshop Days so students have their instructor to guide them along in the hard work of research.
✔ May 18-24 : Students learn how to write the introduction & conclusion, and they do it in class with teacher guidance and support. Last, they learn to create a separate annotated bibliography page and how to revise and edit their entire essay. For homework, they fine-tune their essay and turn them in for final teacher feedback.

𝕌ℕ𝕀𝕋 𝟝: 𝕋ℍ𝔼 ℂ𝕆𝕃𝕃𝔼𝔾𝔼 𝔸ℙℙ𝕃𝕀ℂ𝔸𝕋𝕀𝕆ℕ 𝔼𝕊𝕊𝔸𝕐: 𝔸 𝕎𝕆ℝ𝕂𝕊ℍ𝕆ℙ 𝕋𝕆 𝔾𝔼𝕋 𝕀𝕋 𝔻𝕆ℕ𝔼!
Students, you will learn how to research your audience and how to prepare, draft, revise, and edit an essay to get the results you want. Class time involves direct instruction with a dash of inspiration, and students will have individual workshop time with feedback from the instructor. Explicit instruction includes the following:
✔ May 25-31:
Day 1–Learn what colleges and universities look for in college essays. Students begin brainstorming their essay’s topic, audience expectations, and how their strengths fit their prospective school. Students develop a topic idea to illustrate those character traits in a story that is narrow, appropriate, and engaging.
Day 2–Students learn two different methods for organizing the college essay. The instructor inspires them to think deeply about who they are and the significance of their essay’s topic. They read two sample essays and have a little Hollywood inspiration to go deeper into their topic for its significance. They meet in breakout rooms, one-on-one with the teacher for individualized help. When not meeting with the teacher, they are organizing their essays.
✔ Jun 1-7:
Day 1–This is an “ah-ha” day! Students finally start to understand how to be transparent, authentic, and to communicate the significance of their experience. Again, they see on film how to go deeper, read a sample essay, and learn how to make their essays memorable. They meet in breakout rooms, one-on-one with the teacher for individualized help. When not meeting with the teacher, they are drafting their essays.
Day 2–Now that they have a draft, they learn how to write a conclusion that brings closure, satisfaction, and an emotional connection with their reader. When complete, they revise and edit their essays for sentence fluency. They learn some simple tricks to use in the revision process to make their sentence structure stand out from the rest. They meet in breakout rooms, one-on-one with the teacher for individualized help. When not meeting with the teacher, they write their conclusions and revise their essays.

🎓 𝗬𝗢𝗨 𝗗𝗜𝗗 𝗜𝗧! 𝗬𝗢𝗨 𝗙𝗜𝗡𝗜𝗦𝗛𝗘𝗗 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗦𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗘𝗦! 🎓
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Class Introduction Video

Coming soon…

✨ 🍋 ✨ Why Lemons-Aid? ✨ 🍋 ✨

A BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW: The Bible, infallible and inerrant, is the very written word of God, who has revealed Himself to man. The Bible is like the light we cast on all content areas in order to understand it, whether that be literature, physical science, history, or geometry. Students learn all content through a Biblical lens. Theology is important for understanding all subject areas. We carefully curate courses that capture learners’ imagination while pointing them to God through sound doctrine. THIS is most important!

EXPLICIT TEACHING: We understand the skills and concepts students need to learn and know how to teach them. Lemons-Aid’s materials are top-notch, organized, and clear for students and parents to understand. We are especially skilled at breaking down a complicated process into understandable parts. Further, explicit instruction is “a structured, systematic, and effective methodology for teaching academic skills. It is called explicit because it is an unambiguous and direct approach to teaching that includes both instructional design and delivery procedures. Explicit instruction is characterized by a series of supports or scaffolds, whereby students are guided through the learning process with clear statements about the purpose and rationale for learning the new skill, clear explanations and demonstrations of the instructional target, and supported practice with feedback until independent mastery has been achieved.”

• Explicit Instruction: Effective and Efficient Teaching by Anita L. Archer and Charles A. Hughes.

Anita Archer trained Mrs. Lemons in workshops, and it changed her teaching. Read a little more about the research behind explicit teaching here and here.

STUDENT ACCOUNTABILITY = ACHIEVEMENT: Students master skills with us and make gains. We have a high degree of accountability. Since we make promises here and parents are paying good money, we understand you trust us to work! Students have to work too, and let’s be honest: they’re kids and don’t always want to. We push it. We teach them how to stay engaged, we cold-call on kids, we tell them to use the chatbox, and we want them to use emojis! If they are resistant, we contact the student through the teacher tab first. If that doesn’t work, we call in the big guns–Mom and Dad. We want kids to learn. We don’t want them to pass through our classes without gaining skills and doing great learning.

