What's out there for writing?

[SparklyUnicorn]

I'm looking for grades 7/8. 

[cintinative]

SparklyUnicorn, what have you already used? That might be helpful so we don't suggest things that have not worked for your household.

That said, I am aware of these:

• Writing with Skill (Well Trained Mind Press)
• Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW)--Student Writing Intensive B, SICC-B, Elegant Essay/Speech Boot Camp, Level B Theme Based products
• Lost Tools of Writing (Circe Institute)
• CAP's Writing and Rhetoric series
• Memoria Press' Classical Composition series
• Excellence in Writing (EIW) series
• Bravewriter
• Michael Clay Thompson's materials (MCT)--not sure of the names?

 

I'm sure there are tons more. Those are just the ones I could come up with off the top of my head.

[blue daisy]

My 7th graded is not a strong writer. We've done IEW and I picked up Writing with Skill for him to use next year. I feel like it has a lot of support and practice without being as formulaic as IEW.

 

My younger son is a very good writer. We use Bravewriter and CAP's Writing and Rhetoric for him and I plan to use that through middle school for him.

[ScoutTN]

The Lively Art of Writing is a good intro to essay writing. Some of the prompts are a bit outdated, but it is not hard to replace them with similar ones of more interest to your particular student. 

Quark reformatted the accompanying workbook. It's posted here somewhere.

[Momto6inIN]

We've had good success with IEW SWI and SICC and Wordsmith Creative Writing and Craftsman for 7th-8th.

[Lori D.]

 

Jump In (Watson)
Christian, but it is mostly limited to a just a few comments and assignment ideas that you can skip over. Written to the student and can be done largely independently. Covers all 4 areas of writing (Descriptive, Narrative, Expository, Persuasive), and focuses on helping students think of what to say and how to organize their writing. Designed to take 2 years, but that is because the schedule has you insert 4 weeks of "free writing" from prompts after each unit, which stretches the 1-year program into 2 years. This program worked well for our struggling writer; we skipped the lame/repetitive writing prompts and completed the program in 1 year -- and that was with a struggling writer and just 4 days a week (as 1 day a week we all did a timed essay from a past SAT prompt -- which is one of the best things we did for writing from 8th-12th grades ;) ).

Brave Writer: Faltering Ownership
I have this one on the shelf as a resource for teaching my co-op class, but have not really used it yet. This is a 1-year program that covers a 1-semester long guide to writing a report and citing sources. It is a bit more "scattered" perhaps in approach, and requires a lot more parent involvement, but Brave Writer materials are often a good fit for students who are not natural writers or logical/sequential writers (which is much more the IEW and WWS approach to writing instruction). Even better, although much pricier, is to enroll your student in 1-2 Brave Writer writing courses.

Wordsmith Apprentice (gr. 4-7); Wordsmith (gr. 6-8); Wordsmith Craftsman (gr. 8-12)
Apprentice is great for struggling writers and for the earlier grades; it has a light, humorous tone and a very fun "cub reporter" theme that was fantastic for pencil phobic and struggling writers here in late elementary/earlymiddle school. Wordsmith is for middle school and focuses on writing solid paragraphs (Descriptive, Narrative, Expository, Persuasive) and ends with writing a longer multi-paragraph essay; it is informal in tone, written to the student, and can be done largely solo. Wordsmith is pretty light (I think of Jump In as being similar but much more meaty), but that can be a good fit for a struggling writer. And it is easily completed in less than a year, even by a struggling writer. Wordsmith also worked well here with one DS (Jump In came out soon after we used it, and we switched to that for the next DS.) Craftsman is also written to the student and meant to be done independently -- we found it to be too scattered in approach to work here.

Write Shop 1
No personal experience, but this is a 1-year incremental program with a consumable workbook that focuses on the steps of the writing process, and descriptive, narrative, and expository writing. (Most essays are persuasive writing of some form, in case that is what you are looking for.)

Mastering the 5-Paragraph Essay (Van Zile)
Secular; classroom teacher resource, and would require a lot more parent involvement, but good info and assignment ideas. Find it at Amazon. Also have this on my shelf as a resource, but have not used a lot of it yet.

Cover Story (Schwabauer)
Year-long creative writing program. No personal experience, as DSs hated creative writing assignments at that age, lol.

