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My daughter is currently using Bravewriter's Help for High School.  I'm hoping she'll be done with it in May or at least early summer.  She'll be a junior next year.  So what do you suggest I do for writing for her for the next 2 years?  She actually writes well but needs polishing and needs some more instruction on various types of writing.  Maybe HTH will address some of this?  

 

Suggestions?  :)

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A great logical next step would be to use the book Writing with a Thesis.  It takes the essay writing skills you learn in BW and expands it into learning to do specific kinds of essays - Narrative, Descriptive, Cause & Effect, Compare & Contrast, etc.  It's a great book.  It's very compatible with the BW approach, and it has students focus on the rhetorical purpose of their writing with every single piece that they produce.

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A great logical next step would be to use the book Writing with a Thesis. It takes the essay writing skills you learn in BW and expands it into learning to do specific kinds of essays - Narrative, Descriptive, Cause & Effect, Compare & Contrast, etc. It's a great book. It's very compatible with the BW approach, and it has students focus on the rhetorical purpose of their writing with every single piece that they produce.

Sounds great!

But how independent can it be used?

Is it written to the student?

I'm not that great in English as dd seems to be...

And is there any where a 'look in book' option, so I can show her?

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Sounds great!

But how independent can it be used?

Is it written to the student?

I'm not that great in English as dd seems to be...

And is there any where a 'look in book' option, so I can show her?

 

Here is a version on Amazon with the look-inside function:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Thesis-Rhetoric-Sarah-Skwire/dp/1133951430/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1455984328&sr=1-1&keywords=writing+with+a+thesis

 

Don't bother spending money on the most recent edition, from what i can see the one I have which I bought for a penny is essentially the same.

 

It is written to the student, it's a college-level rhetoric text, but so much more clear and approachable than the others that I own, I thought it was the best starting point.  We go over it together and discuss the sample essays before I turn her loose on writing her own version, but it could certainly be done independently by a motivated student.

 

It's very clear and focused on the persuasive principle: all your writing should have a rhetorical purpose, and it is the rhetorical purpose that should drive the form that you use.  Then it goes through ten different forms, explains how to write them, and points out common pitfalls to avoid - it informally covers fallacies in this section, but only informally.  Then it presents a student sample, which is a very straightforward expression of that form. It includes the student's thesis and an outline.  Then it presents and discusses several professional samples. One thing I really like is that it shows how professionals combine the different forms to meet their rhetorical purpose.  By the end, we can pick out how the professional writers are using the multiple forms together to create a whole piece.  This is kind of the opposite of what you get with WWS - there you get a very parts to whole explanation of the pieces of an essay, which you only put together after using them in isolation.  WWaT is much more top-down, whole-to-parts: you learn the forms, but in the context of the finished piece, and the rhetorical purpose you have in writing it.

 

In the past, I've posted about things I just started using and how great they were, only to realize after a while that they weren't working out that well, and feeling sheepish like I should go back and delete old posts for posterity's sake!  But we are on the last chapter of WWaT now, and if anything I love it more than I did at the beginning. This one has earned its place on my shelf, and I recommend it without reservation.  With the caveat that it is a college-level rhetoric text, not a step-by-step writing program designed for homeschoolers.  So if your student is ready to learn from a textbook, it could be great. But the assumption is that they can already write an essay, this isn't a beginner book. That's why I thought it would be good for someone who had finished HfHS or LAoW or some other introductory essay program.

 

HTH.

Edited by Chrysalis Academy
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Here is a version on Amazon with the look-inside function:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Thesis-Rhetoric-Sarah-Skwire/dp/1133951430/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1455984328&sr=1-1&keywords=writing+with+a+thesis

 

Don't bother spending money on the most recent edition, from what i can see the one I have which I bought for a penny is essentially the same.

 

It is written to the student, it's a college-level rhetoric text, but so much more clear and approachable than the others that I own, I thought it was the best starting point. We go over it together and discuss the sample essays before I turn her loose on writing her own version, but it could certainly be done independently by a motivated student.

 

It's very clear and focused on the persuasive principle: all your writing should have a rhetorical purpose, and it is the rhetorical purpose that should drive the form that you use. Then it goes through ten different forms, explains how to write them, and points out common pitfalls to avoid - it informally covers fallacies in this section, but only informally. Then it presents a student sample, which is a very straightforward expression of that form. It includes the student's thesis and an outline. Then it presents and discusses several professional samples. One thing I really like is that it shows how professionals combine the different forms to meet their rhetorical purpose. By the end, we can pick out how the professional writers are using the multiple forms together to create a whole piece. This is kind of the opposite of what you get with WWS - there you get a very parts to whole explanation of the pieces of an essay, which you only put together after using them in isolation. WWaT is much more top-down, whole-to-parts: you learn the forms, but in the context of the finished piece, and the rhetorical purpose you have in writing it.

