WriteShop I and II comprise a parent-participation writing curriculum for students in middle and high school. These placement guidelines will help you choose the exact starting level when using WriteShop I or II.
WriteShop I
Target range: 12- to 15-year-olds
Start with WriteShop I if your teen needs to learn how to:
- Generally hone writing skills
- Narrow a broad topic to a specific topic
- Brainstorm before writing
- Develop stronger, well-constructed sentences
- Write a strong paragraph
- Choose concrete words over vague, weak ones
- Improve use of punctuation
- Identify and correctly use parts of speech in writing
- Use more mature and varied sentences in writing
- Write with more detail and description
- Write to explain
- Correctly use voice and tense in narrative writing
- Understand omniscience and limited omniscience in narrative writing
- Improve self-editing techniques to correct and revise compositions
If your older teen is already experienced and confident in these areas, consider WriteShop II instead.
WriteShop II
Target Range: 13- to 17-year-olds
WriteShop II is a continuation of WriteShop I, so students who have successfully completed WriteShop I can move right into WriteShop II. WriteShop II is a good option for 15-17-year-olds who have a solid foundation in paragraph writing and experience with descriptive, informative, and narrative writing.
Start with WriteShop II if your teen needs to learn how to:
- Write a basic but solid 5-paragraph essay in which they adequately develop several main points with details, facts, examples, and logic
- Write an effective timed essay in 30 minutes
- Experience writing different kinds of essays: opinion essays, compare/contrast essays, and essays that describe or define
- Use descriptive narration
- Use narrative voice and different points of view in their writing
- Understand propaganda in writing
- Write to persuade
- Improve use of writing vocabulary
- Improve content and build more complex sentences
- Use parallel sentence construction
- Write more concisely
- Use appositives, participial phrases, subordinating conjunctions, and other parts of speech to develop well-structured, mature-sounding sentences
Older teens who are already skilled and confident in these areas may not need WriteShop.