Writing with Sharon Watson, a Review

     Whether teaching writing skills to a high school student or reviewing existing skills, the process of teaching writing skills can be daunting.  Sharon Watson, the same author who has written Apologia's Jump In curriculum, has taken the guess work out of honing student's writing skills.  We have been able to use and review one of Sharon’s curriculum items:  The Power in Your Hands:  Writing Non-Fiction in High School .  Designed for high school students, the Writing with Sharon Watson curriculum is a conversational-style instruction that is both informative and engaging.

The Power in Your Hands:  Writing Non-Fiction in High School  is “the natural next step for those who value college-preparatory material presented in incremental steps with a conversational tone. With over 100 daily lessons and complete instructions for 22 essays and reports, this is an engaging course students will enjoy--or not dread.”  Through these lessons, students work through writing five different persuasive essays, a comparison and contrast essay, a biography, a literary analysis, a research paper with documentation, descriptive essays, and narrative essays. The student workbook is comprehensive, containing over 400 pages of instruction and activities.  The teacher’s guide gives parents the answers to all of the questions in the student workbook and samples of numerous papers to help them evaluate their student’s writings. Additional writing prompts and suggestions are also included in the teacher's guide. The student workbook retails for $39.98 and the teacher’s guide retails for $14.98. 

     I have been using Sharon's curriculum with my high school boys.  One is in tenth grade and one is in twelfth grade.  Writing has not been their forte' over the years, so I was anxious to see how they would react to this program.  Our experience with writing curricula has been generally limited to the occasional writing class in our co-op.  The first thing they noticed about The Power in Your Hands was that it is super easy to read and understand.  They weren't just 'thrown in' to writing a persuasive essay.  Each lesson guided them step-by-step, a little at a time, and gave them plenty of examples and practice at each stage of the essay writing process.  By the time they were ready to put together a final copy of an essay, it was really just a process of doing some fine tuning.  I had tried to give them a process for essay writing before, with little success.  Watson's lessons really guided them through the process instead of giving them just a list of steps.  Now, I'm not going to say that writing non-fiction essays / papers is their favorite past time; however, by using The Power in Your Hands, it has become a much simpler process for them.  I highly recommend this program for anyone who want to use a writing curriculum that is easy to implement, can be completed independently by the student if needed, and has great support for teachers in the teacher's guide.

  
To read what our illustrious crew members have to say about their experience with Writing with Sharon Watson The Power in Your Hands, as well as her other curriculum product, click on the graphic below.