Homeschool Review Crew - Writing With Sharon Watson Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crisis Christian Worldview

I somehow have birthed three very reluctant writers and 2 very reluctant readers, even though one of them was reading fluently at age 3, so needless to say - I was thrilled to get a chance to review Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crisis from Writing with Sharon Watson. Before I got started, I was able to download free sample chapters, grading grids, and quizzes on the course page, and you can too. Please take a look at the samples provided on the site.

 

What is the Illuminating Literature Characters in Crisis by Writing with Sharon Watson?

Sharon Watson has written for Apologia with their Jump In middle school writing curriculum. She loves to teach writing and does so in a relaxed, non-threatening manner that is perfect for middle to high schoolers. 

Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crisis by Writing with Sharon Watson is intended to be used with students in 9th - 12th grade, but can be used during any high school year. This is intended to be used as a one-year high school course, which is a pace of four weeks per book. One of the best parts, in my opinion, that piqued my interest the most is that it is written from a Christian worldview. 

I received a nice physical set of glossy paperback books. The books included:

• Teacher
• Student
• Quiz/Test
• There is also a Novel Notebook available as a pdf download, and online quizzes.

The books that the study is based on usually need to purchased or obtained through the library separately. The first reading assignment is the short story entitled, A Jury of Her Peers. This is included in the text, no purchase necessary.

The program has several components:

Physical Books and Downloads:

Teacher's Guide

The Teacher Guide includes everything you need to guide your student through the literature. It includes a monthly lesson plan, grading grids and answers to the lessons, discussions, and quizzes found in the textbook. If you are using it with a co-op or classroom, it even has a grading grids to make it easy for grading multiple papers. The Teacher Guide also includes a schedule for setting up a book-of-the-month club for teens which include Facebook posts to interest teens.

Student Text

38 easy-to-follow lessons, students read the actual novel or literature work and not passages pulled out of context. Written from a perspective intended to be used with Grades 9-12 Christian high schools, homeschools, or co-ops, this course is great for teens whether they are reluctant readers/writers or advanced at a college-prep level. Sharon Watson has set up the course to make teens feel comfortable with literature. She includes fun facts, author bios and background information that piques the interest of the students. The course is student-directed, but she provides weekly reading schedules and clearly numbered lessons. By the end of the course, your student will have studied nearly 100 literary terms and author tools and will have gained an appreciation for literature. Upon completion of the two semesters, you may assign your student one high school credit.

List of stories and books (Most suggested to be used by Dover Publications version) If you use the recommended version of the literature, the textbook includes a key that takes you to specific page numbers of the novel or play:

• A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell, (included in the textbook)
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Silas Marner by George Eliot
• Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
• An Assortment of Short Stories (included in the textbook or link provided):

1. A White Heron by Sarah Orne Jewett
2. The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges
3. Haircut by Ring Lardner
4. The Lady, or the Tiger? by Frank Stockton
5. Of the Passing of the First-Born by W. E. B. Du Bois
6. A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Biography or autobiography of student’s choice
• The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien (Mariner Books version)

Quiz and Answer Manual OR Online Quizzes - Your choice. Do you prefer online quizzing or pencil to paper ones? Whichever you prefer, this program has you covered. The online quizzes are graded for you. If you access them online, you will need the code found in the Teacher Book. The quizzes each start with a "Yes, I read it" Quiz followed by a Literary Terms Quiz and sometimes an Opinion/Survey.

Novel Notebook (Optional to use)

This is a free 86-page pdf download. You can print it to put inside a 3-ring binder and fill out the pages with a pencil or pen, or you can save it to your laptop and use the pdf tools to add text and fill out the pages onscreen. The notebook is a nice little extra where the student answers questions, draws conclusions about passages, and collects favorite passages.

The pages are designed in a modern, fun style that looks a bit like notebooking/scrapbooking on  lined notebook background.

How Did We Use It?

We were familiar with Sharon Watson because we had previously used Illuminating Literature: When Worlds Collide which we really enjoyed. So, I immediately turned to my high school daughter who absolutely loves literature and reading and loves to express herself through writing.

What Did We Think?

Writing with Sharon Watson did not disappoint. I love her friendly style and especially appreciate that she writes from a Christian Worldview. I really like how relatable and easy to follow the who program is and how the teacher book provides enough guidance but doesn't lay out every single word verbatim that you must follow to instruct the course. I loved that! I also like how it allows plenty of options for however you learn best, either online quizzes or pen/paper ones, pdf downloadable notebook you could use on or off screen, etc.

