Building Writing Skills ~~ A New TOS Review!!

We are huge fans of The Critical Thinking Co. and over the years have used many of their products. For this review we narrowed our choice down to the Building Writing Skills - Essential Tips and Techniques so that my eldest could work on some of those skills to help make her writing pieces better developed. It was supposed to be a digital product which we would have loved, but unfortunately my Chromebook is not compatible with the digital version. BUT the company is so great and they sent us a physical copy of the book! (Although this is not generally the case since this particular workbook is in the digital version only.)

Building Writing Skills does just that - builds a 6th - 12th grade students skills in writing so that they can sharpen their compositions by making writing more appealing and interesting to readers as well as clearly express their thoughts.  Throughout the workbook the students will cover vivid verbs, active and passive voice, adjectives, analogies, anagrams, nouns, qualifiers, alliteration, similes, metaphors, hyperbole, personification, onomatopoeia (a favorite of ours), and anthropomorphism. After this they will start working on complex and compound sentences, varying their sentence types and exploring different ways to start their sentences. The book also covers phrases and transition words, appositives, repetition and points of view.

These activities are split into multiple choice, fill in the blank, matching, crossword puzzles, as well as just rewriting sentences with the correct items that the student is working on for that activity. There are about 59 activity pages in the 84 page book. The answers for all the activities begin on page 72 and there is a 2 page sample activity for another of their other books at the very end.

My daughter has been doing about 1 activity page per week, sometimes 2 pages, but she was working mostly on the verb section and making them more vivid. Some of them were longer (like the crossword puzzle or when she had to rewrite the sentence with a more "vivid" verb that makes the sentences more interesting. This was very helpful while she's also been taking a writing class as a dual enrolled at the local community college. I believe she's read ahead in the workbook to learn some of the other areas since I think I've seen them in her papers I've edited for her class. That makes a mom happy! (Especially a mom who was an English major in college.)

Even though we had this as a book, it would generally come as an e-book. Then you could download the pages when they were needed or extras if your student needed more work on that particular writing skill. With the activities being just one page for most of them that will make it very easy to add onto your regular workload for the week helping to strengthen those writing skills yet still not overwhelming your student with too much work.

I believe you could also do this workbook out of order very easily. Since this was created for middle and high school students they probably will all know about nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and the like. This helps them make them stronger, interesting, and varied which leads to a more full and complete writing repertoire.

Each page has a small 'learning box' in grey which tells the student about the part of speech they are focusing on.

That is followed by instructions for the activity.

Next is the activity itself which is generally just one page. Some lessons have more pages to work on the concepts being taught so that they are truly cemented in their brains. And you really don't want them to work through this too quickly or they won't have time for the concepts to sink in!

I would highly recommend Building Writing Skills - Essential Tips and Techniques to anyone who has a student in middle or high school. It's an easy supplement to be added to their regular days work and will bring a lot of meat and content to their writing as they beging to add it in to their other work. You can also find The Critical ThinkingCo.  on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube. The company has also granted our readers this wonderful coupon for 15% off through the end of this year December 2019!

There are many other on the Crew who reviewed other products by The Critical Thinking Co. inculding math games, vocabulary,  critical thinking, and a few others so be sure to check them all out at the link below!

Persuasive Writing & Classical Rhetoric - A New TOS Review!!

Having the ability to write well is a skill that every high school student should acquire from their studies. So when we had the opportunity to review a homeschool writing curriculum from Silverdale Press LLC, I knew that we had to give this a go and see if it was a good fit. After perusing their website and allowing my daughter to also check out the website we decided that Persuasive Writing & Classical Rhetoric: Practicing the Habits of Great Writers, would be a solid introduction to writing. I knew that in the beginning that this course would really stretch my daughter, but I knew with continued work that it would help her become a better writer and maybe even give her tips on her own dream of being a writer one day.

This program is completely digital and our review consisted of its 4 parts - The Reader (111 pgs.), the Lesson Book (235 pgs.), the Workbook (202 pgs. - consumable), and the Answer Key (68 pgs.). They came as 4 separate PDF's that I downloaded to my Chromebook, but we also put it on a USB so that my daughter could take her work with her and work on it at her grandmother's house when she's there during the week. Once I began looking through Persuasive Writing & Classical Rhetoric: Practicing the Habits of Great Writers (which I will heretofore call Writing & Rhetoric), I knew that this course would be a bit hard in the beginning especially with the weekly papers.

This course is set up to cover a 4 day work week over 36 weeks for a full-year curriculum. I knew these assignments would be a bit difficult for my 14yo who is just entering high school and even though she wants to be a writer she really doesn't like to write. She feels it's very hard to come up with the "right" answer.