And then, of course the programs listed above by previous posters: Writing with Skill series; Classical Academic Press' Writing & Rhetoric series; Lost Tools of Writing series; IEW series; etc. I will just add that the Lively Art of Writing mentioned above is a high school level resource, so your middle schooler would need to be a strong/solid writer to use that one. Here is the thread ("Lively Art of Writing formatted workbook and key") with links posted by Quark, for the go-along workbook created by WTMers Still Waters and mjbucks1.

[Another Lynn]

Maybe Thinking in Threes?  

[Holly]

WWS is the first writing program that has "clicked" with all of my kids.  I wish we'd used WWE/WWS years ago! 

[SparklyUnicorn]

I've used several of these.  I find writing frustrating to teach.  Of all of them IEW has been my favorite and so I'll probably just stick to that one, but the hardest thing is finding sources for the writing. 

[MerryAtHope]

Have you used Essentials in Writing by Matthew Stephens? That one was easiest for me to teach of everything I tried over the years, and worked well here. I have an old blog review up here--we ended up using levels 7-11. Hope you find something that's a good fit!

[Momto6inIN]

37 minutes ago, SparklyUnicorn said:

I've used several of these.  I find writing frustrating to teach.  Of all of them IEW has been my favorite and so I'll probably just stick to that one, but the hardest thing is finding sources for the writing. 

Have you used their theme books? I use theme books mostly for elementary but they've got some interesting looking ones for middle school too, and those have source texts given I think.

[cintinative]

2 hours ago, SparklyUnicorn said:

I've used several of these.  I find writing frustrating to teach.  Of all of them IEW has been my favorite and so I'll probably just stick to that one, but the hardest thing is finding sources for the writing. 

 

Do you happen to own the "writing source packet"?  If not, you might want to take a look at that.  https://iew.com/shop/products/writing-source-packet

Includes:

Articles and Stories for Units 1 & 2
Story Sequence Sources for Unit 3
Mini Book Set for Units 4 & 6
Pictures for Unit 5

The only negatives I can see is that the packet will only take you through 8th grade at the highest and the packet is designed to cover 1st-8th so there are not a ton of sources for each for the 6th-8th range.  I have an electronic copy of the Articles & Stories portion which I must have downloaded during one of their Christmas promotions. 

 

ETA: I have a pdf of an email I received called "Using IEW with any assignment"  I could send that to you?   It's not super detailed but it gives you some ideas. Spoiler alert: one of them is the resource packet. =)

 

[SparklyUnicorn]

13 minutes ago, cintinative said:

 

Do you happen to own the "writing source packet"?  If not, you might want to take a look at that.  https://iew.com/shop/products/writing-source-packet

Includes:

Articles and Stories for Units 1 & 2
Story Sequence Sources for Unit 3
Mini Book Set for Units 4 & 6
Pictures for Unit 5

The only negatives I can see is that the packet will only take you through 8th grade at the highest and the packet is designed to cover 1st-8th so there are not a ton of sources for each for the 6th-8th range.  I have an electronic copy of the Articles & Stories portion which I must have downloaded during one of their Christmas promotions. 

 

Hah...I actually have this already.  I completely forgot about it!  Thank you! 

But yeah you are right.  There isn't a ton for the range I need, but still there are some. 

[SparklyUnicorn]

2 hours ago, Momto5inIN said:

Have you used their theme books? I use theme books mostly for elementary but they've got some interesting looking ones for middle school too, and those have source texts given I think.

I tried one.  I thought it was pretty awful unfortunately. 

[SparklyUnicorn]

2 hours ago, MerryAtHope said:

Have you used Essentials in Writing by Matthew Stephens? That one was easiest for me to teach of everything I tried over the years, and worked well here. I have an old blog review up here--we ended up using levels 7-11. Hope you find something that's a good fit!

 

We used 2 levels of that.  Not bad, but over half of it was just grammar without much writing. 

[cintinative]

24 minutes ago, cintinative said:

 

ETA: I have a pdf of an email I received called "Using IEW with any assignment"  I could send that to you?   It's not super detailed but it gives you some ideas. Spoiler alert: one of them is the resource packet. =)

The email is basically what is on this site: https://iew.com/twss-help/practical-application-all-nine-iew-units

 

[Lori D.]

