Writing Strands 3

Found this boring and painful and I am the teacher. Worse for the child.

I just started using this with my 7th grader. He was struggling with another writing program and it wasn't working. So far he likes Writing Strands and doesn't complain anymore when it's time to do his writing (and neither do I). So far, so good.

We have been using this with our 9 year old and our 12 year old. It has been working well for both of them. It is easy, concise and enjoyable for both.

I wish I had known there was an instructors book that went along with this series We used this book for our 9 year old and 12 year old We used it about 2 months before switching to something else We liked the tone of the author We just weren't sure of what was being asked Lessons were short but it felt like we spent forever on the same thing The kids kept asking "when do we move on?" We used this book because so many of our friends had used it and loved it This is one you'll want to read thru or look at first hand before purchasing If you like it Get the Teacher's ManualNote: we believe she is referring to #20436 - Evaluating Writing

Using Writing Strands 3 last year was fun straightforward and challenging I think for both teachers and students writing is one of the subjects that is a bit abstract and hard to tackle Using this program (Writing Strands along with Evaluating Writing for the teacher)relieved us of that feeling We learned to enjoy the writing process Even the mistakes were exciting after some time had gone by and we could look back and see the progressWriting Strands is intended to be a stand alone writing grammar and spelling program It expresses the idea that grammar and spelling are best retained when taught in application rather than as an abstract subject The reusable textbook is divided into fourteen lessons which are ideally alternated with a reading/literature program making a full year of study The lessons are broken down into small daily assignments that are easily done At the beginning of a lesson the student is given the overall goal but the daily assignments themselves are very doable and keep out writers block The students cover four basic writing techniques; creation by writing stories and learning to make characters; basic writing structure such as following directions controlling sentence and paragraph structure; description of places or peoples;and organization of thought By the end of the year the student will have done character sketches learned basic paragraph set-up written narrations of feelings kept a detailed and organized journal learned spacial description experimented with writing short stories and dabbled with describing animation in conversation among other things Though this program is meant to be used in place of a traditional language arts curriculum we used it as a supplement and found it very enjoyable The lessons are ready made and can be taught or self-taught as is suggested without advance preparation The teachers manual is optional but it makes the job easier if you don't trust your own writing It is intended for all the grade levels One of qualities that stood out to me is the sense of pride of authorship that DAVE MARKS gives the student in his composition At the end of each lesson the student is asked to evaluate his work by choosing the best sentence he wrote that week The student is also asked to find a mistake he made that he will try not to make again Some students don't particularly care for the palish type of language used throughout but others say it makes the task seem easier It isn't over done We particularly made use of the suggestions for inspiring young writers on the introduction page My daughter loved publishing her work for the whole extended family There is a strong message throughout the text that writing is a non-competitive skill that each style is unique and gives a peak at how someone else thinks and feels Since I had two different age and grade kids going through the program it was fun to see how different the products of the same tasks were We all agreed that it'd been enjoyable and we plan to use Writing Strands 4 this year