Writing curriculum suggestions needed

[LEK]

Please help. I am needing a full writing curriculum (1 semester minimum, prefer full year) written to the student. We are needing to work on perfecting academic essays, research papers etc, creative writing not required. Must be secular.
 

Is there ANYTHING out there that meets the above criteria?

What I really need is a written to the student curriculum that teaches academic writing step by step, ideally starting from the perfect paragraph and ending with the perfect essay but anything that will teach essays thoroughly in a systematic way. Student is in 10th grade but a reluctant writer and needs some hand holding (but absolutely not from me lol, her rule).

[HomeAgain]

So it sounds like you either want Writing With Skill or Killgallon.  WWS is marketed to as young as middle school, but it's a perfectly good text for a high schooler who hasn't had the lessons yet.

[alisoncooks]

Have you looked at Essentials in Writing? My dd did level 10 last year (with the scoring service) and I think it’s pretty close to what you want. 
 

https://essentialsinwriting.com/level-10/

[royspeed]

3 hours ago, LEK said:

What I really need is a written to the student curriculum that teaches academic writing step by step, ideally starting from the perfect paragraph and ending with the perfect essay but anything that will teach essays thoroughly in a systematic way. Student is in 10th grade but a reluctant writer and needs some hand holding...

LEK:

Just a suggestion: Make certain the program you use provides model essays — readings of the kind of thing  your student is being asked to produce.

Good luck to you both!

[Farrar]

You could consider Help for High School from Brave Writer. It's written to the student and covers academic writing in a very introductory way. It's not a beginning to end program, but that would really be a lot to ask of a one semester writing program.

[Shelydon]

On 7/20/2022 at 8:20 AM, royspeed said:

LEK:

Just a suggestion: Make certain the program you use provides model essays — readings of the kind of thing  your student is being asked to produce.

Good luck to you both!

Do you have a suggestion as to where to find essays for students to read?

[Lori D.]

If you are able to ignore the occasional Christian reference, The Power in Your Hands fits all the rest of your list of needs.

Possibly the 9th or 10th grade level of Essentials in Writing -- here's the placement questionnaire. Video-based lessons directed to the student, plus the option of outsourcing grading/feedback with the additional $99 Scoring service.

JMO: Writing with Style is not usually a good fit for a reluctant writer, unless the student is a parts-to-whole type of learner who does well with traditional formal/structured curricula.

If you can outsource, then you might look at the Essay Basics series of 8-week classes from Lantern English.
 

On 7/20/2022 at 2:41 AM, LEK said:

...Student is in 10th grade but a reluctant writer and needs some hand holding (but absolutely not from me lol, her rule).

Just my experience from having a struggling writer and an average writer who disliked writing, plus my experience of teaching Lit. & Writing to high schoolers at my local homeschool co-op -- reluctant writers really do best with 1-on-1 mentoring. Since she won't do it with you, I would strongly recommend outsourcing, either with an online class, or with tutoring (in person, or via Zoom or other online face-to-face real time interaction).

BEST of luck in finding what works best! Warmest regards, Lori D.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Lori D.

[royspeed]

13 hours ago, Shelydon said:

Do you have a suggestion as to where to find essays for students to read?

Shelydon:

I'm happy to share places where I go essay-hunting, and the best place to start is here:

• Arts & Letters Daily — This is a compendium of essays & articles culled from all over the web. It's sponsored by the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the only downside is that it's weighted more toward the humanities than toward technology & science. (I think it's important to show our students models of great science writing, and I abhor our English classes' over-emphasis on essays of literary analysis.)

This one site, Arts & Letters Daily, provides a lot:

• new articles & essays — Notice the three columns across the top of the homepage: Articles of Note; New Books; Essays & Opinions. — Important to note: The heading of each column is itself a link to a dedicated page, with articles and essays going back more than two years (under each heading, that's forty webpages worth of links). — Those three columns are as follows:
  Articles of Note :  This is the column where the editors of the A&L Daily post writings on issues currently in the news, but I often find it's the best part of the site for finding discussions of science & technology.
  New Books :  Mainly links to book reviews, but don't be fooled: in many publications, e.g., The New York Review of Books, reviews of new books are treated as the occasion for expansive essays on the topic at hand — and sometimes those essays are awesome.
  Essays & Opinions : The place where you will find more traditional essays.
   
