Write With World (TOS Review)

We have subscribed to World Magazine and God’s World News in the past and have really liked the publications. I appreciated being able to read news written with a Christian worldview.

Now, the publishers of these magazines have published a new two-year middle-school writing curriculum with the goals of training students to become proficient communicators through their writing. This methodical curriculum covers 16 key lessons, including:

• Reading images and advertisements
• Comparative and critical reading of sentences, paragraphs, and essays
• paragraphs
• composing and linking sentences
• creating focus and arranging ideas
• linking paragraphs: transitions and logic
• reporting facts
• creating character
• writing autobiography
• writing fictional narrative
• and much more

The student book includes short chapters written directly to the student in a conversational style that explain a concept with numerous examples. Each lesson concludes with a writing assignment. This might be to write a paragraph, to critique a paragraph or to write a sentence or list.

The program differs from others that I’ve seen in that it focuses heavily on analyzing short passages before the student is asked to do much writing. The student is asked to evaluate passages that are well written and others that are not very well written and to describe the reasons one is better than the other. The emphasis seems to be teaching students to understand what good writing looks like before they are expected to produce lengthy writing assignments themselves. Weekly assignments with a thesaurus are included, as are occasional grammar lessons. The assignments are short, but this keeps them from being overwhelming to a reluctant writer.

Emily seems to be enjoying Write With World and, while she hasn’t yet done a lot of actual writing yet with the program, I am hopeful that the curriculum will improve her writing skills.

Emily says:

I like this writing program because I learn a lot. I am learning how to use more descriptive words and phrases. I like it because it helps me write with great detail and use capitals and nouns and even pronouns. Write With World also teaches me to write so I  can create images in whoever reads my stories’ minds, make it descriptive so that people can picture the scene and what it looks like. I really love Write With World and hope that I will get to be a great writer someday.

The teacher’s book contains the entire student book as well as  notes in the margins that help the teacher in further explaining concepts and evaluating the assignments.

In September, a website will be added to the program. This site will provide an online publishing opportunity for students as well as additional writing assignments to supplement those provided in the book.

 Write With World will sell for $95 for year one. This includes the student and teacher books and annual website access. The complete two-year curriculum with two years of website access is $165.

To read more reviews of Writing With World, please visit the TOS Crew Blog.

5/5 stars

Disclaimer: As a member of the TOS Crew, I received  free student and teacher’s books from God’s World Publications, Inc. in order to write this review. All opinions are my own.