The Write Foundation Review

Munchkin is great in many different areas of academics, but writing is not one of those areas.  She’s very creative and has no problem coming up with very imaginative stories.  She can tell quite the tale verbally, but when it comes to the mechanics of writing everything down properly, she falters.  She wants to be able to adequately write down her creative writings, so she gets frustrated with her lack of natural ability in this area.

I looked forward to receiving Level 2 – Paragraph Writing from The Write Foundation.  After looking at the website, I thought that this would be the best place to start for Munchkin.  It’s geared towards 12 to 15-year-old students.  While Munchkin isn’t quite 12, I felt that that it was best to start at that level rather than at the sentence level.  If you aren’t sure where to start your child with the program, the people at The Write Foundation are more than happy to help you figure out the best starting point for your child based upon their abilities.

The Level 2 15-lesson package ($65 + tax/shipping) included a spiral-bound Teacher’s manual for lessons 1-15, 3-hole-punch loose-leaf student worksheets, and a resource cd which includes teacher’s pages.  Before starting, I read over the introduction to the system on The Write Foundation website for better understanding of the program.  I then read over the materials in the teacher’s manual to familiarize myself with the materials.

My first impressions were that of a bit of confusion.  It just didn’t click for me.  I decided that I better jump into the program as I’m a hands-on type of learner.  This ended up being the best avenue for us.  We started out doing this exactly as directed, but we soon found that the program is really set up for a co-op type format.  The lessons are all to be taught on day one, and then the student completes the assignments independently over the rest of the week.

It turns out that in a writing program that format was a little to overwhelming for Munchkin.  She needed the teaching in bite-sized chunks immediately followed by the assignment.  The program utilizes Critical Thinking’s Mind Benders to help the students work on their critical thinking skills.  Munchkin adores this part of the program and often asks to do more than is required.

In the curriculum, the student looks at the examples and then recreates their own version of the sample.  They use highlighting to break down the different parts of the paragraph.  The visual use of the different colors of highlighters for the sentences really struck a cord with Munchkin.  She enjoyed this portion of the tasks.

Each lesson also includes a poetry assignment of some sort.  Munchkin thoroughly enjoys doing these even if they aren’t always easy.  One of her favorites was the tongue twister assignment.

A couple of Munchkin’s tongue twisters:

Little Lisa Lightsman licked lots of light lollypops.
Super Sam spoke superbly to the supercilious sparrows.

While this program is a little difficult to understand at first, I do like the systematic way that it teaches students to write.  To be fair, that can be said of many writing programs.  In my opinion, the program, as written, is best for co-ops, but it can be tweaked for use in a home setting.  While this is billed as a pick-up-and-teach program, I feel there is teacher preparation required due to the format of the teacher’s manual.  As you get use to the format, it gets a bit easier to teach without as much preparation ahead of time.  Overall, I think this is a solid writing program.

The Write Foundation has 3 levels: Sentence, Paragraph, and Essay.  It comes in packages of either 15 or 30 lessons, or the components can be purchased individually.  Check out the samples on the website and/or head on over to The Write Foundation yahoo group to learn more about the curriculum.

I received a copy of The Write Foundation Level 2 – Paragraph as a member of the TOS Crew to help facilitate the writing of a frank and honest review. No other compensation was received. All opinions are my own.