Julie Bogart has been teaching writing courses for many years, and homeschoolers can benefit from her wealth of experience through all of her Brave Writer resources. The courses cover more than writing and can serve as your foundational language arts instruction since they also teach reading comprehension, grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Phonics and handwriting will require other resources.
Most customers will want to purchase one or more bundles that have either two or three PDF resources for each age range. Bundles for students up through eighth grade include the Growing Brave Writers manual for parents (a one-time purchase), a monthly handbook specific to that level (used to teach writing mechanics and literature), and an age-appropriate program of monthly projects that teach the writing formats. Bundles for high school drop the parent manual. Bundles can be stretched beyond the specified ages, and children of different ages might be taught from the same bundle. See the website for suggestions for teaching children at differing levels.
The bundles and their component are:
- Beginning Writers (ages 5-7): Growing Brave Writers, Quill, and Jot it Down
- Emerging Writers (ages 8-10): Growing Brave Writers, Dart, and Partnership Writing
- Middle School Writers (ages 11-12): Growing Brave Writers, Arrow, and Building Confidence
- High School Writers (ages 13-14): Boomerang and Help for High School
- College Prep Writers (ages 15-18): Slingshot and Help for High School
Growing Brave Writers
Growing Brave Writers teaches parents how to coach their children through the writing process over a 10-month school year. The ideas and strategies in the book are best for children in grades three to ten, although many ideas can be used with younger children. Many strategies can also be used with older students, especially those behind in their writing skills. Recognizing the overwhelming load faced by many homeschooling parents, Bogart has designed the book so that parents read as they go rather than having to digest the entire book before starting. She also includes short summaries of many ideas in Growing Brave Writers within the other course components at points where they apply.
Parents are expected to work with students at all levels rather than having students learn independently. Bogart urges parents/teachers to provide children with a language-rich environment to nourish their developing abilities. Writing skills are developed as children listen to good books read aloud to them, as they carry on conversations with others, as they share their ideas orally, as a parent jots down a child’s thoughts, or as children retell or illustrate a story.
Bogart uses narration and dictation—tools familiar to Charlotte Mason fans—to develop several language arts skills. Both strategies can help children become interested in writing before they can write for themselves. Narration helps children learn how to express their thoughts, and dictation helps older children develop spelling and punctuation skills.
Each chapter in Growing Brave Writers continues to educate the parent/teacher while adding more techniques and teaching strategies. Among these are a communication game, freewriting, developing observation skills, working with prompts, developing and narrowing topics, editing, and learning how to write in structured forms, including essays.
Pages 181 to 206 have charts showing the skills taught in each component of the five bundles (e.g., parts of speech, punctuation, literary devices, narration, report writing, editing), including cross-curricular activities that touch on history, math, science and nature study, and art. These charts might also be helpful for summarizing what students have accomplished for a student’s records or for handing in to oversight authorities.
The charts are followed by many pages with samples of student writing in response to the different activities in Growing Brave Writers plus some comments by adults regarding their children’s work.
The other bundled resources support the methods taught in Growing Brave Writers, and students can also enroll in Brave Writer’s online classes for even more support.
Punctuation, Grammar, and Spelling Instruction through Literature: Dart, Arrow, Boomerang, and Slingshot
Dart, Arrow, and Boomerang each have nine monthly units, while Slingshot has five. Each unit is based on an age-appropriate children’s book or novel that you need to obtain separately. Whichever level you subscribe to, they are delivered as PDFs to your account on the fifteenth of each month, beginning in July. These full-color handbooks each have 40 to 50 pages and can be used with multiple children in your family. (Class groups need a license to produce copies for students outside a single family.)
Within each course, the plan is that you spend four weeks per unit, but it’s okay if it takes longer to complete some units. Slingshot’s units are planned for two months each since students will be reading lengthy books and writing papers. Every school year’s program has a specified list of units with their associated books to be read. Many more units have already been created and are available as individual units in their “literature singles.” You can swap one unit within each program for one of the literature singles if you wish.
I have to mention Quill in this section since it’s the “mechanics” level for ages five to seven. However, it focuses on pre-literacy skills for reading, writing, and math through its ten units rather than punctuation, grammar, and spelling. Quill uses picture books related to the unit’s theme, and you can choose from several recommended titles or choose your own.
A Guidelines book that comes with each of these programs explains how to use the units. It has essential instructions and must be read before beginning to teach the units. Parents and teachers will likely refer to it frequently as they teach. It covers some of what is in Growing Brave Writers, but it’s much briefer. The Guidelines books all include a “Skills Tracker” form to be used each month to keep track of grammar and punctuation skill coverage and improvement. The “Our Week” form helps parents keep track weekly of all elements in the unit, including discussions.
For all levels except Quill, the Guidelines books recommend a grammar reference book such as Nitty-Gritty Grammar or More Nitty-Gritty Grammar, both by Edith H. Fine and Judith P. Josephson. You don’t need both, and you can use another grammar reference book if you want.
All four levels (beyond Quill) share many of the same features. A novel serves as the basis for lessons for each unit. Notes in the units provide background for the novel. The novel might be read aloud, read independently, or heard on a recording.
