Daughter hates Writing Strands – what else is out there?

DD17 is currently in her junior year of high school.  She is somewhat dyslexic, which we are going to be working on through a neurodevelopmental program.  Writing well has always been a challenge for her.  She is doing fairly well with grammar, but composition has been difficult.

We started off this year with Writing Strands level 5, and I was hoping to get through both levels 5 & 6 this year.  The pace (3 times a week) does not seem to bother her, but she does not like the Writing Strands book at all.  I decided to use it because we already had the books from my older daughter (who did not like it either) and because it seemed to be well-recommended by those who had used it.

Her complaints are things like “it sounds like it was written by a two-year old,” and “it’s confusing,” and “they give you an example and then ask you to write the same thing in your own way.”  For example, chapter 2 gives a story about how an old, homeless man lost his bridge because it was torn down.  They then ask the student to write their own version of the man losing his bridge.  She said to me, “How am I supposed to write something different about that?  I don’t know what else to write about it.”  It is clearly not working for her.  I offered to go through it with her instead of having her read through it herself and then discuss the assignment with her, but she keeps going back to the issue of not liking the book.

Is there anything else to teach writing skills that would be simple and straightforward, suitable for a struggling writer, and not horribly time-intensive (especially for me)?  I just cannot give her topics to write on and then simply correct errors.  Her writing is not always fluent, she tends to use rather basic vocabulary, and the way she constructs paragraphs is really below her age level.  Written narrations have not gone well for her over the past several years.

I really want her to be able to write more confidently.  She has a lot to say if you ask her about organic farming, GMO’s, or poultry.  She simply has a hard time writing appropriately on a variety of topics when asked to write something specific.