DO HARD THINGS. Boost your confidence, master new skills, learn new concepts. This takes a commitment to do hard things. Like the standards we have for our teachers, we also expect our learners to do hard things, whether that means they stand firm in their convictions, learn geometry, write an essay, or give an oral presentation. You can do hard things!

HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS: To balance our high expectations for their learning and behavior, we build relationships with them. We want them to know we care about and know them. We’ll ask about their play last weekend or the new trick they’re trying to master on the skateboard. We also want students to get to know each other and encourage community engagement.

DEPENDABLE: Multiple teachers are teaching this class, and we have an entire year of lessons planned and scheduled. Since we are a mission-driven organization, we protect our brand and the relationships with our families. We are accountable to our learners. When things come up for teachers, we work to get substitutes and do everything we can before canceling a class. We do not like canceling or changing, and we often teach classes at a loss to give others a chance to join. We have limits, of course, but we are not flippant or irresponsible about canceling! When things come up for students, since we have multiple sections, they can transfer from section to section. All our teachers teach the same content the same week, giving families even more flexibility!

TEACHER FEEDBACK: The back-and-forth work between a student and teacher significantly benefits a student if done well. We follow best practices in designing class time, assignments, and routines. According to Pennington Publishing, effective writing feedback (or grading) is:

• Specific, not general
• Immediate, not postponed
• Routine with a revision / feedback cycle
• Explanatory
• The right amount
• Targeted to the most critical issues
• Varied (written, audio, and video comments)
• Holding students accountable

WORKSHOP TIME: We use “workshop time” so students will work while the teacher answers questions, gets them started, and holds them accountable. In a writing class, the teacher “visits” learners on their Google Documents and watches and helps them write. The immediacy of the feedback/revision cycle with the instructor allows writers to improve rapidly. Additionally, once we started using this method in writing classes, we saw nearly a 100% completion rate in student essays!

GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS: Students need graphic organizers to help them see the structure and breakdown of a concept or process. For example, we use them to help learners understand how to write a paragraph or essay and to use the writing process. This is how they learn to develop coherent ideas. They don’t figure out how to do this magically; the graphic organizers and the intentional, explicit teaching help them learn the skills!

STUDENT MASTERY: Each class includes explicit, direct instruction with teacher modeling. Students are guided toward mastery of skills and understandings to grasp the concepts and become independent. Students are held to a high standard of academic work, including often ignored skills like the use of grammar and neatness in math.

STUDY THE BEAUTIFUL

We are surrounded by the mediocre, which is not good! We see this in expectations at some schools, the poor customer service at a store, and even architecture like in a gray, uninspiring complex of high-occupancy housing.

In contrast, we are surrounded by the beautiful, which is good! We see the beautiful in classic literature, music, and beautiful architecture like pictured here.

The mediocre demoralizes learners while the beautiful inspires.

At Lemons-Aid Learning, we study the beautiful: classic literature, artful sentence construction, art, poetry, maths, God’s hand in all of history, and God’s very creation. His creation glorifies Him, and in our study of all content areas, we learn about who God is.

We do not compromise. This means we don’t choose a graphic novel of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We read the original play. We know how to make the complexity and beauty of classic study approachable and understandable to a modern audience. It’s more difficult, but worth the effort!

For over a century, progressive education reform has been “anti-content,” which means they de-emphasize rich content and focus instructional time on things such as self-esteem and “skills” they hope will benefit a learner in the future. This is why American kids do so poorly in testing compared to nations with content-rich curricula. We want our learners to increase in knowledge and grow in wisdom, which our content-area experts foster while teaching.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

We serve the Lord and we work hard for families. We work to give quick responses to questions, authentic and careful feedback, and to solve any conflict. As home educators ourselves, familiar with the joys and struggles of teaching our own children, we can relate! We are supporting families, equipping learners, and serving Christ. We are 100% devoted to Him and to you!

To read more about our teaching and learning methods, read our blogs, written by our teachers and staff.

The Lemons-Aid Team

Lemons-Aid teachers have a few things in common.
❤️ They love their students and value each of their unique strengths and personalities that make our classes special. Our classes can be described as fun, personal, academic, challenging, and supportive.
🤩 We work to keep learners engaged, so there is always a degree of student accountability for their attention and focus, whether that be through asking them direct questions or by using the chatbox.
💭 We know all kids can learn, but sometimes things are hard! To support students, we teach them how to develop effective thinking and learning habits that will bring them success in class and in life.
🌟 Building relationships with students so they know we care about them helps us balance the high expectations we have for them regarding their effort, work quality, and behavior. Our students are encouraged, cared for, and they achieve!

