Thomas and I (mostly Thomas 😉 ), recently reviewed a DVD writing course from Essentials in Writing. I chose the EiW Grade 8 for him based on what each level taught and what I wanted him to learn/work on; grade 8 is geared toward ages 13 and 14.
Essentials in Writing has a dvd based writing curriculum for each grade from 1 to 11.
In Eighth Grade, your child will learn: detailed sentence structure, a proper use of a business letter and their formats, using the writing process to compose narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive writing (including formal paragraphs), five paragraph essays, compare and contrast writing, effective writing skills, multi-paragraph composition, the process to complete a research paper, other forms of written communication, and other topics. (from website)
I really wanted Thomas to work on narrative and persuasive writing. Thomas already likes to write, so I was hoping that this would be a painless way to help him work in the proper forms. He did a few of the first lessons about sentences, then we jumped around a bit to get a better idea of the scope of the lessons for the review.
The Essentials in Writing curriculum includes multiple dvds that have lessons for the student to watch on either tv or computer. The written activity worksheets are sent in a PDF format for printing as need at home (there is also a new physical workbook available for $20). The curriculum is $40. The Grade 8 set includes 64 dvd lessons, and Thomas was able to easily complete an average of 2 lessons per week for the review period. We will go back now and fill in the stuff we missed by jumping around.
Thomas found the sentence work easy, and blew through those, so we then moved on to paragraphs, then worked on business letters. For each lesson, Thomas would watch the video lesson, then do the corresponding writing assignments for the lesson – for some lessons, there is only one writing activity, for others there are multiple worksheets. I liked that the worksheets were numbered the same as the dvd lesson, but any multiple worksheets for one lesson were also marked A, B, C,…
Thomas enjoyed the variety of having a class taught by a ‘teacher’ on the screen, and I enjoyed him being taught by a teacher other than me! LOL! This curriculum was great in that there was very little teacher prep work (I don’t care for printing off worksheets, so would have preferred the physical copy of a workbook). Thomas felt like he progressed in his writing skills on the paragraph and business letters that he wrote, and I felt that he did too. We both enjoyed this program, and I am thinking of purchasing it for a few of the other kids also (different grade levels obviously!). This is one case where I did like the course not being in book form, and the kids enjoyed the variety of having it be a visual lesson.
If you are interested in Essentials in Writing, I would encourage you to hop over to the TOS Review Crew linky page where you can read other homeschooler’s reviews of EiW – there are reviews on there for all grades!
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this product through The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew. All opinions are my own, and I was not compensated in any other way.
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