Her first paragraph for the JFK writing prompt.

Now if you are like most people you may not know what Rhetoric is or means. The book defines it as "skillful and artistic communication that aims to persuade an audience." This then means that persuasive writing "is skillful and artistic written communication that aims to persuade an audience." These are the premise for the entire curriculum -- that we need to get back to well written, persuasive arguments that have a clear foundation. Each lesson begins with reading the lesson and then answering the review questions. Day 2 the student will read the 'Profile in Rhetoric' and then answer the follow-up questions. The entire 36 weeks the student is building stone by stone for a final writing assignment, so Day 3 is doing some type of focused writing activity. Then Day 4 the have a writing prompt for 500 word essays. You can do a 5 day week and then the writing could be split into 2 days with approximately 250 words done for each day.

The involvement of the parent is really up to them, but the authors, Joshua and Jill Hummer, do suggest that at the very least they provide some feedback for these essays. They even provide a rubric to help with grading. As the parent/teacher, you can also use the answer key to check the workbook answers to the first 2 days review questions. I did notice that there were some answers that were "answers may vary" which could be hard for some parents if they have no background or experience with this type of writing curriculum. An example of this was in the very first chapter where the student had to find examples of rhetoric ... my daughter was working on this lesson while at her grandmother's house. Trying to help, but not really knowing what rhetoric was they led my daughter on a slightly different path, but when you check the answer key it said answers may vary. I ended up telling them we'd work on it over the weekend and not to worry about finishing that days work. ;) It was more that her grandmother didn't understand the curriculum well enough to really facilitate helping direct my daughter.

Answer Key

Rubric

As we have moved through the program the toughest part each week are the essays.  I knew that at the beginning of this program since it was pretty rigorous, that it would be very difficult or my daughter. She is very much a perfectionist in most everything she does and not being perfect for the papers I knew would be the "sticking point" ... that one hurdle she would have to learn to work through. Writing is HARD work. And it takes time to learn how to write well. I am very proud of her for keeping with it, even though she takes a bit longer to write the essays.

We have had to modify my original plan on using this program because of two things. First we had to take a whole week off for ice skating camp. She was wiped and we pretty much did no school for an entire week. So last week when we got back to our regular 'summer schedule' I reminded her that the review was coming up and she realized she hadn't finished up her essays ... they were still in that pre-done phase where you need to re-read, edit, and correct. So she worked on that and then we started week 4 this week. I will say that once she gets her words onto the paper (or the computer) she has a really great writing style.

The other big hurdle has been that somehow my Chromebook no longer speaks to my printer so we've had to make modifications for that as well. My husband was able to print out some of the workbook pages, but for the essays I've had her write them up on paper OR to write them in an email and then send them to me. The editing process for her has been harder this way because she does not like sending me a 1/2 paper or one that isn't perfect, but I told her I'd rather her write it all down and then we go back to edit at a later time.

Lesson overview

Eg. of a writing prompt

Her Thoughts:

This program has pushed me to my limits. It has made me have to think about things that I never have had to before. I think that it has been fun to learn about people I have never had given a second thought to. It made me realize that there is more to a speech or article then meets the eye ... or should I say ear.  

This is how my lessons went. On the first day I would read about a person who had an impact on society or the government, followed by questions. The second day I would read something written by that persons and then answer questions that went along with the reading. On the third day I would do an exercise that would enhance what the lesson was trying to teach me. On the 4th and 5th day I would write a 500 word essay on the prompt that was provided. Overall, this curriculum has broadened my writing abilities and most of the people who I have never heard of or studied before I thought were interesting to learn about.

The entire Writing & Rhetoric curriculum is broken into 5 sections. Within each section the 36 lessons are divided and focused on these sections with Invention(13 lessons) being the largest and Arrangement (8 lessons) the second largest sections of the curriculum. Along the way your student will be reading from Great Writers like Patrick Henry, Winston Churchill, E.B. White, Antonin Scalia (a favorite of mine), and Eleanor Roosevelt. All of the profiles in rhetoric have your student learn from some of the very best writers ... and thinkers ... in history. This is how you will learn to write, by studying the writings of great writers. This is homeschool writing curriculum that is geared for the 14 - 18 age range, but is on par to a college level writing course. I believe that this will certainly teach my daughter all the skills she needs to be a good writer and studying the profiles will help her become a better person as well.

Eg. of a writing exercise

I hope you take the time to read other reviews of Persuasive Writing & Classical Rhetoric: Practicing the Habits of Great Writers from my fellow Crew members by clicking the link below. Some of the Crew were able to check out Silverdale Press LLC's White House Holidays Unit Study so you'll want to be sure to read some of those as well. You can also find them on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.