Writing Power

By Beverly L. Adams-Gordon
author of Spelling Power

 Order Now! 

   Writing Power gives you the background information you need to make writing an integral part of your entire curriculum. You will find important tools needed to conduct exciting and effective composition instruction for your kindergarten to grade 12 student. It provides you with a systematic approach to teaching your student the necessary grammar and punctuation skills through his composition work. You will find it fits in beautifully with many curriculum approaches, in particular the unit study, Charlotte Mason, Montessori, Principle Approach, and classical educational models. Even an "unschooler" will find Writing Power an excellent resource for helping her student improve his writing.

   Writing Power is for your whole family. Together, you will work to develop good writing skills and habits. The format is organized to allow you to teach one or more children, at different grade levels, at the same time. It also allows you to review key concepts as you teach. However, you will find Writing Power is not a self-teaching program. Your student cannot use Writing Power completely on his own. It requires hands-on teacher involvement, but the family approach to writing lessons and composition projects is designed to ease your lesson planning and instructional burden. The resources and organization of the entire text make it easy to individualize the program for each student, while still maintaining your sanity.

   What you won’t find in Writing Power is boring "drill and kill" worksheets, but rather fun, relevant exercises that you can select to address your student’s specific skill deficiencies. At the heart of Writing Power is the belief that the composition curriculum must be relevant to your student now, yet prepare him for whatever vocation he later chooses.

   Writing Power provides for the correlation of reading, writing, spelling, speaking, listening, and thinking primarily through your students’ writing about topics related to other curriculum topics (Art, History, Science, etc.) or literature selections, as well as topics of your student’s choice.

   This scheme of related skills and content allows for "family learning." After introducing a skill or writing component to your children, you are able to spend time with each of your children helping him to achieve success at his or her own level. What also happens in the family learning approach is there is more opportunity for family bonding and greater opportunity for students to work and help each other than possible with more traditional programs where each child works out of a separate and unrelated textbook.

   The family learning approach is central to Writing Power — this may result in radical changes to your approach to language arts instruction. Reading Writing Power’s Teacher’s Manual section (Section I) will help you understand and apply this approach. In addition to this major difference, you will also be learning other new and exciting ways to teach your student grammar and composition skills. So please, do take the time to read the Teacher’s Manual section—it will ensure that you and your student get the most out of the materials provided in Writing Power.

   It is a good idea to read through the teacher’s manual portion of your book the first time rather quickly, without really analyzing the material. This will give you a complete picture of the approach. (It takes the average reader just ten hours to complete this survey reading.) After this quick reading, you can return to Chapters Four through Ten for in-depth study and implementation of each aspect of the program.

   Chapter One discusses the overall goals of Writing Power. Chapters Two and Three essentially provide you with a mini-course in the fundamental aspects of Writing Power’s philosophy and what constitutes research-proven Grammar and Composition strategies. This information summarizes, for busy educators such as you, research proven approaches gleaned from hundreds of books on teaching language arts and on the psychology of teaching and learning in general. The focus of Chapter Four is setting the stage for writing by establishing an atmosphere and attitude conducive to effective writing instruction.

    There are seven main components taught through the Writing Power program: Oral Language, Literature and Reading, Integrated Functional Writing, Directed Writing, Spelling, Handwriting, and Prescriptive Grammar.

   1) Oral Language: This component recognizes that your student is likely to write as he speaks. Therefore improving his oral skills will prepare him for or improve his written skills as well as his verbal skills. The work in the Oral Language Component falls into two main categories: development of oral composition skills and development of effective speaking skills. Skills emphasized include: oral grammar and building a sentence sense, recitation and dictation, manners and etiquette, and public speaking. The procedures you will use to teach these important skills to your three to 18 year olds are detailed in Chapter Six: Writing is Talk on Paper. If your student is below age twelve, plan on allowing about five minutes per day for Oral Language work. If he is above age twelve, you will spend a total of fifteen minutes on the oral language drill and oral written connection activities.

