Need Help Choosing Among the
Home School Writing Curriculum Options?

Finding the best home school writing curriculum for your child can be a daunting task when there are so many options out there. How can you make sense of them all? Some home school curriculum options are very structured, others not; some emphasize lots of writing, others less. Some approach writing in a methodical approach, other curriculums in a more organic way. Confused yet?

Let’s take a look at some of the popular home school writing curriculum approaches. This list is by no means exhaustive, but I have tried to choose a representative sample of home school writing curriculum possibilities that you could compare to each other and any other ones you are considering, to see which you prefer. I have not personally used all of these, but I will pass on the information I have learned so far.

Sonlight Home School Writing Curriculum

Sonlight's home school writing curriculum derives much of its approach from Charlotte Mason and Ruth Beechick. They offer a really well-planned out Instructor's Guide that you can either follow day by day or use as a base to come back to. There are dictation passages that relate to the readings, discussion, and narration questions. There are also numerous writing projects of various formats (poetry, persuasive essay, etc.), along with a new Grammar Ace program. This is definitely on my wish list for this year!

Brave Writer Home School Writing Curriculum

Brave Writer has become a favorite of our family’s over the past few years. Julie Bogart, author of The Writer's Jungle and the owner of the Brave Writer website, says:

My goal [is] to enhance the mother-child relationship through the teaching of writing rather than the usual weeping and gnashing of teeth that accompanies so many writing programs.

Sound promising?

One of many things I appreciate about Julie’s materials is that she approaches writing as – fancy this -- a writer. As a professional writer, editor, writing coach and homeschooling mom herself, she melds those worlds together and offers numerous tools to help you guide your child to find his writing voice and to write well.

I sometimes describe the Brave Writer approach as starting from the inside out, beginning from what your child already knows (even though it may not be “academic”) and helping him learn to express himself about that. Through starting with what your child already has experience with or opinions about, and learning to express himself through that topic, your child develops the skills he will use later on with more academic assignments.

Kids are tremendously interesting people, even the ones who write poorly. My goal is to help you do your job—to draw out the mind life of your child so that you can capture those precious thoughts in writing. What's on paper ought to be a fair and insightful representation of all that goes on in your kids' busy heads. And when it is, you and your young writers will love the results…. That, in a nutshell, is why Brave Writer exists.Once kids realize that paper is a safe place for thought exploration, they can learn how to craft their writing into satisfying finished products that use all kinds of writing devices. Writing becomes a safe playground instead of an intimidating foreign country. Brave Writer works through all the steps from thought-origination to published work of writing. From Brave Writer's Welcome

You can browse the Brave Writer site or Julie's blog for more information on her approach to home school writing curriculum.

The Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) is a very popular home school writing curriculum. Based on the Classical Model of education, this approach to writing is more structured than Brave Writer. It’s assignments help to develop skills which are stepping stones for later creativity and expression of original ideas. One excerpt from their website is:

One of the fundamental ideas of the Classical Model is the emphasis on skills development as a prerequisite for creativity and expression. Many writing programs are set up first to help a child figure out what to write in order to be able to practice writing. With our syllabus, we separate the problems of "what to write" and "how to write." Young children do not have a wealth of experience and knowledge to draw upon when writing. In fact, it's a little absurd to ask them to write about their thoughts or feelings until they have practiced and are comfortable with the basic activity of putting sentences on paper. Therefore, in providing them with the content (what to write), in demonstrating a specific model to follow, and in giving them a concrete checklist of a variety of grammatical constructs and techniques to use in each paragraph, we can teach them to develop a high level of skill and confidence with writing. Because the classical model also encourages ability development by repetition, our approach of using everything learned so far in every paragraph written provides that repetition and allows even the most remedial student to produce a decent composition again and again with increasing independence. From Excellence in Writing Home School Writing Curriculum's FAQs

So while Brave Writer and IEW both separate out the “what to write” from the “how to write,” you can see from the above excerpts that the starting points are quite different. IEW uses checklists and skill-building exercises, whereas Brave Writer uses a more organic approach to its exercises.

IEW does not list specific lesson plans for its home school writing curriculum, so it allows you to tailor your child’s writing to other topics you want your child to write about (like history or literature).

I am impressed with the IEW materials I have seen, but I have yet to incorporate them daily in our home school. I think I need a bit more structure in how to implement it for our home school writing curriculum.

WriteShop Home School Writing Curriculum

WriteShop, like IEW, is an incremental writing program, although unlike IEW, it is only geared for middle and high school students (although on their website they do offer ideas and materials for younger students). Like IEW, it helps your child improve his or her sentence structure, provides checklists to help editing, and makes sure that skills that are learned are practiced over again for your child to remember and become more comfortable using. It also includes specific writing suggestions (for example, an exercise to describe a person).

Probably the biggest difference I can discern between WriteShop and IEW is that IEW offers less structure in implementing the skills learned, but more flexibility to apply what your child is learning to whatever you want to tailor it to. So, if you want to write your own lesson plans or know already how you want to apply the exercises, then IEW is probably a great choice for you. IEW’s materials (like their checklists) are easy to adapt to a variety of writing settings, whereas WriteShop’s checklists are specific to a specific writing skill.

If, on the other hand, you prefer to have schedule already ready to implement on Monday morning, lesson plans to give your child direction of what to do, and student instructions, you probably would feel more comfortable with WriteShop. That being said, however, WriteShop still allows great leeway in choice (for instance, allowing the student to pick which item he wants to describe if the assignment is to describe an object). WriteShop comes in two levels, and they recommend Wordsmith Apprentice for students younger than 6th grade.

Price and format (workbooks or CDs) are also different so you’ll want to check out their websites for further information.

Writing Strands

Writing Strands is another popular writing curriculum that has won several awards. It is an incremental approach, comes in seven levels, and offers very specific topics to work through to learn skills. Each day’s activity (prewriting, revising, etc.) is suggested and mapped out for each assignment. The books are written to the student, so your child can easily know what to do for writing if you aren’t available. Naturally, you will still need to work with him on editing his work, though.

Some people have found that there isn’t enough review of the skills that are learned over time. Others have found that the prefer to pick and choose topics from the lessons.

Write Source

Although Write Source writing handbooks are not a writing curriculum, our kids love them so much I do want to put a plug in for them. There are several levels and they have all sorts of writing helps – from examples of how to write a play or a persuasive essay, to tricky grammar points to remember. All sorts of useful information in a variety of levels.

• Review of IEW and Writing Strands

• Cathy Duffy's review of Writing Strands

• Comparison of IEW and WriteShop

Remember in all of this, though, that you don’t have to use the same curriculum for all the years that you will home school. Using a variety of approaches over the years can enrich your child’s experience and give them a broader understanding of the writing process. Many writing programs are only designed to cover a short season of your child’s writing, anyway. So rather than see choosing a writing curriculum as an “either/or” proposition, or “which one is best?” a better question really is, what does my child need now?

I hope the above information has been helpful for you. If you have any comments, please feel free to drop me a line though our Contact Us form.

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