Review: WriteShop Primary Book A

Disclosure: I received WriteShop Primary Book A and Help, I Have a Reluctant Writer in order to write this honest review. This post also contains affiliate links.

A couple of weeks ago I started working on WriteShop Primary Book A with 3 of my children and am very happy to share a review of it today with you.

I received this WriteShop curriculum in ebook format, which was just perfect because I need to print out various pages for more than one child.  There is a 186-page Teacher’s Guide and an Activity Set Worksheet Pack (which includes the pages for the kids to write on).

Immediately after showing it to my 4-year-old son, my 6-year-old daughter, and my 8-year-old son they wanted to work on it!  The graphics and pictures really drew them in.  The pages for writing were so fun that they wanted to write their own stories on them.  And the other worksheets encouraged them to use their imaginations.

This one was by my 4-year-old:

Can’t read this one? That’s because my 8-year-old son used invisible ink. 🙂

The next 3 were by my 6-year-old daughter:

 

I’ve never used a writing curriculum with my students in K-2nd grade.  But now I’m really glad I have WriteShop Primary Book A.  There are a lot of different ways to use it.  There are 3 Primary levels (A, B, and C), so you can decide how quickly you want (or need) to get through Book A. At the beginning of the Teacher’s Guide, it explains schedules for doing Levels A, B, and C all in one year, or spread out to 2 years, or just one per year.  It depends on how old your child is when you start.

I really love the activities for getting young children such as mine interested in writing.  It is perfect for their level!  And, you as the parent or teacher will be doing the actual writing down on paper for them if they can’t do it yet.  So, don’t worry about that part.  There are activities such as guided writing practice, pre-writing, and brainstorming.  The activity sheets are fun and have pictures the kids can color. Some are for cutting out and doing something with–like making a “story train.”  Kids are exposed to rhyming, learning how to do a story web, sequencing of a story, editing, and revising.

The Teacher’s Guide tells you exactly what to do for each lesson.  You don’t need to have any experience in teaching writing–you’ll learn along with the kids.

One of the most fun ideas in this curriculum was the different ways you can “publish” the kids’ stories–such as making a story kite by taping the story into a cylinder and attaching streamers to it.  Then he or she can fly the kite around to share his story with others!

So, check out WriteShop Primary Book A (and all the other WriteShop products they publish for kids through high school).

WriteShop has another product called Help, I Have a Reluctant Writer that is great as well because it offers lots of tips and strategies for helping reluctant writers.

 

In this 29-page e-book you’ll learn ways to not turn your child off of writing, how to help them by giving specific instructions, and even how to get teens writing.

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