So... In addition to letting us know what you've already tried/discarded, if you could give us just a bit of background to go on that would help tremendously. Students in the grade 6-9 ages vary dramatically in writing abilities so that's the toughest age range to give suggestions without more info about the student.

Where is your DS in the grand scheme of writing: ability-wise? (sentences? paragraphs? multi-paragraphs? thought-out essays?), and interest-wise? (hates writing, does it without complaint, enjoys it) -- and what type of writing is more his strength or interest (factual/expository? creative writing? journalism/blogging? persuasive/argumentative?) 

And, what do YOU want to accomplish with writing with DS in the coming year -- your goals? (get over the hurdle of hating writing? produce a multi-paragraph essay? get comfortable with the process of writing and figuring out what to say and how to organize it? write 5-paragraph essays? do a research paper? something else?)

Also, what do YOU need -- sounds like a good guide to teaching/mentoring writing, or grading/commenting writing might be helpful... :)

[MerryAtHope]

1 hour ago, SparklyUnicorn said:

 

We used 2 levels of that.  Not bad, but over half of it was just grammar without much writing. 

 

There is only grammar in levels 1-6. Levels 7 and up are just writing.

[SparklyUnicorn]

11 hours ago, Lori D. said:

So... In addition to letting us know what you've already tried/discarded, if you could give us just a bit of background to go on that would help tremendously. Students in the grade 6-9 ages vary dramatically in writing abilities so that's the toughest age range to give suggestions without more info about the student.

Where is your DS in the grand scheme of writing: ability-wise? (sentences? paragraphs? multi-paragraphs? thought-out essays?), and interest-wise? (hates writing, does it without complaint, enjoys it) -- and what type of writing is more his strength or interest (factual/expository? creative writing? journalism/blogging? persuasive/argumentative?) 

And, what do YOU want to accomplish with writing with DS in the coming year -- your goals? (get over the hurdle of hating writing? produce a multi-paragraph essay? get comfortable with the process of writing and figuring out what to say and how to organize it? write 5-paragraph essays? do a research paper? something else?)

Also, what do YOU need -- sounds like a good guide to teaching/mentoring writing, or grading/commenting writing might be helpful... :)

 

The only struggle he has is coming up with what to write about.  And it does not matter if it is creative writing or not.  IEW has made that a bit better, but he is still under the impression he has to produce something profound.  For example, the past few days we have been working on outlining a short story.  He was very excited about changing it up to make it a bit different.  We brainstormed ideas, etc.  Then when he went to write he flipped out.  So after trying various things to help him along I just said write the story as if you are writing a letter to a friend about this event.  That got him going at least.  But even with non-fiction stuff requiring one to basically regurgitate the information, he flips.  Not sure what to do about that! 

He does well with grammar, punctuation, spelling, structuring sentences and paragraphs, etc. 

I would like him to practice writing more, and I want whatever we use to be mostly open and go.  Sometimes I spend so much time looking for the perfect story or resource that we might not get to writing because I haven't found anything.  Apparently the indecisiveness runs in the family!  Haha... 

I would be perfectly fine with not doing too much creative writing.  He has a love hate thing with it.  He loves the idea of it, but he hates having to actually do it because he gets stressed over not being able to be original and interesting. 

[SparklyUnicorn]

11 hours ago, MerryAtHope said:

 

There is only grammar in levels 1-6. Levels 7 and up are just writing.

 Good to know.  I will take a look at it.  Thanks! 

[SanDiegoMom]

Your son sounds very similar to my son! He is a great perfectionist in his writing, expecting everything to come out needing no revision. He usually hates creative writing because of the stress of coming up with something completely original. I thought he would love WWS since it is so structured, but he can only take so much of it before he needs a break. His favorite resource is Unjournaling -- little exercises that allow him to be creative but within a framework of a funny prompt -- his favorite for instance was to write a sentence where every word begins with the next consecutive letter of the alphabet, backwards. He also likes Kilgallon. 

However neither is a full writing curriculum, so I don't have a lot of advice. I am debating between two very different online writing classes and for each one I can totally see him falling apart.  I think it's the anxiety and perfectionism I have to work on with mine, as opposed to finding the perfect fit. 

