Jump In: A Workbook for Reluctant and Eager Writers

by Sharon Watson

Apologia Educational Ministries, Inc.

Jump In is a two-year writing program for middle school students (grades 6-8), although it might also be used with high schoolers who need more work on basic writing skills or need a user-friendly approach to motivate them to improve their skills. Written particularly for Christian homeschoolers, it is designed for students to work independently most of the time, and it assumes a Christian audience, with references to favorite Bible verses, church activities, judgments about Greek gods and goddesses, spiritual motivations of characters in stories, and similar Christian experiences and attitudes.

The course consists of a student book plus a teacher guide titled The Lifeguard’s Locker: A Parent/Teacher Manual for Jump In. Both are essential. The 248-page student worktext includes instruction, activities, and assignments plus helpful reference tools at the back. Assignments are presented in seven sections of varying length: prewriting skills, opinion, persuasion, exposition, description, narration, and poetry. Within each section, lessons are presented as a series of skills so that students approach each type of writing in bite-size chunks. For most of the activities student will write directly in their workbook, spending from five to twenty minutes per lesson on writing activities. I particularly like the way Sharon Watson has interspersed activities throughout the instruction to ensure that students are processing and applying as they learn. At the end of each section of “skill lessons” students are given a number of writing assignments from which to choose. These lengthier assignments might take anywhere from two to ten days to complete and will likely be done either in a notebook or on the computer.

The teacher manual has answers for the activities when they are predictable answers, and it also has an extensive section on evaluating lengthier student work with reproducible forms and samples of completed forms—very helpful for the inexperience parent/teacher.

The student workbook itself might be completed in one school year. What transforms Jump In into a two-year program are the “10-Minute Writing Plunges” found in the teacher manual. These are a number of writing prompts—four per week for September through May—that are the basis for ten-minute writing assignments to be completed Monday through Thursday. You are free to substitute your own writing prompts if you wish. On Friday, students select their favorite of the four papers and polish it to be turned in on the following Monday.

The “Writing Plunges” are not to be used at the same time as students are working through their other lessons. They might be used on their own as the second year of the program or you might break up the workbook lessons by spending a month or more on “Writing Plunges” between sections of the book.

A fairly comprehensive course, Jump In provides instruction from brainstorming, topic selection, and construction of a composition with an introduction, body, and conclusion all the way through the use of citations (either included within the text of the composition or at the end of the quoted or referenced material) and creation of a bibliography. Note that the “exposition” section of the workbook expands to include lessons on writing biographies, book reports, book responses, newspaper articles, how-to articles, and compare and contrast essays.

The student workbook is very attractive. Printed in full-color, it includes illustrations and graphics that break up the print content and keep students from getting overwhelmed. Students will also need a grammar reference book or they might need additional grammar instruction if they are weak in this area; suggestions are included in the teacher manual.

I expect this will be a popular choice for homeschoolers for three reasons:
- The content is appropriate with examples that suit Christian homeschoolers
- It’s a well-written course that teaches very effectively
- And students can complete most of their work independently.