Best resources for learning to write paragraphs, essays, and reports

[tld]

I need the following suggestions from you all for my rising 7th grader.  He's not completely clueless on some if this.  We did Essentials in Writing 6 last year, which covered these things, but he still has a ways to go.  So I need (and they can all be separate resources):

-Best resource for learning to write paragraphs

-Best resource for learning to write essays

-Best resource for writing reports

 

[Momto6inIN]

"Best" probably depends on your DS's learning style and your teaching style. We've had success with both the Wordsmith series and IEW. Wordsmith worked best for my intuitively organized writers, and IEW worked best for my kids who need help with organization. I personally liked IEW best as a teacher because although I am a decent writer myself, I needed hand holding to know how to communicate how to do what I did intuitively to my kids who did not write well easily.

Wordsmith has 3 levels - your 7th grader is probably beyond the Apprentice (1st book) and would probably do well with the Creative Writing book (2nd book) and the Craftsman book (3rd book) after that. I was pretty much just able to hand my kids the books and let them go at it with just input from me during the editing process.

IEW requires a much bigger time investment as a teacher (and also $$$).

[Lori D.]

GAH!

If ONLY I could have found "the best" writing programs for my own DSs, and now for my co-op classes... Totally agreeing with Momto6inIN -- it is totally going to depend on what clicks for the individual student. I've run Lit. & Writing co-op classes for 6 years now, and every single student has had different strengths/weaknesses and needs, and there is NO ONE program that I can teach to all -- I have a shelf full of programs and resources and pull bits and pieces from each.

The main things I have learned over these years of teaching writing:
1. teach students the parts (and sentence order) of a paragraph
2. practice by writing lots of 1-paragraph assignments of different types (comparison, analysis, process ("how to"), argumentative, etc.)
3. then show how a multi-paragraph or multi-page assignment is just the 1 paragraph expanded in to multiple paragraphs
4. stress that a finished paper is a multi-step *process* (brainstorm, organize, rough draft, revise (add/remove, move parts), revise again, proof-edit
5. and most important of all -- teach and practice how to THINK and how to build a logical supported argument

Ideas:

Wordsmith (2nd of the 3 Wordsmith programs)
Focuses on paragraph writing and leads into essay writing. Covers writing paragraphs in all 4 types of writing (descriptive, narrative, expository, persuasive), and is very independent, but not a lot of depth or help for the student if they don't "click" with writing. (Wordsmith Apprentice (program 1) is the more creative writing-based program, with a "cub reporter" theme of writing through the different departments of a newspaper -- if your student is already writing complete paragraphs and multi-paragraph papers, he is beyond this one. Wordsmith Craftsman (program 3) is based on essay writing for high school; we found it too scattered and disjointed to be helpful.)

Jump In (gr. 6-9)
Also independent, but is more in-depth than Wordsmith, and teaches students how to think of what to write about and how to structure their writing. Focus is multi-paragraph writing (5-paragraph essays). Some people have said the scheduling is too scattered for them -- it is scheduled to take 2 years, but that is because after each unit you take 4 weeks to do "free writes". We skipped the free writes as the prompts were repetitive, boring, and "lame" (according to DS), and completed it in 1 year, and We took 1 year, and instead did timed essays from past SAT prompts (we slowly built up over 2 years from 1 paragraph/10 minutes, to the full 25 minutes and multi-paragraph essay).

Other programs to consider:

general
Daily 6-Trait Writing (gr. 7-8) -- Evan-Moor
Twisting Arms: Teaching Students How to Write to Persuade (di Prince) -- how to think / build an argument
Writing Skills: level 2 and/or level 3 (Hanbury-King)

paragraph writing
4-Square Writing Method (gr. 7-9) -- or version with "enhanced CD"
How to Write a Paragraph (gr. 6-8) -- Teacher Created Materials
Paragraphs for Middle School: A Sentence Composing Approach (Killgallon)

essay writing
Mastering the 5-Paragraph Essay (Van Zile) -- written to a teacher/classroom so you have to adapt, and not tons of detail, but some solid material
How to Write an Essay (gr. 6-8) -- Teacher Created Materials

for high school, or possibly a strong writer in grade 8:
- Lively Art of Writing + matching work pages created by WTMers
- Elegant Essay
- Windows to the World -- units on how to write a literary analysis essay, plus units on annotation and then how to use your annotations as support in a literary analysis essay 
- Mastering Short Response Writing: Claim It! Cite It! Cement It!
- Writing with a Thesis (Skwire) -- older editions are super cheap; a dense, college-level text

For research papers with citations... you might wait until high school, and right now in grades 7-8, work on nailing down solid writing habits, solid paragraphs, and solid multi-paragraph essays and reader responses. Most of the research writing programs I've seen are for high school levels, and for students who can already write multi-page papers.

Edited July 18, 2019 by Lori D.

[tld]

Thankyou to both of you so far!  Just what I was looking for!  I'd still like to hear from others on this too. 

[hollyhock2]

Completely agreeing that the "best" will totally depend on you and your student. There is no best across the board for everyone. 🙂

As far as reports and paragraphs go, I really like the instruction in Rod & Staff English. We use it for grammar up to about 7th grade anyway, so it was easy to pull from the writing lessons. They make everything clear and simple.

We always do narration and outlining on the side, too, so for essays, my favourite book is Know and Tell by Karen Glass. It teaches how to transition from narrations to essays. If you don't use narration, it might not be that helpful for you. Another essay resource I really like is Writing to the Point by William Kerrigan.

[Ausmumof3]

IEW has been good for us.  We still have a way to go but it’s a good way of learning the structure. 

[CAtoVA]

We've been using a mixture of IEW and Writing with Style. IEW is great for paragraph writing including introducing and cementing structure, word choice, sentence variety, etc., in my opinion.

For my DS (now rising 10th) we also did an online course with Open Tent Academy  last year when he was in 9th grade. It was a mixture of IEW B & C and The Elegant Essay without calling it those things. He had to write five paragraph essays in various formats: narrative, informative/expository, persuasive, etc. That class was for students who already had mastered paragraph writing but they also have more beginner type of classes.

I second the idea of waiting until your child is older to master "true" report writing (i.e., citations, etc.) You can have him write longer "super essays" as he gets more proficient but this is mostly adding on body paragraphs beyond the typical three.

Edited July 31, 2019 by CAtoVA

[BlsdMama]

I like IEW - and especially after doing something like the SWI, it's easy to pick up one of the history based writing programs to supplement the history program or one of the interest led themed books.  It has to be the least painful way to teach writing.  Now, once they feel as though they've truly grasped form in essays, I think there is great value in Elegant Essay.