Avoid these common pedagogical mistakes when teaching writing. 1. Focusing too much on spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Writing conventions (spelling, grammar, punctuation) are important, but they are not the most important part of writing. They are a means to an end. Don’t spend all your time teaching and practicing these. Spend more time helping the child to generate good ideas and communicating them using good sentence form and word choices. Then use knowledge of spelling, grammar, and punctuation to make the writing more polished and free of error. 2. Assigning one-off writing tasks wit ..read more

A good writing piece has a direction. There is a purpose – the reason why you are writing, and there is an audience – who you are writing. What is Purpose? The intention or reason behind your writing is the purpose. We write for many different reasons. Here are some examples; to inform to describe to narrate to persuade to entertain to advise to instruct to explain and so on…. The purpose of writing is your intention or goal for the audience. Which brings us to the next point. What is Audience? The audience is the person or group you are writing to or for. The audience is the end user of the ..read more

There are 4 types of writing. They are: 1. Expository Writing Purpose: to inform, explain, or instruct Examples: reports, recipes, directions etc. 2. Descriptive Writing Purpose: to describe a person, place or thing, in a way that allows the reader to paint a picture Examples: describing jannah, describe your bedroom, describe a person, a place or thing, describe an event using the 5 senses 3. Persuasive Writing Purpose: to persuade or convince the reader of an opinion through using facts and reasons to support the opinion Examples: Online learning is better than learning in class. Why you sho ..read more

Assalaamu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh If you hate teaching writing, I’m pretty sure it’s only because you don’t understand what and how to teach. I know how that feels. Teaching writing can seem like a daunting task. It seems confusing. It can be frustrating. But I promise, it only feels that way because you may not have a clear idea of what teaching writing means. What is the goal of the writing strand anyway? In the video below, I am going to simplify the writing curriculum for you. When I say curriculum, I mean the technical stuff that is written in curriculum documents. I know ..read more

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ Assalaamu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh I am so excited to present this All About Me Islamic Unit to you. I created it for my daughter to kick off the homeschool year, but you can use it anytime through out the year. Below, you’ll find a link to download all the resources I used for free. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed. For a break down of the unit and the lessons, watch the video below. It’s a great opportunity to learn how to teach curriculum subjects with Islamic goals. I create each unit and the lesson for specific academic and Islamic go ..read more

Is planning stressing you out? So many things to teach but you don’t know how to organize and spread them out over the year? No worries, I’m here to simplify the process for you. I actually love planning. I think it’s my favourite part about teaching. My next favourite part is the actually teaching – delivering what I planned. Planning gets me so excited about the possibilities. It’s almost as if I am witnessing the transformation in my students as I plan, even before teaching the content. I am a strong believer in planning. I think when it comes to anything valuable in life, you must have a v ..read more

Last Ramadan, I recorded a podcast episode for Islamic school teachers to help them organize a productive Ramadan for their students. I covered 10 teaching ideas you can easily implement this blessed month. And you won’t have to stray away from your pre-planned curriculum schedule. You can listen to episode #9 of the MakkahCentric Education podcast for a more detailed discussion on the teaching strategy and pedagogical objective behind each activity. In this blog post, I’m sharing the same ideas but slightly adapted for home and virtual use. At the time of writing this post, we’re al ..read more

Good deed trees are a hit this time of the year. It’s a great way to get children to be intentional about doing more good deeds during this blessed month. We jazzed it up a bit. In this activity children will make a date palm tree because of the similarities between a believer and the date palm tree. The hadeeth is included in this download. Print it out and stick on to the tree! Also included are a list of simple and practical good deeds for children. We’ve left some spaces for the child to choose their own good deeds to do. They’ll love practicing these good deeds and then pinning them on th ..read more

So you’re in planning mode but you’re not quite sure what you want to teach this year.  You want it to be Islamically, socially, and academically relevant but you have no idea where to start. Whether you’re following a set curriculum, or you’re curating your own resources, I want to give you 3 main objectives you should have for any lesson or topic you teach. In this video, I’m going help you decide what to focus on when teaching any topic to Muslim children, so that by the end of the year you can say to yourself… “Wow we made a lot of progress and we have really grown in knowledge and de ..read more

So you’re homeschooling this year. Congratulations! Whether this will be your first time, or you’ve been doing it for years, I want to help you get in the right mindset so that you can have an amazing academic year with your kids. This time of the year, most educators are searching for and asking questions about curriculum and what or how to teach. But they forget to do the important work – prepare themselves mentally for the task ahead. How you show up mentally, and how you think of yourself and your abilities, will have a greater impact on your homeschool successes more than anything else. H ..read more