The Writing Pack
An English Grammar Game, Writing Reference Guide and Graphic Organizers

Learn how to put words together into sentences. Learn how to put ideas together to make paragraphs. Learn how to make your writing understandable. The interaction of words, ideas, and grammar is the foundation of excellent writing skills.

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Ten Minutes to Better Writing Skills is a digital PDF download. Be sure to create an account when purchasing so you can download the PDF. Purchasing this PDF grants you 1 license for personal use only.

Limited Reproduction Permission

This book’s forms are meant to be reproduced for one teacher’s use with only his or her students, up to 150 students per year. Any further duplication is prohibited.

“My 13 year old daughter was failing. She wasn’t getting the right kind of support from her teachers to turn it around. I didn’t have enough knowledge to know how to help her overcome her dyslexia and A.D.D. She used to try so hard to get thoughts down on paper, to be able to read and write. Those were her weakest areas. It was a dark time in our lives, until we found the Bonnie Terry Reading and Writing Packs.

Once we started working with your system, the difference was incredible. It made such a difference in her life. Your system gave me an actual step-by-step way to help her. My daughter now reads and writes without difficulty, getting B’s in many of her classes. Thank you.”

Shelly B., CA

About developing these English grammar and writing materials

After years of teaching thousands of students, consulting hundreds of teachers, and reading everything I could get my hands on related to writing, I developed three materials to address the roadblocks to writing. After developing a game (The Sentence Zone®), a guide (Writer’s Easy Reference Guide™), and a book (Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills™), I spent years testing them and making changes to them to make them better.

The solutions to writing roadblocks are ones that intertwine and interact with each other. Just as when baking a loaf of bread, the flour and liquid mixture (dough) doesn’t do much without the yeast. And, the yeast doesn’t do anything without sugar. Together all of these ingredients interact with each other. Each ingredient becomes more than it would be on its own. In effect each of their qualities has been multiplied when mixed together. The interaction, baking of the dough, ends up as a delicious loaf of bread. The loaf of bread is not the result of simply baking the individual ingredients, but the interaction of the ingredients together that makes the difference.

So too, being able to put words together into sentences that make sense, putting ideas (multiple sentences) together to make paragraphs, and doing this is a way that is understandable (using correct grammar) is the interaction of words, ideas, and grammar that produces excellent writing skills. That is what makes the difference.

The good news is with a little bit of ‘home tutoring’, you CAN change your child’s writing future by using the materials in the Writing Pack. Your child can feel confident and in more control of their writing and be able to:

Write quality rough drafts in 10 minutes.
Cut studying time down with the 5 steps to easy studying.
Use the 7 secret steps to take on test day that will improve their test scores.
Reduce homework time and regain family/free time.
Make slight changes to rough drafts and dramatically improve the final copy.

Solution 1: An English grammar sentence building game to help analyze the mechanics of sentences.

The Sentence Zone®

I realized my students that had such trouble putting their spelling words into sentences still had trouble with writing their own sentences without dictating them to me while I wrote them down and then copying them. They still had some fears related to writing a sentence on their own. Would it be a complete sentence? Would it be any good? Would it make sense?

The best way I know of to calm a student’s fears is to create a learning situation that is non-threatening and where they would automatically succeed. So I created a game to teach them how to write sentences. When it was their turn playing The Sentence Zone®, my students created a sentence using color-coded word cards. This was easy for them, picking and choosing the word cards to make interesting sentences.

My younger students played the game to learn how to create a sentence. They learned they needed a blue card (noun), a red card (verb), a capital letter card (to start their sentence), and punctuation card (to complete their sentence) and they would have constructed a sentence and earn points for it. My older students played to learn English grammar as well as sentence structure. This made their English homework so-o-o much easier!

One of the great things about having them play The Sentence Zone® was when they would do their writing at a later time, all I had to say was, “Remember the kinds of sentences you made that you got the big points for when you were playing The Sentence Zone®? That’s the kind I want you to write.” My students knew exactly what I was talking about. And the quality of their sentences improved dramatically.

Solution 2: The mechanics of writing and English grammar in a reference guide.

The Writer’s Easy Reference Guide™

Often when your child comes home with their writing assignment they don’t want to have to do anything more than absolutely necessary to get it done. But, they may need some help on how to format their paper, or need a little bit of advice on how to make their paper better, or how to write a work cited or bibliography.

You know they just need a little something extra to help give them confidence with their writing assignments. It was the same thing for me. My children and students didn’t need a ton of help. What they did need was a quick and easy, down and dirty guide to remind them of the paragraph, letter, and essay formats.

I knew my kids and students would need to be able to independently fix their papers because they wouldn’t always have someone else available to proof them. They also needed a quick reference resource to guide them in how to make small changes to their papers to really improve them. I had shown them an example of how just changing the verb in their sentences their overall writing improved. But then they couldn’t always think of additional verbs on their own.

Because of this, I developed a Writer’s Easy Reference Guide™. It would give them all the grammar and writing tips they would need in one place.

Solution 3: A book to help study skills and the writing process.

Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills™

Every week your child usually has some sort of writing assignment. You know that writing assignments can start as early as 1st grade. That’s usually the grade when your child comes home and has to use their spelling words in sentences. As they get older they have book reports, paragraphs, history/social studies reports, or essays to write. The writing assignments seem endless. Your child just can’t get away from them. And these assignments are not always easy.

What if your child could start by just filling-in-the-blanks when they are given a reading or writing assignment in order to make the assignment much easier? After working with my own kids as well as my students I found that I always got grief from them when they had a writing assignment. Finally I started to make some fill-in-the-blank forms for them to help them with their writing. The whining stopped and they were suddenly able to actually write!

On top of actually being able to write, the quality of their writing improved too. They weren’t spending a ton of time on their writing assignments any more either. When I saw how quickly my students were improving their writing skills I made even more fill-in-the-blank forms and compiled them into a reproducible book, Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills™.

An additional by-product of several of the forms was that my students had even created their own study guides for getting ready for test days.