Cover Story Curriculum

No, but Makayla has really enjoyed One Year Adventure Novel.

Here’s my two cents–my very humble opinion: It’s pretty meh. It’s a fun idea that didn’t deliver for us. It’s a basic writing program (not composition!) wrapped up in the fluff of an interesting, fun concept.

We used this in Jr. High as a fun elective. I was a writer/editor before I began homeschooling the kids. So I have a very specific idea of what I want/need in a writing program. I wasn’t concerned about teaching them to write essays and research papers–I have my own method to teach that, but I was mostly wanting to expose them to practice different types of writing they may not do in a school setting or even try at all, such as writing poetry. I thought this might be a fun way to do just that. When I opened it up, I almost didn’t use it, but since it was an elective, not the main writing instruction, I gave it a shot.

Cover Story covers all different types of writing, including poetry, and the whole point is that they’re basically putting together their own magazine–so stories, poems, nonfiction article, reviews (like a restaurant news article review–not Google review), etc. are included. The kids thought he was engaging and goofy, in a dad-joke sort of way, and they didn’t mind the assignments, as in, the assignments were simple, easy, straightforward, and didn’t take much time to complete.

I won’t reuse it for my younger ones. My older ones grew a bit bored with it because it isn’t very challenging. Thus, the structure of assignments feels repetitive and the video is sometimes forced. They enjoy writing, so this came off as an interesting concept that didn’t deliver. It is marketed to 1) avid storytellers and 2) reluctant writers. If you have avid storytellers and writing lovers as I do, this doesn’t give enough. You can teach them writing and give them opportunities for this type of writing yourself all day long. If you have a reluctant writer, the time spent watching the video might be just another objection to doing this course.

You can teach composition as well as this type of writing incrementally in a challenging, effective, and gentle way using less time than this, in my very humble opinion. I would most definitely not use this in high school. Again, my two cents!