Complimentary product received through the Melanated Gold Review Squad, in exchange for my honest review.
What is WriteShop Primary B?
WriteShop Primary B is designed to be used for early elementary, 1st and 2nd graders, but can be used with a new 3rd grader with some modifications. The program is designed for parents to work closely with their child to help GUIDE and cultivate their creative writing skills. You are laying the foundation together, so you can find their own unique writing voice.
Is parent involvement required?
Definitely Required. These are GUIDED assignments. You are meant to sit along side your child throughout the lesson.
Schedule: It’s set up as a 30-week program, but there are three suggested schedule options to choose from that will lead you to complete the course in as little as 20 weeks or as much as 2 years. There is also a sample schedule available if teaching children at different levels. Flexibility is a major benefit to this program.
Lessons: There are 10 main lessons and at the beginning of each week’s lesson, the Focus, Theme and Objectives are plainly stated for you.
- Writing a Letter
- Standard Spelling
- Acrostics
- Poems and Nursery Rhymes
- Fairy Tales
- In the News
- Humor
- Problem and Solution
- Character and Setting
- Story Organizer
Within these 10 lessons, there are 7 activities each which includes activity sheets, crafts and more practice guided writing. All of these components are used to reinforce the concept learned that week.
Length of lessons varies and each lesson goes over the writing process.
Writing process:
- Prewriting
- You use a provided warm-up worksheet, a mini-writing assignments for practice, and possible reading themed books for ideas,
- Brainstorming
- Organizing the topic and ideas for main writing project
- Writing Project
- Main writing project using your brainstorming notes
- Editing and Revising
- Final Draft/Publishing – Fin!
Yay!! You guys are done…..until the next lesson….muahahaha!
Assessment
As a parent, you want to know if the benchmarks/goals were met. So, there is an assessment sheet that can be used after every week to help keep a record of the progress.
Plan Ahead:
Craft ideas are included and encouraged. If the child loves crafts, as mine does, it’s a win. There are about 10 minutes of prep work for the crafts if you decide to do any. Prepping time is needed. I would advise you to have it (crafts cut and sorted) done before the actual sit down lesson with your child. If not, you risk losing their attention with all of your distractions. Believe me! Lesson learned.
There are benefits in doing the crafts, it makes the lesson more engaging for the child and the conservations and/or laughter that follows are always appreciated.
Product Format:
WriteShop products can be purchased in physical and/or in digital form. WriteShop Level B’s formatting of the manual isn’t visually appealing, though. The information presented felt too compact, like they wanted to save paper. Haha! So, I definitely pre-read the lessons, pulled what I needed and made side notes on post-its to help organize my implementation plan. With that being said, the content is great. I’m relearning how to organize my thoughts into paper as well. Beauty of homeschooling with my kids. We all learn together.
Bonuses:
On their site, you can find Free Monthly Writing Prompts. So, if you choose to have more practice, the calendar gives you some ideas. In the manual, there are spelling and referencing tips like building a spelling folder, word family charts, etc.
Even though this is NOT a literature-based program, there is a suggested book list for each lesson that can be very helpful. Your family can potentially read 125 books. But, as a mother of a brown family, it was disappointing to not see a more inclusive list of authors.
Overall Impression:
The lessons in WriteShop Book B are incremental and not overwhelming. With the scripted parent instructions, I felt comfortable guiding my daughter through her assignments. Her confidence in writing is improving and I had very little push back from her. As of now, we’ll continue with the program and incorporate the methods in Level B to other writing projects across subjects as well.
I hope this review was helpful and please reach out if you have any questions. 🙂
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-LQ
Homelife with Quin5 