Lesson Schedule

𝐃𝐚𝐲 𝟭: 𝐃𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩 𝐚 𝐓𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐜 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. They go through a 1-2 hour exercise just to develop a story idea! This week includes guidance through a writing guide with video teaching, brainstorming, and two sample essays. They send their ideas to the teacher, who gives feedback.

𝐃𝐚𝐲 𝟮: 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐬? 𝐒𝐨-𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭? The instructor inspires them to think deeply about who they are and the significance of their essay’s topic. They watch video teaching, read two sample essays, and have a little Hollywood inspiration to go deeper into their topic for its significance. Students complete more exercises to get them thinking deeper. They send their organizational plan to the teacher, who gives feedback.

𝐃𝐚𝐲 𝟯: 𝐃𝐫𝐚𝐟𝐭 𝐃𝐚𝐲! This is an “ah-ha” module! Students finally start to understand how to be transparent and authentic and to communicate the significance of their experience. Again, they see on film how to go deeper, read a sample essay, and have video teaching how to make their essays memorable. They finally draft their essays now that they’ve done the deep thinking and planning. They communicate with their teacher, who gives feedback on their organization, and they finally start drafting.

𝐃𝐚𝐲 𝟰: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬, & 𝐄𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐬- 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐰 𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫! 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. 💯 Students will share their final drafts with their instructor, who will continue to help edit beyond the conclusion of this class until they have one polished essay, ready to send! This may extend for weeks. This unlimited, ongoing support is free of charge.

Class Introduction Video

✨ 🍋 ✨ 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!

RICH CONTENT / CORE KNOWLEDGE: While other schools and systems try to align their content to broad standards that are vague and open to wild interpretations, we focus our content on what students should know and be able to do so they see the world biblically and head into their adult lives filled with knowledge, wisdom, and mastery of skill such as computing and writing. 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.

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!

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.

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

Request a New Section

Want to see this class offered at another time? Send a request, and we’ll see what we can do!

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: 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 (4 days)
• Extra Practice with Teacher Feedback:
  Live: Essay 911