Did you know that when an excellent teacher marks an essay, he will put in annotations to indicate the specific grammar error in order to help the child? Most of the time, the teacher will let the student know what these annotations mean. However, whether the student remembers what they mean is another matter. They will also probably not be able to explain them to their parents. How can students understand and remember the different annotations? I am sure most

Having a memorable ending or conclusion helps your child’s essay stand out. How can we do this? Let’s turn to time tested solutions in Classical Greek theatre. Greek plays are generally divided into comedies and tragedies. This is basically what we call a happy and sad ending. In addition, they also have what is called a tragicomedy. While this concept is complex, we have distilled it to a simpler form to help your child create a memorable story that stands

In our previous posts, we discussed how to help your child to express emotions in their stories using the IDEA method. Another way your child can improve his essay is by improving the way the climax of his story is presented. We calling this ‘stretching the tension’. Let’s start by looking at how one of the masters of storytelling uses this method: “Suddenly, she froze. There was something coming up the street on the opposite side. It was something black

Now that we have gone through the first three letters of the IDEA technique, we are now moving to the final letter of the IDEA technique. “A”, the last letter, stands for Action. How can your child use this technique? Remember the simple rule of “show, not tell”? By using the character’s actions, your child can show how his character responds to the development of the plot and paint a great picture of emotions in a story. Bad example: James

In my previous blog post, I touched on creating dialogue as a way to help characters express emotions. For this post, I am going touch on using inner thoughts to display emotions. This is the third part of the IDEA method and ‘E’ stands for emotional expressions.  The key to this is the simple rule of “show, not tell”. Do not write phrases like “he was angry” or “she was sad”. Use his thoughts to show his emotions. Bad example: James

In my previous blog, I had talked about the IDEA technique. To recap, the IDEA technique a way for students to write about their character’s emotions. This will help to develop their story and make their characters more engaging. Most importantly, it will add emotional depth to you child’s story so that he can score well in story development. I have gone through Inner Sensations, the “I” part of the IDEA technique in the previous blog. Now, let us move into

How can your child show the character’s emotions appropriately in an essay after he has decided what emotion to express? I would recommend this simple method – the IDEA technique. While I am going to focus on the “I” part, I thought I better give a simple introduction to the IDEA technique. “I” stands for Inner Sensations, which is all about the body’s physical reaction to an emotion. “D” means Dialogue which is what the character(s) say in response to