Focuses on foundational skills, written exercises, and overall writing process

Students will learn how to effectively master using sentences and paragraphs, main and supporting ideas, and point of view, as well as the process of creating characters in this self directed course.

Writing Strands, long a homeschooling favorite, has received an expansion and facelift from its new publisher, Master Books. Still providing the same quality, step-by-step writing instruction, the major difference is that there is MORE than just writing instruction. A complete series of reading/literature lessons is interwoven with the writing instruction resulting in solid language arts courses. Each consumable worktext provides space to complete the writing assignments as well as worksheets for discussing books (chosen and assigned by teacher/parent) and Bible passages. The student is encouraged to keep an ongoing spelling list as well as constantly be involved in the writing evaluation process. Composition lessons cover the writing process and provide experience with the various forms of writing as well as specific traits of good writing. Reading/literature lessons provide literary analysis instruction coupled with discussion questions and biblical applications.

All instruction is provided in the Student Worktexts. Students are encouraged to build a portfolio binder although there is ample space provided to complete many of the Worktext assignments. Introductory information includes course descriptions/principles, writing guidelines, skills writing mastery chart, list of problems to solve (this is kept as a running list based on assignment completion), and a detailed daily schedule. Detailed lessons, written directly to the student, are provided for 180 days (five days a week; four 9-week quarters) and can be expected to take 30-45 minutes to complete. Bible passages are used as the primary resource for the literary analysis lessons. These lessons are coupled with book studies using literature selections chosen by the parent. Answer keys for objective portions are included as well as a glossary of helpful terms.