My Journey to Write Source

Last week on The Well Trained Mind K-8 Curriculum Board  Painted Lady started a thread Name a curriculum you use & love that you think is underappreciated .   Very interesting thread that you should check out if you homeschool.   I declared for all the world to see that I feel Write Source is an underappreciated curriculum.  In the past, I have refrained from talking about Write Source  because as a program written and marketed to the public school market  many classical homeschoolers seem to skim right over it.   So, I kept my opinion about it to myself.   I've tried a lot of the programs aimed at homeschoolers--IEW, WriteShop, Writing Strands, Sonlight, Winter Promise, Shurley, and Rod and Staff (just to name a few!!)---and while they all had their strengths, I just didn't feel they did the job for me.   The exception in the above list is Rod and Staff.   I have used Rod and Staff's writing portion of their English program for my older kids and I really think it is a great program.   It is an incremental "slow and steady" approach to writing that follows the classic model of teaching writing.   And yet, I am using Write Source with my younger kids because I have decided not to use Rod and Staff English all the way from K--8.   After my guinea pig (aka N), I decided to settle on the progression of First Language Lessons 1 and 2, Shurley English 2, 4,and 6,  Rod and Staff 6,7,and 8.   First Language Lessons include all the writing really needed for that young age.   Then comes Shurley English--great at teaching parts of speech however, horrible with writing instruction!!!  

My oldest son took a correspondance course for his 3rd or 4th grade Language Arts.   An older version of Write Source was one of the books used for the class.   I remembered how he loved his Write Source book (at the time it was called Writer's Express).   Additional, we somehow acquired Writer's Inc.-- the high school version of an older edition of Write Source.   We referred to Writer's Inc  a lot as I struggled to make all those other curriculi work for us.  

 Wanting something to hold my hand as I taught my kids to write, WriteShop fit the bill in that aspect, but I just didn't think it required enough of the student.  At the time, I had one student working on his ninth-grade year and one on her 6/7th- grade year.  I really felt I should be working towards more than developing a paragraph with that age level.   I wanted to work on papers!   I had already taught my students how to fashion a paragraph using Four Square(a story and curriculum for another day).   So, WriteShop as a curriculum really frustrated me.  

Not to long after my dismay with WriteShop began, I was purusing my Rainbow Resource catalog( I think it was the year it got really big--like a phone book---I remember because I couldn't read it in the bathtub anymore!--anyway--back to Write Source) when I happened upon this review .   I think this review in and of itself answers so many questions about thecuriculum and should be required reading for anyone thinking about buying Write Source.  

 In a really big nut shell--my journey to Write Source.

Be sure to look at my complete review of Write Source.