   2) Literature and Reading: The literature and reading segments provide opportunities for the student to read a variety of materials for a variety of purposes. The major purpose is to provide a complete spectrum of reading experiences including fiction, non-fiction, biography, and poetry. This component includes establishing a family read-aloud program, individual "pleasure reading" and responding to and reporting on the literature your student has read. It does not replace your instructional reading program geared to teaching phonics, comprehension, or strategic reading skills. It does enhance those lessons and correlates them with the rest of your curriculum. The details of Writing Power’s literature component are found in Chapter Five: The Reading Road to Writing.

   3) Integrated Functional Writing includes specific composition skills lessons, as well as proofreading and coaching sessions. Writing Power incorporates the skills traditionally found in "compartmentalized" language lessons (writing complete sentences, subject-verb agreement, etc.) through its Integrated Functional Writing segment. Research overwhelmingly proves that skills are best developed during the writing process instead of through separate, unconnected lessons provided by workbooks and traditional textbooks. Often such activities become merely "busy work" with little or no connection (or retention) to actual writing.

   Discovery of the skills needed by the student are facilitated through a proofreading and coaching process first introduced in the Spelling Power manual (and greatly expanded here). The object, however, is not to overemphasize a proofreading or a writing process skill, but to encourage the student to perfect the clarity and correctness of all his writing. Although the last chapter of the Teacher’s Guide Section, Integrated Functional Writing is a theme throughout this manual. The key element of Integrated Functional Writing, teaching through coaching sessions, is outlined in Chapter Ten: Becoming a Writing Coach. Your schedule should include thirty minutes a day devoted to writing. This is a time everyone in the family spends actively writing.

   4) Directed Writing sessions provide your student with inductive and concrete lessons which focus on clear communication. In this component your child will learn to write sentences and paragraphs, expand them, and improve them. The Directed Writing component of Writing Power is delivered in a way that assures your child will achieve. Because he achieves meaning in writing, he gravitates toward writing. Thus, he writes more, and because he writes more, he learns to write better which increases his sense of achievement. These directed lessons will require about fifteen minutes a day for all students above age eight.

   Directed Writing Lesson guidelines are included in Chapter 7: Success From the Start, Chapter 8: Directed Writing: Sentences, and Chapter Nine: Putting It In Paragraphs.

   5) Prescriptive Grammar: It is easy to limit your teaching in the area of Language Arts to the mechanical skills, because it is easy to present concrete examples of such skills as using the period correctly or making the subject and predicate of a sentence agree. The Writing Power program takes a different view. Not only are capitalization, punctuation and grammar lessons only offered if and when a student needs them, they are also taught in a totally different manner. In Writing Power, skills are taught through writing and hands-on, multi-sensory activities. These are referred to as Discovery Activities.

   The title Discovery Activities suggests waiting around for learners to "discover" writing, punctuation, grammar and spelling. The truth is far from it. That would be a questionable practice. The discovery approach has absolutely nothing to do with anything remotely associated with educational laissez faire. Skills are "discovered" by your students because you (or the activity creator) knows precisely what is to be discovered and how to manage the discovery process. These Discovery Activities are presented in the Prescriptive Grammar Section as well as the Discovery Activities section of your Writing Power Manual, the Writing Power Computer Resources and the (optional) Writing Power Activity Task Cards. These are completed during the thirty minute family writing time.

   6) Spelling: You must set aside time every day of the week for your student who needs to study spelling. Once or twice a week is not frequent enough for economical learning and retention. These periods require between 15 to 20 minutes per day. The daily use of Spelling Power by all students above eight years of age is integral to the Writing Power program. While Spelling Power is a separate volume, Writing Power is designed to fully integrate with it.

   Students under eight who have completed a comprehensive phonics for reading program and are reading above second grade reading level may use the adapted approach to Spelling Power described on page 93 of the 3rd Edition or on pages 77 and 78 of earlier editions. Students under eight and who are not yet reading at second grade or above level should continue phonics instruction with a sound, multi-sensory approach. If you are not currently teaching spelling, a Spelling Power Readiness Checklist and the Adams-Gordon Spelling Scale (Form A) are found in the Evaluation Tools section to help you determine if your student is ready for formal instruction and if he is, where to begin in the Spelling Power program.