• links to sites that publish essays — On the A&L Daily homepage, look at the column on the far left, and scroll down to the heading "Magazines"; what you'll see is a long list of publications that specialize, among other things, in essays. The column of titles runs like this:
  Aeon
  American Conservative
  American Interest
  American Journal Rev
  American Prospect
  American Review
  American Scholar
  American Scientist
  American Spectator
  Arion
  Armed Forces Journal
  Art News
  Artforum
  Atlantic Monthly
  Atlas Obscura
  Big Questions
  Boston Globe Ideas
  Boston Review
  Cabinet
  Chronicle Review
  City Journal
  Columbia Journal Rev
  Commentary ...
  — where each of these titles is a live link to that publication's homepage. You'll notice that in the above list, we're only part-way through the letter "C".

A few caveats:

• I have no quick fix for you. I've been essay-hunting for more than a decade, so I have culled great essays — great models for students — only through years of reading hundreds and hundreds of essays in dozens and dozens of places.
• Some sites are free, but to get access to great writing, I've often had to purchase subscriptions.

Other places for finding great non-fiction prose. In addition to hunting in such publications, I've also collected excerpts from great non-fiction books — history, science, journalism, memoirs, and more.

Hope this helps, Shelydon.

[Shelydon]

On 7/23/2022 at 12:48 PM, royspeed said:

Shelydon:

I'm happy to share places where I go essay-hunting, and the best place to start is here:

• Arts & Letters Daily — This is a compendium of essays & articles culled from all over the web. It's sponsored by the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the only downside is that it's weighted more toward the humanities than toward technology & science. (I think it's important to show our students models of great science writing, and I abhor our English classes' over-emphasis on essays of literary analysis.)

This one site, Arts & Letters Daily, provides a lot:

• new articles & essays — Notice the three columns across the top of the homepage: Articles of Note; New Books; Essays & Opinions. — Important to note: The heading of each column is itself a link to a dedicated page, with articles and essays going back more than two years (under each heading, that's forty webpages worth of links). — Those three columns are as follows:
  Articles of Note :  This is the column where the editors of the A&L Daily post writings on issues currently in the news, but I often find it's the best part of the site for finding discussions of science & technology.
  New Books :  Mainly links to book reviews, but don't be fooled: in many publications, e.g., The New York Review of Books, reviews of new books are treated as the occasion for expansive essays on the topic at hand — and sometimes those essays are awesome.
  Essays & Opinions : The place where you will find more traditional essays.
   
• links to sites that publish essays — On the A&L Daily homepage, look at the column on the far left, and scroll down to the heading "Magazines"; what you'll see is a long list of publications that specialize, among other things, in essays. The column of titles runs like this:
  Aeon
  American Conservative
  American Interest
  American Journal Rev
  American Prospect
  American Review
  American Scholar
  American Scientist
  American Spectator
  Arion
  Armed Forces Journal
  Art News
  Artforum
  Atlantic Monthly
  Atlas Obscura
  Big Questions
  Boston Globe Ideas
  Boston Review
  Cabinet
  Chronicle Review
  City Journal
  Columbia Journal Rev
  Commentary ...
  — where each of these titles is a live link to that publication's homepage. You'll notice that in the above list, we're only part-way through the letter "C".

A few caveats:

• I have no quick fix for you. I've been essay-hunting for more than a decade, so I have culled great essays — great models for students — only through years of reading hundreds and hundreds of essays in dozens and dozens of places.
• Some sites are free, but to get access to great writing, I've often had to purchase subscriptions.

Other places for finding great non-fiction prose. In addition to hunting in such publications, I've also collected excerpts from great non-fiction books — history, science, journalism, memoirs, and more.

Hope this helps, Shelydon.

Thank you for this!  I am pulling a few essays this week for my students to read and ponder.