 

In the past, I've posted about things I just started using and how great they were, only to realize after a while that they weren't working out that well, and feeling sheepish like I should go back and delete old posts for posterity's sake! But we are on the last chapter of WWaT now, and if anything I love it more than I did at the beginning. This one has earned its place on my shelf, and I recommend it without reservation. With the caveat that it is a college-level rhetoric text, not a step-by-step writing program designed for homeschoolers. So if your student is ready to learn from a textbook, it could be great. But the assumption is that they can already write an essay, this isn't a beginner book. That's why I thought it would be good for someone who had finished HfHS or LAoW or some other introductory essay program.

 

HTH.

Thank you for the answer!

Dd just finished Kidswrite Intermediate and will -hopefully- attend Expository Essay in March too.

Dd is a very textbookish girl, and a top down learner when it is about Languages / Language Arts.

She did KWI well so I'm curious how EE will work.

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Thank you for the answer!

Dd just finished Kidswrite Intermediate and will -hopefully- attend Expository Essay in March too.

Dd is a very textbookish girl, and a top down learner when it is about Languages / Language Arts.

She did KWI well so I'm curious how EE will work.

 

That sounds good.  Dd did Kidswrite Intermediate in the fall, and we had planned to have her do EE in the spring, too, but now that she has done WWaT, she's thinking she might not need to do EE.  We decided to hold off but keep it on the back burner. She wants to take Passion for Fiction this spring, so she's going to do that in March.  If you do EE, I'm eager to hear what you think of it!

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Here is a version on Amazon with the look-inside function:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Thesis-Rhetoric-Sarah-Skwire/dp/1133951430/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1455984328&sr=1-1&keywords=writing+with+a+thesis

 

Don't bother spending money on the most recent edition, from what i can see the one I have which I bought for a penny is essentially the same.

 

It is written to the student, it's a college-level rhetoric text, but so much more clear and approachable than the others that I own, I thought it was the best starting point.  We go over it together and discuss the sample essays before I turn her loose on writing her own version, but it could certainly be done independently by a motivated student.

 

It's very clear and focused on the persuasive principle: all your writing should have a rhetorical purpose, and it is the rhetorical purpose that should drive the form that you use.  Then it goes through ten different forms, explains how to write them, and points out common pitfalls to avoid - it informally covers fallacies in this section, but only informally.  Then it presents a student sample, which is a very straightforward expression of that form. It includes the student's thesis and an outline.  Then it presents and discusses several professional samples. One thing I really like is that it shows how professionals combine the different forms to meet their rhetorical purpose.  By the end, we can pick out how the professional writers are using the multiple forms together to create a whole piece.  This is kind of the opposite of what you get with WWS - there you get a very parts to whole explanation of the pieces of an essay, which you only put together after using them in isolation.  WWaT is much more top-down, whole-to-parts: you learn the forms, but in the context of the finished piece, and the rhetorical purpose you have in writing it.

 

In the past, I've posted about things I just started using and how great they were, only to realize after a while that they weren't working out that well, and feeling sheepish like I should go back and delete old posts for posterity's sake!  But we are on the last chapter of WWaT now, and if anything I love it more than I did at the beginning. This one has earned its place on my shelf, and I recommend it without reservation.  With the caveat that it is a college-level rhetoric text, not a step-by-step writing program designed for homeschoolers.  So if your student is ready to learn from a textbook, it could be great. But the assumption is that they can already write an essay, this isn't a beginner book. That's why I thought it would be good for someone who had finished HfHS or LAoW or some other introductory essay program.

 

HTH.

 

How long has it taken you to get through?  1 semester?  a year?  

 

Thanks again for the suggestion.  I took a closer look last night and like what I see.  We've tried many of the curriculum writing packages and they're just too formulaic for us.  Hence the reason for Bravewriter; so she can find her own voice/groove.  

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How long has it taken you to get through?  1 semester?  a year?  

 

Thanks again for the suggestion.  I took a closer look last night and like what I see.  We've tried many of the curriculum writing packages and they're just too formulaic for us.  Hence the reason for Bravewriter; so she can find her own voice/groove.  

 

This definitely fits into the BW/find your own voice category!  We did it in ~20 weeks, ~2 weeks per chapter.  We'd first read and discuss the chapter text and the student essay, and she'd go off to brainstorm her topic.  Then we'd read and discuss one of the professional samples each day.  There are ~8ish samples per chapter, so that took about two weeks.  Usually she would brainstorm/freewrite and develop a thesis during the first week, then draft, edit and polish her essay during the second week.

 

This was for an 8th grader. She is an advanced writer, but I've not asked her to write at a high school pace this year.  For an older kid you might want to do it at a faster pace? But this was very manageable and unrushed feeling.  So definitely a one-semester book for high school.

Edited by Chrysalis Academy
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