Writing curriculum for essays and research reports

[mims]

A little background on my daughter (14 and a Freshman). . . We have used Sonlight all the way through. We have used several years of IEW. She loves creative writing and has participated in NaNoWriMo two years and has reached her goal each time. We are just starting the One Year Adventure Novel.

 

She is a very good creative writer and can write a basic report fairly well. I am looking for a writing curriculum next fall that is really strong on the steps to write essays and research reports. Something that will lay out at least a year's worth of writing assignments where these things become second nature.

 

I would like to save money rather than a ton of bells and whistles but please suggest all the ones that you like and tell me why.

 

Thanks!

[Carmen_and_Company]

Since you used IEW in the past, why not their Elegant Essay program? IEW also produced a Progymnastama program titled, Classical Rhetoric through Structure & Style: Writing Lessons Based on the Progymnastama.

 

I own a copy of Introduction to Essay Structure that is the precursor to Elegant Essay that the author wrote prior to IEW publishing her curriculum with the new title. I've owned it since 2003, and still refer to when assisting Storm with her essays. In addition, I plan to purchase the Progym program to work through with Storm over the next two summers.

 

IEW lists the products under Advanced Writing at their site: http://www.excellenceinwriting.com/catalog/adv-writing-materials .

[Stacy in NJ]

An inexpensive option would be Wordsmith Craftsman. http://www.commonsensepress.com/wordsmith/wscraft.htm

[FlockOfSillies]

If she's already completed IEW, then you will want to consider The Lost Tools of Writing by The Circe Institute. Very step-by-step, plenty of review. Andrew Kern wants to de-mystify the process for the student, although the curriculum looks confusing to the parent at first. They do offer quite a bit of support for the parent, though.

[cmpet7]

I like Write Better Essays in just 20 minutes a day as well as Teaching the Essay and Teaching the Research paper by Robin Findley (analytical grammar author).

[Love2Smile]

What about Jensen's Format Writing?

[Storm Bay]

What about Jensen's Format Writing?

 

 

What's good about it: it breaks down beginning writing into simple steps and starts by teaching sentence flow.

 

What's bad (but in some ways good) about it is, to quote someone else, it's as dry as dust. The boring writing in it helped dd see the steps better.

 

If you use it, I suggest using it just this year to teach the nuts and bolts, but eventually you want to move beyond writing with a format.

 

fwiw, my 14 yo dd loves do do creative writing on her own but is vehemently opposed to all forms of expository writing longer than short or paragraph answers, so if you find something that works well, I'd love to know. We're going to do Wordsmith next semester, but nothing geared only to essay writing at the moment.

[mims]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I had looked at some of these but will revisit each of them as I plan. IEW's just looked sort of spendy to do the high school level writing program although I hadn't looked at the Classic Writing one. I know I looked at Robin Finley's because we have done Analytical Grammar but I can't remember what I though about it. The search is now on but I will check any other suggestions too. Thanks!

[Janice H]

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/writing-tips-how-to-write-easier-and-better/6076557

 

Despite it's title the document is mostly about the research paper writing process, including a section about "why wikipedia is not a good source" and how to come up with a thesis statement.

 

The author, David Bruce, has a couple dozen free writing and lit guides for download at lulu.com. He writes in a conversational manner for a first year of college crowd. His examples tend to come from good and great books.