My older two children are writers. It is not a struggle with them at all. My daughter, however, does not enjoy writing. She was born with writer's block. ;-)
Create Better Writers has developed a program to make writing easy, beginning with the paragraph and moving onto the five-paragraph essay. In their words, "It all starts with one simple trick. Teach this trick in minutes, have your students practice it several times, and your students will have a solid grasp for writing paragraphs. Use this trick to write stories, summarize stories, write reports, and more. No assignment is too difficult." This review will focus on the book below, How To Write a Paragraph.
This comes in the form of an ebook for $7.99. (http://createbetterwriters.com/The_Paragraph.html)
It is free with the purchase of either How to Teach the Five Paragraph Essay or The Complete Writing Program. It is recommended for students in third grade and up. There are 15 pages of lessons and activities and additional pages in the appendices. This is the overview of the plan:
Paragraph Writing – Overview
Part I – The Basics
Step 1 – Assessment: Students write a paragraph (p. 2)
Step 2 – Learning the five parts of a good paragraph (p. 3)
Step 3 – Memorize the Five Parts of a Paragraph (p. 3)
Step 4 – The Paper Set-Up (p. 4)
Step 5 – Write a Paragraph Together: The Prewrite (p. 6)
Step 6 – Write a Paragraph Together: The Paragraph (p. 7)
Part II – Improving the Parts of a Paragraph
Step 7 – Topic Sentences (p. 9)
Step 8 – Closing Sentences (p. 11)
Step 9 – Paragraph Assessment (p. 13)
Step 10 – Practice, Practice, Practice (p. 13)
Step 11 – The Perfect Paragraph (p. 15)
When I read over this when I first received it, it didn't make any sense to me. It is very wordy. If I am going to follow something someone else wrote, I like to have things listed. The instructions for this program are contained in paragraphs and need to be searched out.
Once the instructions are understood, the program is simple. Repetition is a part of this program. This frustrated my daughter. Asking the same question over and over again is not the way she likes to learn. I know there are kids who learn very well this way, so this could work very well for those kids. Once my DD has been "offended" by the teaching style, she has trouble learning anything else from the curriculum, but we kept going.
Through this program, teaching the student to focus on one main point per paragraph and writing down the supporting details (individual words...not sentences) just to get them on paper helps to ease the frustration when writing a paragraph. This idea is seen in other products out there, so it does work. I myself, though, do not like the approach of this ebook. It is inexpensive. If you don't mind searching for the exact instructions in the paragraphs, then this is definitely a product you should check out.
If you are interested in reading additional reviews on this product, go to http://schoolhousereviewcrew.com/786090/.
DISCLAIMER: I received this product free of charge in order to use it and provide an honest review.
