Hey Educator,
Glad you dropped by! If you own The Writing Course, or are just thinking about it, this is our way to connect a little, share some information about our homeschool writing curriculum, and answer your questions. We had a forum, which was good…but it is a little too tedious for most of us to quickly use (but please go survey it…lots of good stuff there). We’ll move some of the forum material over here and produce more blogs for your benefit. PLEASE comment and interact…it makes a big difference for everyone!
Here’s the one question most folks have in teaching kids to write with The Writing Course
HOW DO WE USE THE WRITING COURSE?
In our experience, going through the homeschool writing curriculum material yearly (at least) is key to comprehensive learning. Each time through the student is at a different “place” in the learning process as a writer.
The Writing Course turns out to be unique here because each time through you print a new workbook. Also, the exercises are open-ended, which means they will be ‘fresh’ each time. Try this with any other curriculum 
and see if your students don’t revolt from the tedium!
So (after investing in your own copy of The Writing Course)
1. Print the workbook
2. Have them listen to the audio lesson and use the workbook (one lesson a day..should take about a month)
3. Discuss together what they are learning (daily)
4. Complete the course and start having them write daily (about 20 to 30 minutes at least).
5. Give feedback (see our video instruction under Video Extras) as we suggest
6. Get wowed!
On a side note, The Essay Course, as part of our homeschool writing curriculum, is probably better suited for 14 year olds and up. Of course, you can decide. I don’t think we started any of our children on it until they were 15. Frankly, high-level argumentation is a function of a more mature brain. The most important thing is to learn to master the sentence / paragraph.
Fred Ray Lybrand
