Switching from Writing Strands 5 to WWS - what level?

[a5hley]

My daughter has been working through the original Writing Strands series for the past few years but, to be honest, I don't feel confident about her ability to write an academic paper at this point (8th grade). She just finished level 5 and she can write fiction wonderfully. For next year, I'd like to switch to WWS. Does anyone have experience with this? I'm wondering whether it's necessary to start at level 1 or if we can start at one of the higher levels.

[aaplank]

I would definitely suggest starting at Level 1.  My kids were pretty strong writers and I started them at Level 1 when they were in 7th and 8th grade.  It starts off easy, we often did 2 lessons per day, but then it got increasingly more challenging.  The lessons build on each other so I think it's helpful to start at the beginning. They have learned so much and I feel that it has prepared them well for all types of academic writing.

[a5hley]

Thank you 🙂

[PeterPan]

I did WWS1 with my dd in 8th, but we did it compacted and at a much faster pace, allowing us to bring in some other writing tasks as well. We let the end of the year project for WWS1 be a NHD=National History Day project. Good stuff, highly recommend!

[Miss Tick]

Also, WWS has the student build a reference section in the writing notebook, so it is nice to have been through the exercises so they have some background for the different topoi.