Expository Writing II at WTM Academy with Amy Samuelson - Feedback, please!

[Monica_B]

Hi everyone,

We have signed our son up for Expository Writing II with Amy Samuelson. He is in going into 8th grade this fall and needs a lot of help with his writing. I did see the pre-req of having completed Writing with Skill Level 1, and we are working our way through that, currently. I believe we are doing Week 13 this week so even working through most of the summer (which we plan to do), he won't finish the whole book.

I have a couple of questions:

1) Has anyone's kid taken Expository Writing II, or has experience with Amy Samuelson as a teacher? This will be our first time using the WTM Academy so we are unsure of what to expect. Our main goal this coming year for our son is to get his writing up to speed in order to prepare him for the rigors of high school level writing.

2) Will it be OK if we do not complete the Writing with Skill Level 1 book before the class begins?

Any advice or suggestions would be very appreciated. Thanks so much!

[SoCal_Bear]

I can tell you that my son did EW1 last year, and they did not do every writing assignment in the book. They did go over the tools and techniques during their class time and exercises like practicing the outling, etc. I can tell you which writing assignments were skipped below if that would help you save time from where you are today. 

13, 14, 17, 19, 22, 26, 33

The last 3 weeks of class were devoted to helping the students write their final paper which is covered in ch. 35-36 which basically incorporates the skills that were taught through the program so you can save time here if you don't have him do a final paper. I hesitate to tell you to not cover the skills...perhaps try to at least get through the Part V as you really need to have these skills in place. I do think if you skip the writing assignments I listed above that you may very well be able to finish. Look through the chapters I listed for these skipped assignments to check to see if there is anything new he needs to learn or something he needs more practice doing. If you can, try to get to the Poetry section Part VI, this was challenging and perhaps the hardest for my son who does not have a literary bent and zero appreciation for poetry. Learning to read and understand the use of symbolism, metaphors, alliteration, meter, etc. in poetry wasn't something he would naturally ever intuit. However, it gave him enough for what he needed to know in this area. 

I am assuming that the actual writing assignments is where your son probably spending the bulk of his time so hopefully knowing which ones you can skip over and still be in line with the rest of his cohort in the fall helps you.

[Monica_B]

This helps a great deal. It's good to know that we can skip over some chapters if we are pressed for time. I really appreciate you taking the time to list out the chapters! Thank you so much.