Review: Writing Fiction in High School with Sharon Watson

Special thanks to Sharon Watson for providing a review copy of this curriculum.

About Writing Fiction (in High School) with Sharon Watson:

Writing Fiction (in High School) is a year long fiction writing course designed for independent learners, co-ops, and classrooms. Students who have written the manuscript of a short story or novel or who are writing one have the option of completing the additional manuscript tract. All students will be exposed to a variety of short stories, novels, and movies. The main book used with this curriculum is The Last Book in the Universe by Rodman Philbrick.

About the Author:

Sharon Watson, author of Apologia Press’s popular middle school writing curriculum JUMP IN, loves finding ways to make difficult writing tasks easy to understand and accomplish. She believes it is time for Christians to influence the culture through meaningful and entertaining fiction.

Sharon homeschooled her children for 18 years and has taught high school fiction writing, composition, and literature to local homeschool students and in all-day workshops. She has been a Christian since her youth; her textbooks reflect this worldview. She lives in Indiana with her husband, whom she met in college in upstate New York. They have three grown children and two grandchildren.

Curriculum Details:

• Writing Fiction (in High School): Bringing Your Stories to Life
  • Publication Date: Jul 18 2011
  • ISBN/EAN13: 1463582080 / 9781463582081
  • Page Count: 300
  • Binding Type: US Trade Paper
  • Trim Size: 8.5″ x 11″
  • Language: English
  • $25.05
• Writing Fiction (in High School) Teacher’s Guide
  • Publication Date: Jul 18 2011
  • ISBN/EAN13: 1463582285 / 9781463582289
  • Page Count: 84
  • Binding Type: US Trade Paper
  • Trim Size: 8.5″ x 11″
  • Language: English
  • $9.95
• The Last Book in the Universe by Rodman Philbrick
  • Paperback: 240 pages
  • Publisher: Scholastic Inc. (June 1, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0439771331
  • ISBN-13: 978-0439771337
  • Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
  • $6.99
  • Electronic version available

Our Thoughts:

The Teacher’s Guide is a valuable resource for this writing curriculum. It contains a detailed list of books, short stories, and media needed for the curriculum broken down by chapter. It also has a discussion guide with an answer key that contains talking points for the teacher. It contains assignments for both the regular student track as well as the manuscript track. Everything is presented in a logical, sequential manner.

The student text is broken down into 13 chapters and roughly 100 lessons. It covers:

1. Facts about Fiction
2. Point of View
3. Fairy Tales
4. Characters and Characterization
5. Conflict
6. Dialogue
7. Description
8. Words, Words, Words
9. Theme
10. Plot
11. Scenes
12. Beginnings and Endings
13. Getting Published

The student text is presented sequentially from starting to write to developing the story and characters to polishing the story to getting it published. The lessons run together a bit with just a little statement that says “end of lesson”;  a fact that my daughter didn’t really like as she would have preferred a definite separation between lessons which clearly showed the beginning of the lessons. Another negative, for us, is the fact that this curriculum is set up to be used with a writer’s group or in a classroom, so it was rather difficult to fully utilize the curriculum as a independent student even though the curriculum description stated this was possible.

I admit that I personally had some concerns with some of the resources that were utilized with this curriculum (such as movies rated PG-13), so we chose not to use those particular resources. I chose to use ones that we found more suitable. Each family will have their own ideas on what is and what is not suitable for their teen to watch/read as part of this course. The main resource (which can be purchased through Amazon) is The Last Book in the Universe by Rodman Philbrick. It is a postapocalyptic story that contains violence, slang, and a strong dependence on electronic mind probes as a form of escape (like drugs). While it’s an interesting story that makes you think and has some intriguing characters, it’s not a book I would have chosen as the key resource for a high school writing curriculum.

The aspect of the curriculum that intrigued Munchkin was the manuscript track since she is working on her second book. Some of the information given was helpful, but other parts were contrary to what another mentor has told her. Obviously, there will be differing opinions on writing, so this is to be expected. Chapter 13 – Getting Published was probably Munchkin’s favorite chapter in the curriculum as it contained a great deal of good, practical information on the publication process including a query letter example. (Note: We have not gone through this entire curriculum as it’s a year long course. We went through a few chapters and then looked at the final chapter, so our opinions are based upon what we have used thus far in the curriculum.)

You can download a sample of the curriculum which includes the table of contents. While this isn’t the right fit for our family, it is a strong, solid curriculum that I’m sure will be beneficial to many families. You can read what others on the Home & School Mosaics review team had to say about the writing curriculum line from Sharon Watson.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this curriculum as part of the review team at Home & School Mosaics to help facilitate the writing of a frank and honest review. A positive review is not expected nor guaranteed. All opinions are my own.