Writing?!?!?

I think you should try Jump In by  Sharon Watson. Check the samples to make sure your oldest wouldn’t find it too juvenile. It’s directed towards middle school age but it sounds like your oldest would benefit from its instruction.

We are using the high school version with my daughter this year and it is going well. It’s titled The Power In Your Hands. It isn’t dry and it is broken down into quite doable lessons. Jump In is broken down even more. You could use it with both boys and move your 15 year old on to The Power In Your Hands next year. That will still give him plenty of time to cover all the forms of writing needed for college as TPIYH can be scheduled over one or 2 years depending on your preference. Either way, he will be done with it in plenty of time.

Please take a look at Michael Clay Thompson’s Language Arts

https://www.rfwp.com/pages/michael-clay-thompson/

my only downside is that it is pricey, but I will tell you how I teach it and then I just need the teacher’s books.

My son age 11 has dyslexia and was completely lost in language arts. He would do the worksheets and I couldn’t read them. He wouldn’t get it and would need me to help him through most every bit. I tried 5 different types of curriculums and nothing clicked until this one. This program was actually written for gifted and talented kids, go figure. LOL

Anyway, the grammar book reads almost like a story, which I read to the kids. I have a document camera and a dongle.. This allows me to project the book onto my tv screen and so I read it while they follow along. It looks almost like a child’s book the print is so big and not much there and yet with the visuals, it makes it click. Anyway, this book should be used everyday for about a 4-6 weeks. Mainly just read and discuss and there are a few practice things that I just cover up the answers and have them do them orally.  By the time you are done with this book, they should be able to distinguish all 8 parts of speech, parts of a a sentence, type and function of said sentence, and point out any phrases and name which kind it is. WOW, right? As if this wasn’t enough, to solidify it and keep it in their brains to never be forgotten, they analyze 1 sentence a day after that. Takes literally 5 minutes and grammar is done!

I thought this sounded too easy and yet I was desperate and so I tried it and it worked. My 11 year old dyslexic son can do all those things. Does he get  some wrong, of course. Heck, even some I have to look at the answers, but he is getting the majority and that is what I love.

Now, the vocab is intense! However, it is his favorite. It is all about Rome and Caesar and I thought how boring, but he loves it. He likes learning the new words and catching them being used in the stories. Whenever he hears a vocab word, he yells out its meaning making it a kind of game. He is learning latin stem words. which has made a huge impact on his spelling.

The poetry he could do without, but I throw it in since it takes such a short time.

The writing focuses not so much on fiction and story prompts, but challenges them to research and write proper sentences, proper paragraphs, and a proper essay.

We are finishing up Paragraph town and I am quite happy with not only the quantity that he has been able to do, but the quality.

Our next year will be Essay Voyage and it seems to ramp up this year, So I would say jump in at paragraph town probably for your age kids. It would be pretty easy for your 15 year old, but then getting something out of them is better than none. His stuff is age grouped and isn’t based on grade. if you look at his high school aged stuff, it would be college level for when I was in school.

I love how his stuff is arranged to be taught. The grammar book is for the first 4-6 weeks and nothing else. I would read at least 8 pages, but would finish a section if I was a page or two away. I school 5 days a week and it takes about 15 mins.

Once you finish it and start the daily sentences, then you start the vocab and I break it down into 2 days this makes the lessons be about 15-20 mins long. first day I read half the lesson and day 2 I read other half, we do not do all the activities. I quiz on day one as a pre-test but if they pass with 90 or above then they do not have to take it again the next day. (this is a motivator in and of itself) I then give them the quiz every day after until they make a 90 or above. (again natural motivator to learn them so they do not have to see the test every day)  They have never had to take it a third time.

Day 3 I do poetry and I read at least 7-8 pages, but try to finish the section if possible. This takes about 10-15 mins. I assign the poetry assignments as optional only.

Days 4 & 5 I do the writing book and again half the lesson per day and then they have an assignment that I would have them work on and I would give them usually 4 days to turn in. I give it the once over and explain any corrections needed and then they are to make corrections and they have 2 more days to complete that then I grade the paper.  Slowly, but surely the simple mistakes are not happening anymore and their writing is evolving into actual writing. LOL btw, I only just started really grading them, before I just wanted to get them putting something on paper.

Anyway, lessons are short and because it gets mixed up between the vocab, poetry, and writing they don’t seem to get to bored with it all.

We are reading Harry Potter books together and lots of their vocab words are in her books, so now he even hollers out the word meanings during that as well.

Remember this is a boy who has dyslexia and he really doesn’t mind any of these except the poetry…. an yet, he wrote a poem that was to show personification and apostrophe using vocab words if possible. (in case you don’t know because I didn’t until this book, apostrophe is when you speak with the object you are personifying or treating as a human when it isn’t) Here it is… just for kicks and grotesque and vivid are his vocab words.

O poor Marigold, how did you loose your head?

Your stem is standing tall and strong

and yet you look so grotesque, so wrong.

Your green is so vivid.

Your yellow so true

and yet when I see you

my emotions turn so blue.

I see death coming to claim you soon

so farewell I say to you.

I hope and pray the afterlife

is so very good to you.

Made me laugh anyway.

Hope this helps you and best thing is no worksheets!! I feel this is more laid back like CM approach and yet it is intense, but fun.

I forgot to mention the genius of it all is how he works in the vocab words into grammar and poetry and writing and how he works the poetry into all the other subjects etc. So students are being exposed to all the concepts daily and aren’t even aware of it.

I am with you; writing is difficult to teach!

We start with oral and written narrations, then move to Jump In Writing in about 6th grade. I feel like this gives them a very good idea of how to structure their writing, and they enjoy it. My 7th-8th grade kids move to Writing with Skill when they are ready to start the essay writing process.

I teach a group of high schoolers, and have had very good success by just using youtube videos and breaking down the writing process as simply as possible. Go back to what Hemingway called, “one true sentence” through copywork.  When they have a grasp of how to communicate a simple declarative sentence, then you can show them how to expand their style with sentence combining.

Essay writing is simplified when students understand how to write an effective introduction. Once they understand how to lay out a paper through a well-written introduction, essay writing becomes much, much more simple. I like these videos that were designed for ESL students:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN6IOSMviS4&t=176s

And this professor is fun to watch as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liyFKUFCQno&list=PLpwyb-j51_eTVgevf5WvUvOrlgpJQ9nev&index=26

Hope those will help somewhat and I just want to encourage you. Keep exposing them to good writing and keep challenging them to work at it. Writing is really a process and involves re-working your original many times over.  If kids can accept that and be open to revision, they can write successfully. “To write is human, to edit is divine.” 🙂