   In the Spelling Power program, You will pre-test words from the Flow-Word-List for five minutes (about one-third of the spelling time). Then your student will study any words which he misspelled, which takes about five minutes. The final five minutes will be used for Teacher Directed Instruction and Discovery Activities and Games which are provided in the Spelling Power manual.

    There are six levels of built-in review in the Spelling Power program. The sixth level of review is accomplished through Integrated Functional Writing Component. It is here that writing and spelling programs become fully merged.

   7) Handwriting: In addition to the copying of poems, writing of stories and writing of dictation exercises which are included in the Writing Power program it is recommended that all students work to improve their handwriting or typing skills. Portland State University’s Italic Handwriting Series (by Getty and Dubay) is recommended for teaching grades K through 8 handwriting skills and Write Now! for older students who need to improve handwriting. A systematic typing program is recommended for all students above age ten. Handwriting instruction and writing occupies about twenty minutes each day.

	• White: Pre-Primary (ages three to five);
	• Red: Primary (ages five through seven or kindergarten to second grade);
	• Blue: Elementary (ages eight through 11 or third through fifth grade);
	• Green: Intermediate (ages 12 through 14 or sixth through eighth grade); and
	• Yellow: Secondary (ages 15 through 18 or high school level).

   Each of these developmental levels provide for skills acquisition through activities and lessons covering a broad range of academic abilities. This allows you to provide your student with material below or above his "grade level," but which still fits within his natural developmental stage.

   Writing Power users are cautioned: Do not use grade levels when you are referring to your student’s level in the program. Getting caught up in grades and grade levels begins the comparison game which in turn leads to sibling rivalry and many non-Christian acts and attitudes. Instead, promote the concept that everyone in the family is working toward the same goal of writing mastery. Writing is a continuum of skills and each person is some where along this line, hopefully heading in the same direction. Writing Power allows each family member to master the skills at his own pace and progress.

Step One: Apply Material In Chapters To Writing

Most students under age eight will only work with the materials presented in Chapters Five through Seven and Chapter Ten. The material presented in these chapters represents foundational elements and on-going aspects of a comprehensive Language Arts program.

Chapter Five: The Reading Road to Writing emphasizes the importance of a background in quality literature to the development of excellence in writing. It details the literature component of your family’s composition program.

Chapter Six: Writing is Talk on Paper focuses on the importance of developing your student’s skills in oral language and its connection to effective written communications.

Chapter Seven: Success From the Start provides you with an approach to beginning writing instruction with students above three years of age. Students of all ages will begin the Writing Power program using the ideas and approaches presented in this chapter.

Chapter Eight : Directed Writing – Sentence Sense guides your student to compose a good sentence, expand a basic sentence and improve a poor sentence. Research overwhelmingly suggests a poor writer’s difficulty almost invariably falls on his inability to construct a clear, well-constructed sentence. Whether a ten year old, a university student, or a professional writer, the sentence is the basic unit of any composition. Once a student has developed a strong sentence sense, composing becomes little more than using any number of sentences in various ways to communicate and entertain. Each year students will progress to more and more advanced concepts of sentence writing as well as review previously covered material.

Chapter Nine: Directed Writing – Putting It in Paragraphs will continue the emphasis on basic mechanics while introducing various stylistic techniques and modes of writing paragraphs. You will also introduce your student to the various stages of the writing process including prewriting, drafting, editing and revising, proofreading, and publishing. Your student will explore the four basic forms of discourse (expository, argumentative or persuasive, descriptive, and narrative) through the lessons and activities in this chapter designed for the second quarter of each school year.

