Teaching Essay Writing - Where do I start?

Are you overwhelmed with the idea of teaching formal essay writing? Even when using some highly rated homeschool writing curriculum, many homeschooling moms are overwhelmed when they attempt to teach formal writing that prepares students for high school writing and college level writing. At the same time however, high school students need to learn how to write an essay. So what do you do if you are intimidated at the thought of teaching essay writing? Do you need a step-by-step writing method with detailed lesson plans that require little preparation to teach how to write?

The Write Foundation is a tried and proven homeschool writing curriculum that lays a solid writing foundation and develops competent, confident writers, even with students who were clueless on how to write. Students learn organizational groundwork for writing simple paragraphs and then advance to college level essays. With a variety of topics and types of paragraphs this curriculum guides you as you teach how to logically and easily write formal papers that “Wow!” professors.

Every lesson in TWF is arranged with detailed, specific guidelines, and gives you the necessary tools to teach the lessons and assist students while they complete their independent work. The Write Foundation provides detailed lesson plans for you to easily follow.

• Daily Schedules: every lesson divided into instruction groups.
• Teacher Presentation: pages for you to use when presenting the lesson (included in the instruction manual and separately in digital format to be used to fit your situation)
• Student Worksheets: 1 set is provided with each level of instruction.Pages which guide students both during the lesson and their independent work. Student Assignments: extra instruction and reminders to guide students as they complete their independent work. Checklists for students to use to edit their work.

The instruction manuals provide:

• Step-by-step teaching instruction for you to follow.
• Examples of possible correct answers.
• Example brainstorms, outlines and paragraphs.

Additional Resources are also sent to you with the following and more:

• Games: instructions for 1 or more students
• Grading Checklists: to help you grade their work.
• Grading System: if you need help with record keeping.

When a student is working on the correct level, intensive teacher instruction drops significantly as the year progresses.

• Students understand and retain more when they work at a level where learning comes easily for them.
• Some students need more teacher help for a while, but many others become more independent quickly.
• Students gain independence as good writing habits are solidified and they are on their way to becoming independent proficient writers.

Mom’s work load is determined by placing students on the right level. Try the free sample lessons before you purchase the curriculum to help determine which level is right for your students.

Entry Level Creating Sentences: Students use fun educational games and activities, while learning to compose and develop sentences by putting words and phrases together like pieces in a puzzle. Students will not be asking, “But what do I write about?”

Sentence to Paragraph Level 1: Students learn to write better sentences, which describe and inform, while they learn the core basics of writing simple paragraphs using the writing process.

Paragraph Writing Level 2: Students continue to develop their sentence and paragraph writing skills using the writing process, while advancing to multi-paragraph formal writing.

Essay Writing Level 3: Students fine tune and develop mature writing skills, so they can easily write a well organized multi-paragraph college level essay that “Wows!” everyone.

See Suggested Age Levels for Homeschool Writing for more specific guidelines for each level.