Four passages from each novel—one per week—are used as the basis for almost all other work each week. Copywork and dictation activities are used to teach and reinforce spelling and punctuation. Students learn writing elements and grammar by studying elements and examples found within the passage for that week. Reading comprehension, literary analysis, and understanding of literary devices occur as you discuss the passage. To help with comprehension and analysis and take students beyond the reading, every unit also includes “Big Juicy Questions,” such as “What makes a good friend?” (Dart: Charlotte’s Web, p. 35). The fourth week of each unit has a writing activity and optional Book Club Party Ideas that are loaded with book-themed games, food, and crafts.
The activities for each unit become more challenging at each level. Boomerang and Slingshot add more background on the novel that goes beyond the selected passages plus nine “Think Piece Questions” for discussion or writing. These questions might deal with literary elements or analysis, or they might go beyond the book into personal or broader applications. For instance, the third Think Piece Question on page 39 of Boomerang: The Giver asks, “The first memory given to Jonas is of snow. If you had the world’s memories to give to Jonas, what is the first memory you would give him?” Boomerang and Slingshot also have students write “Golden Lines” in a commonplace book. These are favorite passages from the novel along with a note about why the students selected each. (A commonplace book is simply a notebook where such writings are compiled.)
Parents remain involved even with high school students. Boomerang and Slingshot lessons assume parents are reading along with students and will participate in discussions regarding the readings and the lesson content.
Writing Formats/Assignments: Jot It Down, Partnership Writing, Building Confidence, and Help for High School
The third component (or second in the two high school bundles) teaches the different writing formats, usually one writing project per month.
Jot It Down for ages five to seven relies heavily on parents to transcribe children’s thoughts as they begin express themselves. Three or more of the activities—selected from Poetry Teatimes, Weekly Movies, Nature Study, Art Appreciation, and Music Appreciation—should be used on different days each week. These activities are fully developed in Jot It Down.
Children will also practice oral recitation of information like their full name, their home address, counting, the seasons, etc. Page 29 has lots of suggestions. Memorization skills will also be learned through songs, poems, jokes, riddles, tongue twisters, and religious texts that you choose. Oral word-play games familiarize children with phonetic sounds, rhymes, and creativity. Narrations (transcribed by parents) are drawn from a child’s interests and enthusiasms rather than assignments. Throughout Jot It Down, conversation is the mainstay.
The ten writing projects for his level often involve a combination of arts and crafts, reading, discussion, oral narration, and parental transcription. For example, children might create a photo journal about things to do with friends and turn it into a scrapbooking project with captions, stickers, cutouts, and other enhancements.
Partnership Writing for ages eight to ten continues in the same vein as Jot It Down, incorporating some of the same activities and emphasizing conversation and interaction. But there’s a transition as children learn to write for themselves and parents become partners who help as needed. In addition to Poetry Teatimes, Weekly Movies, and other recurring activities, Partnership Writing adds reading books on their own, doing word-play activities using a Magnetic Poetry Kit, and writing out copywork passages from strips drawn from a copywork jar. The book includes suggested poems for memorization and oral presentation. Narrations might be prompted rather than waiting for a child to come up with a topic they are enthused to talk about. Freewriting is introduced at this level, with parents writing alongside the child to both demonstrate and join in the process.
Writing projects in Partnership Writing rely more on writing and less on arts and crafts than Jot It Down. For example, the month-long project of creating a personal timeline has children collect information from parents and family members, and then write short descriptions along a timeline. They can be as creative as they want artistically, by adding photos, drawings, or memorabilia.
Building Confidence for ages 11 to 12 retains some weekly activities also used in younger levels—Poetry Teatimes, Weekly Movies, Nature Study, Art Appreciation, and Music Appreciation—and adds theater events, reading or viewing Shakespeare’s plays, and creating visual journals (topical collages with a written description).
Children continue with narrations but also learn to summarize by focusing on the key ideas in a more succinct manner. Editing is taught at this level along with increased emphasis on correct mechanics.
The ten writing projects include writing a letter, an advertisement, a book review, several reports, and creative writing. In addition to the ten writing projects, there are two optional bonus months with creative fiction and poetry projects.
Help for High School is written directly to students, although parents should also read it to better enable them to support students and evaluate work. Students work through the modules, completing the writing assignments for each section.
This 166-page book prepares students for the essay writing required in higher education, but it does so by honing basic writing skills rather than teaching formulaic ways of writing. It is divided into two parts: writing skills (the writing process, choosing a topic, adding details, etc.—the building blocks used for writing essays) and essay writing. The “Keen Observation of an Idea” and “Telling the True Truth” modules in Part One are particularly valuable as preliminary steps to essay writing. The second section teaches essay writing, thesis statements, introductions and conclusions, citations, and the structure of an academic essay. However, Bogart stretches students to write two different kinds of essays, one “closed” and one “open.” The closed essay follows the traditional format students are commonly taught, while the open essay is an investigative piece for which students explore a question without choosing and defending a particular position. I appreciate this broader approach to essay writing since the latter type of essay is often closer to the essay writing done by adults in the “real world.”
Help for High School can be completed in a semester or spread out over a year. However, most of the lessons can be reused several times with different subject matter. That’s why it can be used alongside both Boomerang and Slingshot.
Summary
All these resources and others available through Brave Writer are designed to help students develop a love for writing along with the necessary skills.