Writing Prompts and Projects and the Discovery Activities Sections provide writing activities and assignment ideas which extends the skills introduced in the chapters of the manual. They are organized, as much as possible, in a way that all levels can be working in the same area of composition at the same time (i.e. letter writing, descriptive paragraphs, etc.). This is in addition to the on-going work detailed in Chapters Five through Seven. Within each chapter’s topic are many suggested writing activities, allowing you to choose those which best coordinate with the rest of your curriculum and to make your program fresh and exciting each year. The optional Writing Power Activity Task Cards will also provide you with extension activities for the lessons in these chapters as well as other skill-building and composition activities.

A guiding force in the arrangement of core instructional materials in Writing Power is the belief that nothing is more motivating and reinforcing than experiencing achievement. Thus, guided activities and the directed writing in Writing Power are specifically designed to eliminate writer reluctance and procrastination. The format of the lessons removes the excuse "I don’t have anything to write about." Additionally, by first focusing on the smallest units of composition, the sentence and then the paragraph, you avoid the possibility of an inexperienced and unmotivated writer from being overwhelmed by the instructional process.

You will find a description of how to conduct a coaching session described in detail in Chapter Ten: Becoming a Writing Coach. The Check, C.A.T.C.H., and Correct™ concept described in this chapter allows you to incorporate composition instruction with the Prescriptive Grammar™ section of this book as well as your Spelling Power program.

   The various Skills Scope and Sequence Checklists will guide you in selecting appropriate composition lessons for your student. You can take up these activities in any order you wish or as you see the need in your student’s writing. However, if you have done little formal composition work, it is generally advisable to complete them in the order presented on the checklist because they are arranged in the order which research has shown will have the greatest positive affect on student writing. The checklists allow you to track the work of up to six children. You can also make copies of the various skill score cards to keep a more detailed record of the work completed by and errors made by each student, each year.

   Writing Power gives you many resources for skill-building activities once you determine the need for them through your coaching sessions. One resource you will use is the information and skill-building activities found in Section Three: Prescriptive Grammar. You will find Section Five: Discovery Activities a resource for directions to hands-on games and grammar lessons. The Computer Resources included with the program offers additional material you can access. The optional Writing Power Activity Task Cards box is another source of learning opportunities for your student. These activities add spice and variety to your program.

   At this point, you will also want to incorporate your Spelling Power program with your composition work. To do this, you will point out all misspelled words and have your student correct them on his composition. If your student is above "Level D" in Spelling Power, you will select some of the misspelled words (usually just two or three) for concentrated study using the 10-Step Study method described in Spelling Power. The next day these words will be re-tested during his regular Spelling Power session and will therefore automatically be included in Spelling Power’s built-in review. In Chapter Three of Spelling Power, you will find a complete explanation on linking spelling with composition.

   This approach teaches your student that all work requires proofreading and revising at least once for each of the Check, C.A.T.C.H. and Correct™ sections: content, structure and style, technicalities, spelling, and handwriting or formatting. Its power is that it not only establishes a definite modus operandi, but also helps your student establish the habit of proofreading and revising everything he writes.

The "publishing" phase of the Writing Power program is really the final or "H" phase of the Check, C.A.T.C.H., and Correct™ proofreading scheme. It is the phase where the student is concentrating on the final draft and finished product. This phase provides you an excellent opportunity to incorporate arts and crafts, oral presentations, handwriting and typing instruction, service and civic projects, and other subject matter into your composition program.

The Handbook Section will be used to store your student’s "handbook." The handbook is created by your child as he learns writing conventions, approaches, technicalities (capitalization, punctuation, and grammar), and so forth. More will be explained about this section of the notebook in another chapter. Your child will also file copies of the summary charts that he will use to help him in his self-critiquing and editing.

Directed Writing Section of the notebook will be used to store writing and answers to Directed Writing Exercises, Skill Builders and Oral-Written Connection work.

Journal Jogger Section will be used to store ideas and brainstorming techniques and forms. Each student should be given a copy of the black line masters of Journal Joggers appropriate to his age level. This is available through the Writing Power Computer Resources which are a part of this program. He will be add more ideas to this section as he thinks of them using the "Things I Can Write About" form. Actual journal writing is done in the Student’s Daily Journal. You can purchase these or you can make your own following the guidelines on page 117. Journal Writing is used in Writing Power differently than many programs, you will be introduced to this unique approach in Chapter Seven: Seccess From the Start.

