Well, I am using CtC with my daughter. I wanted to give you what I could about Write with the Best, as we LOVE it!
Firstly, the manual is divided into "units". There are 9 units. Each unit contains 10 days of instruction. The units are titled as follows: Writing a Descriptive Paragraph-describing an object, Writing a Descritpive Paragraph-describing a place, Writing a Descriptive Paragraph-describing a character, Writing a Dialogue, Writing a Short Story, Writing a Fable, Writing a Friendly Letter, Writing Poetry-rhyming verse, Writing Poetry-a ballad or narrative poem. Each unit uses a great peice from literature as an example or foundation for that unit. For example, unit 1 uses an excerpt from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. There is a wonderful appendix in the back called the How to Write Guide. Also, the introduction is full of helps as well.
Jill Dixon says in the introduction that the main goal of the program is to teach students to write descriptively, to produce successful writers who know how to write effectively, know how to proofread their work, and who know how to analyze great literature.
Unit one opens with reading the excerpt by Jules Verne. In Day 2 you learn/review four parts of speech and discuss characteristics that make writing "great". In Day 3 you work through the Jules Verne passage marking the adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and nouns found therein. In Day 4 you use a thesaurus to replace a list of words given in the lesson with 3 substitute words. In Day 5 you choose a paragraph in a book of your choice that is describing an object. Then the student writes down all of the descriptive words they can find. Then there is a discussion and dictation using that paragraph. In Day 6 you discuss and learn the requirements for writing a proper paragraph. Day 7 starts the student in the process of learning how to write a paragraph, very step by step over the course of Days 7-10 of the unit. So this gives you a little picture of how it begins!!
It teaches writing from the ground up, beginning with the paragraph--one thing I love about the program!!
We are not very far through the program yet, as we have been doing CtC at half speed for awhile. But it looks like WWTB gets progressively more challenging as you work through it.
Hope this helps a little, and gives you a little picture of things!!
.
I'm super confident that he'll do so much better this year, and R & S is gentle the way HOD suggests doing it.