𝙆𝘼𝙍𝙀𝙉 𝙇𝙀𝙈𝙊𝙉𝙎: English Language Arts
#High-Energy #Skilled #Experienced #Relational #Fun #Faithful
Karen is the Founder of Lemons-Aid. She has a bachelor’s degree in English, a minor in Education, and a master’s degree in Education Administration from Liberty University. With a teaching certificate and a principal’s license in both Washington and Colorado, she has many years of experience teaching English Language Arts and History / Social Studies at the middle school and high school levels. Additionally, she is TESOL and TEFL certified and enjoys teaching English Language Learners from all over the world. She has worked in private and public schools at every level and is currently an affiliate faculty member at Colorado Christian University, supervising teacher candidates in their undergraduate and graduate teacher education programs. She is a teacher of teachers. A homeschool mom herself, she admits that teaching other people’s kids is easier than teaching her own teenage boys! She lives in the Denver, Colorado area where she cheers on the Broncos, Avs, and the Rockies, but her favorite athletes are her own kids who play hockey and baseball!

𝑱𝑬𝑵𝑵 𝑹𝑰𝑨𝑳𝑬: English Language Arts
#Experienced #Knowledgeable #Empowering #Patient #Rises Above the Ordinary.
As a certified English teacher, Jenn has taught in some capacity over the course of the past twenty-five years. She has taught middle school and high school English classes in both private and public school settings, tutored international ESL students online, developed and taught literature and public speaking classes for a local homeschool co-op, and homeschooled her own two children. Jenn has a bachelor’s degree in English Education. A strong believer in lifelong learning, Jenn has also taken several graduate-level courses related to teaching. Jenn enjoys spending time with her husband, Mark, and their two teenagers. She enjoys taking day trips close to where they live in upstate New York. In her spare time, Jenn enjoys singing and performing in plays. Additionally, she enjoys curling up on the sofa to read a good book. More than likely, one of her four cats will be curled up at her feet.

𝙆𝙄𝙈𝘽𝙀𝙍𝙇𝙔 𝙋𝘼𝙍𝙄𝙉𝙄𝙎𝙄: English
#Energetic #Kind #Encouraging #Authentic #Enthusiastic #Guide
Kim loves life, loves people, and loves learning! She views each student as a team member with his or her own unique talents, skills and life experience to bring to the group. She loves helping students expand their knowledge and sharpen their skills to reach their greatest potential. Kim has a Bachelor’s degree from Cairn University in secondary Education with certification in English (NY and PA) and endorsement in music. Her classroom experience has focused on English, PE and Bible education, but she has tutored in a variety of areas including ESL, special ed, math, history, science and music (piano and voice). She lives in northeast PA with her wonderful family. She has homeschooled all of her seven children. The youngest five are still in school and ensure that every day is an adventure. Kim also coaches intramural and competitive sports throughout the year. She loves music, sports, reading and taking long walks up her dirt road admiring wildflowers, listening to birds and reflecting on what she is learning in life!

𝙈𝘼𝙆𝙀𝙉𝙉𝘼 𝙎𝙋𝙍𝙔: English

Christian Teachers on Outschool

We want to serve you on Lemons-Aid! For first-time learners on Lemons-Aid, you can use the coupon code Newbie20 to get $20 off your first class.

However, if the schedule doesn’t work for you, we will happily teach you on Outschool, but we can’t talk about Jesus.

Use this referral code and get $20 off your first class on Outschool: LEMONSA2020

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High School Writing Series

This class is part of a series that prepares students to do dual enrollment college classes or are entering college. The series gets progressively more difficult and are scheduled in order. You can still jump in whenever you’d like! Completion of all of these classes, which takes about 6 months will cover all necessary high school writing! They make up a complete high school writing plan.

• Trial Course:
  Live: Down to the Nitty Gritty (a one-time 55-minute course). This is great to see if your student and the teacher are a good match before enrolling in a longer course. Attendance in this course earns a $15 gift card toward your next writing course, essentially making this course free.
• Course 1:
  Live: Foundations of Essay Writing (5 weeks/10 classes)
  Self-Paced Sync: Essay Essentials
• Course 2:
  Live: Argumentative Writing (5 weeks/10 classes)
• Course 3:
  Live: Pen to Paper: Essential High School Writing – The Literary Analysis Essay (3 weeks/6 classes)
• Course 4:
  Live: This, That, & The Other: The Historical Research Essay / Term Paper
• Course 5:
  Live: The College Essay Workshop (4 days)
  Self-Paced Sync: College Essay (4 lessons)
• Extra Practice with Teacher Feedback:
  Live: Essay 911

THE COMPLETE SERIES IN A 5-MONTH SUBSCRIPTION FORMAT:
Total Mastery in High School Writing: Excelling in Every Essay