[mom31257]

I recently discovered Writing Strands but haven't used it. It looks interesting. 

https://www.masterbooks.com/writing-strands-series

scope and sequence

https://www.masterbooks.com/downloads/dl/file/id/924/product/3170/writing_strands_scope_sequence.pdf

[Targhee]

On 4/6/2018 at 6:39 AM, SparklyUnicorn said:

 

The only struggle he has is coming up with what to write about.  And it does not matter if it is creative writing or not.  IEW has made that a bit better, but he is still under the impression he has to produce something profound.  For example, the past few days we have been working on outlining a short story.  He was very excited about changing it up to make it a bit different.  We brainstormed ideas, etc.  Then when he went to write he flipped out.  So after trying various things to help him along I just said write the story as if you are writing a letter to a friend about this event.  That got him going at least.  But even with non-fiction stuff requiring one to basically regurgitate the information, he flips.  Not sure what to do about that! 

He does well with grammar, punctuation, spelling, structuring sentences and paragraphs, etc. 

I would like him to practice writing more, and I want whatever we use to be mostly open and go.  Sometimes I spend so much time looking for the perfect story or resource that we might not get to writing because I haven't found anything.  Apparently the indecisiveness runs in the family!  Haha... 

I would be perfectly fine with not doing too much creative writing.  He has a love hate thing with it.  He loves the idea of it, but he hates having to actually do it because he gets stressed over not being able to be original and interesting. 

Lost Tools of Writing

[deerforest]

We've used a lot of programs, and I manage a group of technology writers for a big high tech company after having been in academia...just sharing because I have a fairly strong and varied writing background. I train professional writers daily, and I still found it challenging to teach my daughter. I finally discovered why...I'm just not very patient when teaching writing, probably because I spend my days giving feedback to professionals. When she would write, she created fabulous content. Really impressive with a strong voice, etc. But, I got tired of pushing her so we signed up for 3 Bravewriter classes this year in their new series for preparing for essay writing. 

I can emphatically state that we'll be using at least one of their classes per semester from this point on. The teachers gave excellent, actionable feedback. DD got to see writing of her peers and finally believed me when I told her she was a strong writer. But, most of all, those teachers are SO KIND. Like, seriously, I don't know how they have the patience to respond so genuinely and thoughtfully to every kid on every assignment. DD would sometimes point out how some of the kids didn't follow instructions, and she would be slightly appalled. But, the teachers would give feedback that was directed yet gentle. It was amazing.

She worked SO hard for them too--nothing like she would do for me and grew so much more confident and skilled. I do recommend trying different teachers because we really won't sign up for classes again with 1 of them. It had more to do some of the administrative side of things than her feedback, though. 

They're $$ and I never had great success with the Bravewriter lifestyle, but we had great success with their classes.

[Carolinagirl1]

We just started using Essentials in Writing, and I love how simple it is to use. They just watch a DVD lesson, read the lesson in the book, and complete the exercises. The DVDs are in the back of the book so there is only the student book and (in some levels) the teachers guide. The lessons are presented in short manageable chunks. I think they also offer grading services (but I haven't looked into it). I really can't give a full review on it because we have only completed one week's worth of lessons, but I can compare it to IEW with respect to the materials and the ease of use. 

IEW is another that we have used. I like it, but to me, there are just too many materials. I have DVDs, a student binder that we had to set up, a TWSS teacher manual, the workbook for the history based writing lessons, a student resource notebook. Ugh! Too many components to juggle around!! I am finding that the longer I homeschool, more gets done with a curriculum that is more streamlined (as in not so many components). I do like the content of IEW though, and if EIW doesn't work out for us, we may go back to it, but I doubt it. 

Lost Tools of Writing is what my daughter used in Classical Conversations Challenge A and it was just too much of a learning curve for me. I didn't like having to watch the Vimeo videos to learn how to help my daughter with it. While she was in class learning it, I was in another class with my other daughter. From what I did see, it seems like they were taking simple concepts and making them seem really complicated. "ANI Chart", "Exortium", etc. Some people might like this, but I just like straightforwardness. 

So, for ease of use, I pick Essentials in Writing. It is independent, streamlined, the content looks great, and I can pick it up and know exactly what it is talking about.

[Ellie]

On 4/5/2018 at 4:02 PM, SparklyUnicorn said:

I've used several of these.  I find writing frustrating to teach.  Of all of them IEW has been my favorite and so I'll probably just stick to that one, but the hardest thing is finding sources for the writing. 

