Jump In or Cover Story for 7th grade writing?

[caedmyn]

I'm trying to decide what writing program to use for my DD next year for 7th grade.  I have Jump In and was planning on using it but I just heard about Cover Story and it looks good, too.  She's a bit of a reluctant writer and prefers not to write at all if she has the choice.  Right now she writes one written narration a week which takes her a looong time (mostly because she's trying to think of ways to make it as short as possible) and one paper on any topic she chooses once a week.  Both are usually 2 paragraphs of 3-4 sentences each.  I need something that's mostly independent and not too time-consuming.

[Perogie]

I've not used Jump In so unfortunately I can't do a direct comparison.  But we use and love Cover Story.  The DVD is great and the concept is very engaging.  The writer gets to choose the topic on which they'll write (one dd chose swimming, one chose foster care) and then spends the year learning a variety of writing styles.  My older dd is an avid writer but my next is more reluctant.  They have both loved it.  Older dd did a more thorough job but nonetheless it is working well for younger dd and getting her writing more than other programs we've used.

[PeterPan]

I really liked the writing prompts in the Jump In tm. I put them in page protectors and used them through a year for my dd, great stuff. You might also look at WWS. It sounds like what she needs, sigh. With my dd, I went through it and highlighted what I wanted to make sure she caught. It's overly wordy, but the analysis is AWESOME. Once you have her set up, it's basically independent for the week because it's all there. It really pushed the envelope for my dd. My dd did that hyper-condensing, and it was because she was bored. She didn't want to do the task. Even with WWS, there's really an issue of lack of audience. However the content was there, didn't have to generate that, and it challenged her on the SKILLS and really made her think. She had to be alone to work on it, and she needed to use graphic organizer software sometimes. 

You know the other thing that really helped my dd at that same age was doing metronome work. It was free and we used Heathermomster's instructions. You can google for them. She went from very resistant to doing writing contests and fan fiction online, I kid you not, when we did the metronome work. I think it's because it was all the brain skills of writing wrapped up into one exercise to make it easier. So we were motor planning with our hands, dealing with distractions (son running around, tv or radio on, me talking at her, etc.), using our EF (keeping time with the metronome) and using our language (her replying to me). Once she could do the basic motions, I started adding in digit spans. Like I said it resulted in a huge leap and was free. People will also say there's a growth spurt at this age. I think it was both, sure, but the metronome work was what we were doing when she blossomed.

[GeoKitty]

My kids loved Cover Story.... it is scheduled for something like three times a week for 24- weeks.  We did find it to be more time consuming then we thought it would be. But that was mostly because of what/ how much my kids chose to write for each assignment. We took most of the year to finish it. My friends IRL who have used it did not finish in one year. But that is all time management and choices.