Reading & Reviews Section will be used to store Reading Records, Book Reports and Reading Responses which will be introduced in Chapter Five: The Reading Road to Writing. The Book Report chapter of the Prompts and Projects section will explain how to teach book report writing skills to your student. Some families prefer to keep these in a separate binder.

Poems and Dictation Section will be used to store your student’s handwritten copies of poems he is memorizing for the Oral Language Connections and for work he has written during dictation sessions. These activities are introduced in Chapter Six: Writing is Talk on Paper.

Letters and Address Book Section will provide your student a place to store photocopies of letters he will write each month. He is also able to record important addresses in this section. Letter writing is one of the first complete compositions your student will complete in Writing Power. You will find complete directions for teaching the various levels of letter writing to your student in the Prompts and Projects section of this manual.

Composition Section is used to store your student’s writing assignments (other than listed above) and projects completed during Integrated Functional Writing as well as other writing done related to Language Arts Instruction.

The bulk of your student’s Writing Notebook will be devoted to storing (in date order) writing he has created and on which he is working. Your student will store partial, incomplete, and abandoned pieces as well as published pieces. Each piece will be dated and multiple pages of a piece, including all drafts, should be paper clipped together. New pieces are added to the back of this section. A log of entries is kept on the beginning page of the section. Completed pieces will also include a scoring chart. Your student’s Writing Notebook should be stored in a location which is easily accessed by both you and your student.

At the end of each quarter (45 instructional days) you and your student will select three pieces from his Student Writing Notebook that you think reflect his best work. These pieces should represent a variety of genres when possible and include carbon copies of letters sent. They should be placed in order of completion from the oldest to newest in a separate notebook which is not in daily use. This notebook becomes a permanent, cumulative record demonstrating your student’s growth as a writer. In the Writing Power program this notebook is referred to as your student’s portfolio. If you are required to issue grades or choose to do so the portfolio is used to help determine your student’s grade in Language Arts.

You should also have available in your home a Spelling Power manual, chart paper or a white Board, a timer (able to be set for five to twenty minutes), and a tape recorder and audio tapes. An integral part of the materials Writing Power provides to you is the Writing Power Computer Resources. These are primarily intended to provide lessons, skill building activities, and other resources. It is best if you access these materials on-line, since additional materials and updates will be added time to time. If you do not have access to the Internet, you may request a CD-ROM be sent to you free of charge by mailing in the post card found in your manual.

This introduction and the "reviews" provided in each section do not replace reading the manual. They are only an overview and aid in helping you begin using the program quickly by breaking up the process into bite-size chunks and highlighting keynotes. The margin notes in this introduction and throughout the text will guide you to more details and highlight key points.

To get the most from your Writing Power program, read and try to understand its philosophy and include each aspect of the program. While it is possible to complete the quarterly lessons, proofreading scheme, or Prescriptive Grammar™ lessons in isolation, this would amount to a program only slightly superior to traditional "drill and kill" workbooks. Only through the total application of the complete program will your student achieve writing power.

 

Two important notices:
"Binding Method"
	Writing Power is only available in what we call the  "Binder-Ready" format. The pages are loose-leaf and 3-hole punched, ready to be placed into a 3-ring binder. (We recommend a 2" binder at a minimum.) You will receive the printed front and back covers as well as the spine of the book, ready to slip into an Avery-type binder for easy identification.
Computer Resources
	The Writing Power manual comes with a wealth of activities for your students to use in reinforcing the concepts you will teach through this program. In addition you also receive, with your purchase, access to the Writing Power Computer Resources. The Computer Resources will be located on the castlemoyle.com web site and are updated and added to on a regular basis. If you don't have access to the Internet, you may receive a copy of the Computer Resources on a CD-ROM at no additional charge. Information on gaining access to the Writing Power Computer Resources is included in the Writing Power manual.

Last Updated: 22-Nov-03
© MMIII Castlemoyle Publishing