I like Writing Strands, because it teaches children how to write. The children don't have to brainstorm topics in the lessons, because that isn't part of the writing process. They use what they've learned in their writing lessons when they write for other subjects.

[wehave8]

[I just came to this board to look for some Writing ideas and reviews!  I don't remember ever being on this particular board for middle school.]

Has anyone used this (Put That in Writing)?

https://www.exodusbooks.com/put-that-in-writing/8081/

It has a good review, and I downloaded the samples, but I am hoping for some reviews from someone who's used it.

[Lori D.]

On 6/12/2018 at 4:12 AM, wehave8 said:

[I just came to this board to look for some Writing ideas and reviews!  I don't remember ever being on this particular board for middle school.]

Has anyone used this (Put That in Writing)?
https://www.exodusbooks.com/put-that-in-writing/8081/
It has a good review, and I downloaded the samples, but I am hoping for some reviews from someone who's used it.

We tried twice to make it work, and only managed to make it useable with heavy tweaking. It just was not a good fit for either of our DSs: too formal and repetitive, dull writing assignment ideas, overly long examples of "good writing" and the unnecessary (for us) heavy focus on Grammar. And there were a number of typos -- kiss of death to me in a Writing program! (:D

We tried it, dropped it, tried it the following year, dropped it, and finally managed to use JUST the instructional/informational parts on the types of essays (narrative, process, compare/contrast, cause & effect, analogy, defending a position, character analysis) to learn about the different types of writing, made our own writing assignments for each of those essay types, and skipped everything else.

[shernandez]

On 4/6/2018 at 8:39 AM, SparklyUnicorn said:

 

The only struggle he has is coming up with what to write about.  And it does not matter if it is creative writing or not.  IEW has made that a bit better, but he is still under the impression he has to produce something profound.  For example, the past few days we have been working on outlining a short story.  He was very excited about changing it up to make it a bit different.  We brainstormed ideas, etc.  Then when he went to write he flipped out.  So after trying various things to help him along I just said write the story as if you are writing a letter to a friend about this event.  That got him going at least.  But even with non-fiction stuff requiring one to basically regurgitate the information, he flips.  Not sure what to do about that! 

He does well with grammar, punctuation, spelling, structuring sentences and paragraphs, etc. 

I would like him to practice writing more, and I want whatever we use to be mostly open and go.  Sometimes I spend so much time looking for the perfect story or resource that we might not get to writing because I haven't found anything.  Apparently the indecisiveness runs in the family!  Haha... 

I would be perfectly fine with not doing too much creative writing.  He has a love hate thing with it.  He loves the idea of it, but he hates having to actually do it because he gets stressed over not being able to be original and interesting. 

I teach 11th Grade ELA at the local PS, and my students always have the misconception that writing has to be grand. When we hit the narrative writing unit, I spend days convincing them that they do not have to write about this profound moment in thier lives. Anyway, I teach at PS very differently than I teach my kiddos at home, but I have found a book that has helped me become a better teacher in both places. It is by Penny Kittle and it is called Write Beside Them. It is a teacher text and shows how she teaches in PS, but I was able to alter several of the ideas and use them at home with my kiddos. I recommend it as a good read to help you, especially when it comes to how she helps students find topics to write about.

[rjand6more]

On 6/14/2018 at 12:31 AM, Lori D. said:

We tried twice to make it work, and only managed to make it useable with heavy tweaking. It just was not a good fit for either of our DSs: too formal and repetitive, dull writing assignment ideas, overly long examples of "good writing" and the unnecessary (for us) heavy focus on Grammar. And there were a number of typos -- kiss of death to me in a Writing program! (:D

We tried it, dropped it, tried it the following year, dropped it, and finally managed to use JUST the instructional/informational parts on the types of essays (narrative, process, compare/contrast, cause & effect, analogy, defending a position, character analysis) to learn about the different types of writing, made our own writing assignments for each of those essay types, and skipped everything else.

We had a similar situation.  My DS was already a strong writer with no lack of creativity.  We tried it, dropped it and tried it a few months later and dropped it for good.  I had super high hopes. I hate wasting money.

[LAR]

We had tremendous success with opententacademy.com and their powerful paragraphs class.  DD12 took this in 7th grade and will take middle school writing in the fall.   Ms Eva's classes may be full - I haven't looked lately. But OTA has a fantastic team of teachers, so it's worth checking out their lineup of classes.