Elegant Essay Teacher/Student Combo

Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) curriculum provides an overall approach to writing instruction for all your homeschooling years. The distinctive Teaching Writing Structure & Style (TWSS) approach focuses on two basic components of composition – structure and style. Structure is both the type of writing and the method of organizing the writing. Style includes such things as varying sentence openings, using similes and metaphors, or repeating certain words for effect. Teachers and students will learn how to outline and summarize; transform their thoughts and ideas into writing; create cohesive paragraphs, essays, stories, reports, and critiques. They’ll learn/apply stylistic techniques like varied sentence structure, interesting vocabulary; and literary devices. It’s assumed parents/teachers are familiar with this dual-focused TWSS method when teaching IEW’s Structure & Style and in the Theme-Based Writing lesson courses. 

Prepare your student for college-level writing assignments with this 12-week course. If you’re familiar with IEW’s process, Andrew Pudewa’s instruction, and program components (student consumable and binder, teacher book, portable walls, key-word outline and video teaching), this course will be a fabulous next step in preparing for academic writing. If you’ve never used an IEW program: no worries! You can easily step in and benefit from this course—no pre-reqs! Students can stay fairly self-directed using their Student book and Binder: assignments are delineated; check-the-box steps are organized by days. Teacher books provide brief video summaries, the student book in small-format, additional teaching information, answers (when applicable), and more. The purchase of the Teacher’s Manual allows an e-audio download of Hacking High School (download instructions included in each text). Students will learn and practice varied writing types: taking notes from written and verbal sources; précis (similar to an abstract), writing prompts, a personal essay, position paper, reflection essay, and mimic a famous author’s writing style (while learning more about their own style). In addition, students will learn some very college-specific writing skills: note-taking practice, timed essays, MLA and APA documentation styles, bibliographies, and avoiding plagiarism. For the required video instruction, choose between either the forever streaming or DVD options. ©2024 ~ Ruth

Suppose your junior or senior high student has been through Level B or C of the Student Writing Intensive (SWI) seminar and has a good understanding of how to write a paragraph using topic and clincher sentences. He may even have a little bit of experience with essay writing but you feel he needs more instruction and practice with essays. This course is for you! Focusing specifically on the structure and content of essay writing, it's an extension and refinement of IEW's Unit VIII (the formal essay). Utilizing a four-step teaching strategy which includes preliminary instruction, modeling, practice with help, and "on your own" work, this ten-week course by Lesha Myers takes the student step-by-step through the essay-writing process. Teaching units include thesis statements, essay organization, transitions, introductions, and conclusions and end with descriptive and persuasive essay practice. Revised for 2011, the Teacher's Manual is now separate from the Student Book and includes additional teacher material specifically useful for co-op classes - class schedules and more information on teaching methods. Student Books contain the student pages from the previous edition with additional pages for taking class notes. The two books are designed to be interactive, and both are required to complete the course successfully.