Writing with Ease: Strong Fundamentals: A Guide to Designing Your Own Elementary Writing Curriculum

This book was published at just the correct time for us. We've just completed 3rd Language Lessons by the same author and I felt that my 3rd/4th grade daughter was not where I expected her to be in her actual writing skills. So nice to read this book and have my concerns eliminated - composing a thought in one's head is NOT automatically related to getting that thought down on paper correctly. It takes copywork and dictation and guidance to get it right. This book helps with all the steps in helping your child get it right; going week by week for 4 years covering what your child should be working on. This is the actual book NOT the student workbook; if you just use this book you will need to find your own sources for the copywork and the dictation work. If you don't want to do that yourself, the workbooks have all of it already done for you; there's a workbook for each of the 4 levels. If your child is at 2nd grade or higher, please read the book first before buying any of the workbooks so that you don't buy one for a level too low. I'm very pleased with the results already and we've only been using it for a week. I plan to use it from the start next year with my youngest when he begins First Language Lessons. There will be 2 follow-up books in The Complete Writer series. This one, Writing with Ease, is for years 1 to 4, Writing with Skill is for years 5 to 8, and Writing with Style is for years 9 to 12.

Susan Wise Bauer is dead-on correct with her approach to teaching writing. I've taught persuasive writing to freshmen in universities for 12 years in Utah, Virginia, and South Carolina. What's so disheartening is that these students believe that an essay with very few punctuation errors and some big vocabulary words thrown in for good measure (usually used incorrectly) should deserve an A grade. Completely lacking from their writing is evidence of their ability to THINK and to ORGANIZE. These students (I'd roughly guess about 85% of all I've taught) feel that since they've been cranking out shallow book reports and plagiarized research papers since 1st grade, they know how to write. I'm also a homeschooling mom of eight children, and have been troubled by every writing curriculum I've encountered--until now. Most skip from one skill to another with little connection, focus on the self, or provide little instruction relevant to the crucial persuasive writing skills children need to develop to succeed in college and the real world. But Writing with Ease lays the foundation for teaching children to THINK about the words, the sentences, the paragraphs, the ideas. Then it teaches them to ORGANIZE those ideas. My two oldest are natural writers, and now as teenagers are succeeding well. But this book has come at the right to help me guide my two boys who struggled with even learning to read by their eighth birthdays. We've always done copy work and written notes with their science and history lessons. Now with Writing with Ease I have the instruction and lessons to move my sons to the next level of competent writing. No skill is more critical for the success of adults in any job or career than the skill of persuasive, organized writing. Try this book. The lessons take about 10 minutes' of preparation per day (I'm not using the workbooks). Hardly a big investment for such an important skill.

Susan Bauer's opening essay on the writing process and how to teach it is the most cogent, informed explanation I've ever read: "Writing is a process that involves two distinct mental steps. First, the writer puts an idea into words; then, she puts the words down on paper. INARTICULATE IDEA ---> IDEA IN WORDS <br /> IDEA IN WORDS ---> WORDS ON PAPER <br /> <br />. . . The pianist practices first the right hand, and then the left hand, before putting the two together; the young writer practices putting ideas into words, and then putting words down on paper, before trying to do both simultaneously. . . What follows will equip you to train the young student in the language of writing." <br /> <br />And Bauer delivers on this promise perfectly; she shows even the most unprepared parent or teacher how to teach good writing in just a few minutes a day. Her program will be a great relief to students who feel overwhelmed by writing assignments. It's all so manageable: she even tells you exactly what to do if you're starting with a "reluctant older student(grade 6-12)." <br /> <br />To make her case, her own writing is so easy and delightful that it's relaxing to read. I'm ordering the workbooks. <br /> <br />Thank you, Ms Bauer. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />

my daughter HATES to write. we've been using this program for a week, and already the sentences chosen to copy are so intriguing for her she actually requested we check out the book it's taken from. this is the child that doesn't have patience for chapter books. she's already read through 24 pages of it within the first two days of starting it. but i digress... this copy work and narrative work is exactly what my daughter needs. mrs. bauer is precisely right when she teaches the parent that writing from thoughts is a two step process and the children need to be taught how to do those steps separately (copy work & narration - parent writes the narration). my child continuously gave me zippy little narratives because she didn't want to copy down big long sentences after she was done thinking it through. with the time to grow her writing ability even five words at a time while simultaneously strengthening her summary and narration skills, she is now on the path for inevitable success. the best part is these writing exercises take no more than 5-10 minutes per day, four days per week. ahhh, gone are the cries in protest when i announce it's time to do writing! thank you susan bauer yet again!

This book is what i had hoped to find. My son has a vivid imagination and talks incessantly. But, when it came time for him to write he would write the simplist of sentances, ie. "I like blue." I was unsure of where to start. With this book I have four years of direction and an understanding of what he should be accomplishing. I have been using this book for 2 weeks now. I can already see a difference. I would never have thought it would help so quickly. I am glad that this book was released just in time for me. I look forward to years of using this book.