Schoolhouse Review ~ Create Better Writers

Language Arts is one of my favorite subjects to teach and I’m always on the look out for good material.  So when I had the opportunity to review three ebook products from Create Better Writers, I was so excited!  The ebooks I was given are The Homeschool Writing Action Plan, How To Teach a Paragraph and How To Teach the Five Paragraph Essay.

The Homeschool Writing Action Plan is a road map for teaching writing from grade 3 to 12.  Part 1 is The Writing Action Plan Summery.  In this section they give you an overview of the core steps of the writing action plan.  This helps you know where you should be and where you’re heading in your goals.

Part 2 is the Pacing Guide, here they provide a sample schedule to help you decide how much time to spend on each activity.

Part 3 is The Road Map, this section helps you to reinforce the writing concepts that have been previously thought. It also provides sample worksheets and lesson plans.

This book is a road map that you can use on your own or with their writing programs.  It gives you suggested time frames for how long a child should stay on a concept.  In the Elementary grades it is about 2 to 3 months, in the Middle and High School grades it’s a week 2.  The Homeschool Writing action Plan gives a good overview of what needs to be taught in each grade.  It does not however provide a step by step process for that.  You will need your own writing program or the one suggested by them.

How to Teach a Paragraph is 22 pages long and shares 11 steps for good paragraph writing.
Part 1.  The Basics takes the student through the first 6 steps, teaching 5 parts of a good paragraph and then practice writing a paragraph.  Steps include, learning and memorizing the 5 parts of a good paragraph, how to set up a paper and prewriting & writing a paragraph.
Part 2.  Improving the Parts of a Paragraph, this section has your child work on topic sentences, closing sentences and how to assess a paragraph.

How To Teach The Paragraph is a wonderful and easy to use book to teach writing.  It is full of tips on how to teach children to write.  We used the How To Teach a Paragraph and really enjoyed this one!  My main focus was to work with my oldest daughter, who really struggles to get her thoughts down on paper.  She enjoyed this program and I’ve seen improvement in her writing since we started using it.  Closing sentences are still tricky and we will need to work on that a bit further.  Once we have mastered this, I’m really looking forward to using How To Teach the Five Paragraph Essay.

I haven’t found anything about the program that I dislike, however if your children don’t enjoy repetition this program might not be a good fit.

 

These books are available from Create Better Writers website.
The Homeschool Writing Action Plan ebook is $15.95, for a print copy $19.95
How To Teach a Paragraph ebook is $7.99, free with the purchase of How To Teach the Five Paragraph Essay or The Complete Writing Program.
How To Teach the Five Paragraph Essay ebook is $17.99, for a print copy $19.95.  This  is free with the purchase of The Complete Writing Program.

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