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Ladies,

I am excited to share another sneak peek with you from our upcoming World Geography guide. Today's peek is about the composition part of the English credit for the upcoming guide. We are so excited about this choice and are glad that we have worked out the details of carrying this particular product!

Just to give you a fuller picture, I'll share that the English credit in high school is typically comprised of literature, grammar, composition, and vocabulary. These areas can be covered in any combination of ways, however usually they are all represented somehow within the credit. The English credit is often at the upper range of hours logged, leaning more toward 150 hours in a year for a credit. This is because it must contain so many subjects within the credit. With this in mind, the piece I am sharing today has to do with the composition and grammar portion of the English credit.

Our plan for the new geography guide is to schedule Matthew Stephen's Essentials in Writing: Grade 10 for the area of composition. We are thinking that we will alternate this course with Rod and Staff English 7 so that students will do Essentials in Writing twice weekly and Rod and Staff twice weekly. Usually, we will plan for the time slot that these two subjects share to take approximately 30 min. each day. Students will complete half of Rod and Staff 7 as a freshman and the other half as a sophomore. Of course, students who are new to HOD (or who came to Rod and Staff late) may be on a different Rod and Staff sequence, however I just wanted to share our "ideal".

There is much to love about Stephen's Essentials in Writing: Grade 10 course. Our own oldest son is completing it this year, doing the Grade 10 even though he could have easily handled the Grade 11. This is because the Grade 11 course was delayed in its release, and so we simply began with the just released Grade 10 to give our oldest son a different approach to writing than he has had in the past.

Essentials in Writing has a DVD component for most lesson days, with the video lasting 7-15 minutes. Matthew Stephens enthusiastically teaches these video lesson with the aid of a whiteboard, clearly sharing the writing process step-by-step as he teaches the lesson. The Student Book is well laid out, including a summary of notes from the lesson, samples of effective writing, samples of ineffective writing, and clear rubrics to aid the parent in grading the student's work. Lessons are broken down into incremental steps, keeping the writing process from becoming intimidating.

We prefer the Grade 10 writing lessons to the grade 9 writing lessons for two reasons. First, due to the fact that HOD students have done much writing in the past, they are more than prepared for the level of writing taught in grade 10. Second, we much prefer the topics in grade 10 used for the writing sessions, and were more comfortable with the grade 10 focus than with some of the topics in grade 9. This makes Grade 10 Essentials in Writing an excellent fit for the upcoming World Geography guide. As you can see by the samples linked below, we are also thrilled that the Grade 10 EIW covers the writing of a research paper by breaking this large task down into incremental steps. What a blessing for all the families who worry about how to cover this very important skill!

The cost is $40 for the DVD (which includes a printable PDF of the Student Book). You also have the option of buying a pre-printed workbook for $20 (if you prefer a printed and bound copy). HOD will carry both of these product options. The Student Books are currently undergoing a few needed revisions and corrections, but they will be done by the time we begin carrying the grade 10 EIW in our HOD store!

Here is a link to the scope and sequence of the Grade 10 guide. Link: http://www.essentialsinwriting.com/reso ... ntents.pdf

There is no link to the interior of the high school Student Books yet, however here is a glimpse at the interior of a grade 8 lesson so that you can get an idea of what the Student Book looks like. (Keep in mind this is two grades below the grade we will be scheduling.) Link: http://www.essentialsinwriting.com/reso ... agraph.pdf

Here is a link to the grade 8 sample of a DVD lesson for the Student Book linked above. Again, there are no samples yet online for the high school guides (as they are so new), however this will give you an idea as to what the teaching looks like on the video lessons. Scroll down to the bottom of the link to see the video. Link: http://www.essentialsinwriting.com/eighth-grade.php

We hope that you will be as excited about this selection as we are! Stephen's EIW is truly an answer to our prayers for a high school composition program for our World Geography guide. The Grade 10 was just released in late September, 2012.

Blessings,
Carrie

Not that I have to think about this any time soon But can the pdf be used with subsequent children? Or is that something we'll have to pay for each time?

Carrie I have heard great things about Essentials in Writing and had just looked at it recently and hoped you would schedule it at some point because I think it will be a good fit for Noah. So glad you chose to use it.

I'm so glad that you are excited! In answer to MomtoJGJE, you can reprint the Student Book for each subsequent child without additional cost from the provided PDF that comes with the DVD. If you did choose to buy a preprinted Student Book, then that cannot be photocopied, so it would be for a single child's use. However, the printable PDF automatically comes with the DVD's at no additional cost, so you'd always have that option for future kiddos if desired.

Blessings,
Carrie

Hi, Carrie. We are all loving the sneak peaks! Just a quick question for future reference. I realize that this guide is geared toward a freshman year in high school. We are doing Preparing as is (with all of your recommendations) for third grade now with my 9 year old daughter who falls in the middle of the target age range, and it is a perfect fit for her. So, she will hit this new guide for her 8th grade year. Will this still be a good fit, or will it need to be modified for 8th graders? Thanks so much!

Christy

Nice. I like having more multimedia being brought in for various subjects. For us it helps that it's not just mom and a book telling them what to do. Is it silly to be excited about that aspect?

DD11 stood beside me while I watched the 8th grade video sample, and said, are we going to use that. I said when she gets to the first high school guide, and she said, yay, I want to learn from him. She had listened to the entire thing with me, so I gather she was impressed with what she heard, and I would imagine likely to remember what he said and use it in her writing now.

Carrie ,

Thank you for all you do! We have been so blessed this year. This is our first year using HOD and we love it, or I love it! My kids like it a lot except when they have to be stretched a bit. I told them it is good to be challenged some. Thanks for all the sneak peaks.

My oldest dd is going into high school next year, and getting very excited. We are using RevtoRev and she has done great. So much so that I have been thinking of moving her right into the new guide and just letting her read some of the books from MTMM.

I have a question regarding writing. My daughter loves to write and was wanting to do the One Year Adventure Novel (DVD-workbook) have you thought of putting this in any of your guides to come?

Well I can't say enough wonderful things, even my oldest dd said how neat it was that everything is draw back to scripture. She thinks it great to see all the books point back to God.

Lord willing we will continue on this path using HOD!
Thanks so much.
Stacey

I'm excited too to have another "writing" teacher help out with writing lessons, and Stephens does a terrific job in that area!

As far as those students who come into the World Geography guide in 8th grade, after coming up through the rest of the HOD guides, there shouldn't be any problem with doing the EIW: Grade 10 (as long as they have done the HOD recommendations for writing throughout the previous guides). This is because the extra writing programs added each year throughout HOD are very diverse and cover so many types of writing that the students who come up through the HOD guides will be very well-prepared for Stephen's writing instruction in EIW: Grade 10. Stephens is also very thorough, which helps so much!

As far as the One-Year Adventure Novel goes, we did look at it quite a bit for our own oldest son and found that the amount of time required for that particular program each day was very heavy. It would pretty much eclipse any time spent on literature or grammar (making writing the sole focus). So, while the concept is exciting, we felt the balance we strive for within each HOD guide would be lost with the inclusion of this particular writing program.

Blessings,
Carrie

Carrie,
Wow this was is refresing to see. I struggled to teach my older kiddos language arts. I told my dd who is in College studying to teach English as a second language that she needs to make a language arts DVD for her two younger siblings when they are in high school. Well, she won't need to because that has already been done. This should be a wonderful resource for High School. Thank you for the sneak peek. Hope the "it" has left your home. We are staying indoors and away from germs as an arctic blast with windchills -35 and temp -11 has reached Minnesota.
Tammy