FIND ON SOCIAL MEDIA @:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WritingWithSharonWatson
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/writingwithshar

Read what other members of the Homeschool Review Crew thought by clicking on the picture below:

TOS Review - The Power In Your Hand NonFiction High School Writing With Sharon Watson

Teaching your child to write at a high school or college level comes with the initial shock of intimidation until you realize that there is great curriculum available to help your students learn. That's why I was thrilled to get a chance to review The Power in Your Hands: Writing NonFiction in High School, 2nd Edition from Writing with Sharon Watson.



  

What is the The Power in Your Hands: Writing Nonfiction in High School, 2nd Edition?

This is a writing program intended for beginning writers at the high school level as well as college-bound writers by offering dual-level instruction for the early, intermediate, or accomplished writer. It provides student-directed lessons with little to no teacher prep time involved and uses a relaxed approach to make the student less stressed about putting his or her pencil to the paper to write. There are grammar lessons included as well, but it is not a grammar text.

The Student Book is packed with information and practical tools needed to succeed in high school and college writing. It is 23 chapters in 417 pages of material, including a full year's worth of writing prompts, 117 suggested daily lessons, step-by-step instructions and exercises along with complete instructions for 21 essays, reports, articles, and narratives in nonfiction modes of persuasion, exposition, description, and narration.

The chapters include various exercises, some with workbook style pages in the book and others meant to spark additional writing on pages outside of the book, that provide thought-provoking questions related to:

1. Thinking and Planning
2. Opinions
3. Persuasion Essentials
4. Persuasion - Next Level
5. Persuasion - Logical
6. Persuasion - Compare and Contrast
7. Persuasion - Moral/Ethical
8. Persuasion - Emotional Appeal
9. Proofreading
10. Common Grammar Mistakes
11. Letters and E-mails
12. Process Writing (How-To)
13. The Position Paper and Documentation
14. A Devotional
15. Newspaper Writing
16. Biographies
17. Compare and Contrast
18. Literary Analysis
19. The Definition Essay
20. Descriptive Essays
21. Personal Testimony or Spiritual Journey
22. Interview Into Narrative
23. Personal Narrative

Then there is a large Reference Section

The book is written by Sharon Watson and offers a respect for the Bible as God's Word.

I received two paperback books, the Student Book and the Teacher Guide 2nd Edition, but they are also available in digital format.

WHAT IS DIFFERENT ABOUT THIS 2ND EDITION?

The major changes in this 2nd Edition is that:

• The Teacher Guide now includes a grading grid for each writing assignment that is intended to make grading the work much easier. 
• The textbook now includes an index
• The example essay for the emotional appeal persuasive essay is far shorter and easier to understand than in the original edition. 
• Since SAT essay requirements changed recently, there is an added chapter on common grammar mistakes and lessons.

What to expect when you present it to your student:

How Did We Use It?

I was so excited to show these to my daughter, who will be a High School Freshman in the fall. She is always looking for great literature and writing curriculum. So, she was the lucky winner of which child gets to use this. I couldn't wait for her to get started. The book is really set up to pretty much hand it over to your student, and they get started from Day 1. This book requires basically no prep time to get started, and the teacher book walks you through everything you need to know about guiding your child through it. Don't be surprised if your student disappears into a quiet room to complete their writings:

The Teacher book is more of a guide and is loaded with information on how to grade writing, with informative pages on what constitutes an A paper, a B paper, C, D, or F.

Here is how a completed grid looks, though expect to fill in different numbers and comments for each paper you are grading:

What Did We Think?

I think The Power in Your Hands is packed with information, some of which I never received until taking college-level courses. Some I didn't even encounter until writing professionally. I love that it is student-directed and filled with checklists and bite-sized exercises. I love the 14-minute power surges that are essentially writing prompt exercises made fun for each chapter. Even though the part of teaching writing that I still feel the most awkward and uneasy about is the grading since I never want to discourage my child's creativity, I really appreciate the rubric grading sheets that turn an agonizing process of grading your own child's work into a checklist. I work well with checklists.

FIND Writing With Sharon Watson ON SOCIAL MEDIA @:

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/WritingWithSharonWatson
Pinterest:  https://www.pinterest.com/writingwithshar

 

Other TOS Review Crew members reviewed these additional Sharon Watson products:

  

Read what other members of the TOS Review Crew thought by clicking on the picture below: