Structured Writing
Author: Laura George
For more information or to order: www.structuredwriting.com

Structured Writing by Laura George, is a thorough approach for teaching the format for writing paragraphs, essays, and longer papers. The unique concept of this curriculum is color-coding.  The topic sentence and the concluding sentence of each paragraph are printed in black, and the supporting ideas are printed in blue.  If there are more details under the supporting ideas, they are printed in green.  Personal opinions are added in red.  The student is taught to underline the sentences in the appropriate colors as he outlines and then writes his paragraph. The assignments are divided into six sections.  The first four sections deal with writing paragraphs, and the fifth section teaches how to write essays and longer papers.  The last section, called "Writing Backwards," shows how to evaluate a passage of writing to find the main ideas.

This program comes with two books: a teacher's manual and a student handbook.  They are spiral-bound with durable covers.  The explanations of the lessons, including exactly what to say, are in the teacher's manual, and the writing assignments are in the student handbook. The student pages are not reproduced in the teacher's manual, so the teacher must have a copy of both books and look at them together.  There is a lot of good information in the teacher's manual that is not included in the student manual.  For instance, page 9 is a list of "Do's and Don't in the Writing Process."  This list is to be used by the teacher for evaluating the students' papers, but it would be useful if it was included in the student book, too. This curriculum is geared more toward a Christian school setting where the teacher gives a lecture to explain the lesson to the class.  This can be adapted to a student who works independently by giving him access to the teacher's manual as well as the student handbook. This curriculum would be easier to use if it were all printed in one book so the teacher could see the student pages, and the student would have all of the examples.

The author suggests that these books can be used for any age students, but only a few of the lessons are applicable for elementary students.  She suggests teaching most of the lessons to middle school students, and then teaching high schoolers all of the lessons every year for four years.  I would recommend using this program only once or twice for older middle schoolers or high schoolers and teaching all of the lessons in order. There are a variety of suggested topics for each writing assignment, but some of them are geared toward older students.

I was glad I found Structured Writing because I have been looking for a good curriculum to teach essay writing to my children.  The teaching I had in high school on how to write essays was a great help to me in college, so I think this is a valuable skill to learn.  I used this curriculum with my sons, who are 14 and 16 years old.  They thought it was a little dry because it taught mostly format and very little creative writing.  They did, however, learn to write a good outline and then use it to write a very organized paragraph.  We are taking a break from this book to do some creative writing, but I am looking forward to working through the section that teaches essay writing.  This book is definitely helping my sons become better writers as they prepare for college.

Making the Grade: A
Cost:  Teacher's manual $40.00 Student handbook $35.00
Value for your homeschool dollar: 9  (Fairly pricey, but worth it if you can use it for more than one student. Several students can share one workbook since it is not consumable).
Reviewed by Celeste Pulls, homeschool mom of 4