The Write Foundation
Basic Structured Creative Formal
The Write Foundation was started by Rebecca Celsor after 8 years of teaching writing to home school students in a Co-Op setting as well as her own children. There are 3 levels to the program: Sentence to Paragraph, Paragraph and Essay. I will be reviewing Level 2: Paragraph Writing. This level is recommended for students between 12 and 15 years old.
Program Overview:
This program is called a “grab and go” curriculum. This means that with the teachers manual and the worksheets, very little preparation is needed by the teacher. As with all programs, more time is needed for the first few lessons than for the later ones.
When you order this writing program it has 3 parts that it comes with. The first is a spiral bound teacher book. Next are the student worksheets. Finally there is a CD with additional resources. You supply the student binder for making a tabbed notebook and the highlighters needed as well for the program. Also supplied by the parent is a Mind Bender ® book published by The Critical Thinking Co., if desired.
Paragraph writing from The Write Foundation teaches writing in a structured format. There are specific instructions as to how to outline and highlight the outline for clarity. These processes are very important to the program and the teacher is instructed to not skip any part as the repetition is a learning tool. Poetry is also taught throughout the program.
Likes:
From Sarah:
From Mom:
There were some features of this program that I really liked. I liked that organization was a priority, both in the writing and in keeping all the pages together. The Paragraph Writing Checklist and the No List. made grading the paragraphs easier. Sentence structure was taught in an easy, natural way. We learned about adjectives and adverbs, descriptive verbs, and so on, then Sarah was required to use these skills in the homework paragraphs.Only one concept was introduced in a lesson, so nothing was overwhelming.
In the instructions I (as the teacher) was told that the student (Sarah) should type all work, give a word count, circle or underline various parts of speech and highlight each paragraph as discussed. Having these specific instructions to tell Sarah was good in that it was not just me coming up arbitrarily with new requirements.
Each lesson was presented in a very orderly fashion. The student worksheet pages were easy to fill out. The format is provided you just fill in the blanks and highlight.
I was a bit leery of teaching the poetry portion, but was pleasantly surprised. The poetry generally goes along with a sentence structure theme from the lesson and is fun and not at all intimidating. I noticed that Sarah put great effort into each poem she was assigned. I think her absolute favorite were the Alliteration tongue twisters. (Henrietta the heroine hamster ate hot ham in her house hence her humongous head.)
Dislikes:
The main dislike I had with the program was: the instructions were not always clear to me. By this I mean, I did not always understand from the teacher instructions exactly when I was supposed to help fill out a worksheet and when Sarah was to fill it out on her own. Some lessons proceeded along just fine and others I became confused. The instructions are written as if this were a co-op class. This took some getting used to for me and I had to do some tweaking as I only have one student. The first lesson took us over 2 hours, but the next lesson went a little better. I found that some lessons we could do in one sitting of about an hour, but others I had to break up over 2 days.
Recommendation:
In writing this review, I kept asking myself, “Would I recommend this program?”. The answer is YES, with a disclaimer. The disclaimer is: expect to be a little confused with the teacher instructions at times, so keep this in mind if you tend to get frustrated easily. That being said, Sarah has written better paragraphs in the 7 weeks that we have been following the program. She has also absolutely loved the poetry. She is so excited about the poetry, she usually shows it to me or her dad well before it is due. We will be continuing the rest of the 15 lessons and will probably order the next 15.
Cost and Ordering information:
All levels of this curriculum are available from The Write Foundation.
Paragraph Writing Curriculum is available in 3 different packages:
Curriculum Package 1: Paragraph Complete Lessons 1-30 $100 + tax/shipping.
Spiral Instruction Manual Lessons 1 – 15 & Lessons 16 – 30
Student Worksheets Full Set Lessons 1 – 30
Paragraph Additional Resources CD
Curriculum Package 2: Paragraph Lessons 1-15 $65 + tax/shipping.
Spiral Instruction Manual Lessons 1 – 15
Student Worksheets Lessons 1 – 15
Paragraph Additional Resources CD
Curriculum Package 3: Paragraph Lessons 16-30 $65 + tax/shipping.
Spiral Instruction Manual Lessons 16 – 30
Student Worksheets Lessons 16 – 30
Paragraph Additional Resources CD
I reviewed Level 2: Paragraph Writing Curriculum. Also available is Level 1: Sentence to Paragraph Writing and Level 3: Essay Writing
Read reviews on all the different levels of The Write Foundation by visiting the TOS Crew Blog.
As an Independent contractor for The Old Schoolhouse and member of TOS Homeschool Crew I received the The Write Foundation: Paragraph Writing Curriculum Lessons 1-15 for free in exchange for my honest review of their product.
