Individualized Writing Courses for Homeschool Families...

"Our goal is to address the precise needs, interests, and skills of students who have chosen to learn at home."

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Individualized Writing Course:

Course Description

WriteGuide.com provides an online writing program called the Individualized Writing Course.  Students enrolled in the course work at their own pace with their own private writing teacher, who adapts his or her instruction to meet the individual needs of the student.   All our teachers (called “writing consultants”) hold Masters degrees in a field related to writing and/or English, are writers themselves, have an incredible amount of teaching experience, and are trained to use The WriteGuide Method (the teaching philosophy developed by our company).  The course takes the form of a friendly, daily (Monday through Friday) exchange of e-mail between the writing consultant, the student, and the student's parents.  Courses are available in lengths of one, three, four, nine, and twelve month options. 

Courses can be scheduled to begin on any weekday.  On your scheduled starting date, the student's writing consultant first contacts you (the parent or guardian) via e-mail to discuss your goals for the course.  Planning and discussing your goals with your writing consultant is an integral part of the course itself, and becomes an ongoing activity throughout the entire course.  

There are three basic ways to utilize your time in the course.  When your writing consultant contacts you for the first time, you can 1) ask him or her to work with your child on a "from scratch" writing project that you choose or create with or without the consultant's help; or 2) have the writing consultant work with your child on various assignments from a curriculum or program that you're already using; or 3) work with your son or daughter directly - without your input - to design a set of hand-tailored writing projects.    For example, you might  tell the writing teacher that you'd like your son or daughter to write a research paper (or a critical essay, or a persuasive essay, or a short story, etc.).  Or, if you're using a certain literature-based unit study that happens to include exercises and essay questions at the end of a chapter, you can have your writing consultant help your child work on those exercises or questions.  Finally, you might tell the writing consultant that she should assign a paper that she feels would be appropriate for your son or daughter's current level of ability.  Because the program is truly 100% individualized, you can switch among the three different formats on a daily basis, simply by informing your writing consultant.

After a parent communicates his or her goals to the writing consultant, the consultant will begin working directly with the student, guiding him or her through whatever project has been selected.  Again, that might involve working on a paper that you chose and designed yourself, or one that the writing consultant designed, or one from a textbook or curriculum that you have at home, or even one that the student has decided upon herself.  Students are also welcome to work with their writing consultant on papers that are in-progress, or that they have previously finished.  The process includes all aspects of the writing process, including generating ideas, research, taking notes, drafting, grammar, punctuation, mechanics, controlling tone, sentence and paragraph structure, literary devices, editing, and the process of revision. The course ends when the time limit of the course has passed. 

Every time a student or parent writes to his or her writing consultant, the writing consultant will respond within 24 hours (unless it's a weekend or holiday), providing whatever lessons or feedback are necessary to help the student move forward with the project.  Enough instruction will be provided to give the student about half an hour to 45 minutes of work per day, so that he or she can then write back to his or her writing consultant to receive more instruction.  Ideally, students should write to their writing consultants five days a week, Monday through Friday, resulting in an intensive exchange in which students send their revised papers five times per week, and receive in return five sets of individualized lessons, feedback, and instruction.  Students can take as much time as they need before responding to their writing consultant, but please be aware that the consultant won't write back until the student has responded to his or her last e-mail!   Upon hearing back from his writing consultant, a student should work on his paper, and should respond with one e-mail.  Parents can also send one e-mail per day to their child's writing consultant, in addition to the mail their child sends, resulting in a maximum of two e-mails sent to the consultant per day, per course.   We like to view our course as a partnership between two teachers (the parent and the writing consultant), so frequent parent input is essential!  

Although the course was designed to serve as a complete writing package for one individual, it can be shared by more than one student.  The only stipulation is that if two or more students are sharing a course, no more than one submission (a "submission" is one e-mail from one student, and should never contain more than one paper) can be sent to your writing consultant per day.  

Courses are available in one-month, three-month, four-month, nine month, and twelve-month options.  Generally, a student can finish one "from scratch" writing project (see our Project Options for a list of suggested projects) in one calendar month if he writes to his consultant consistently.  Courses may be ordered through the process described on our Pricing and Enrollment Information Page.

If you're not sure whether or not the program is a good fit for your family, please consider trying a one month course -- it's only $75.00.  When it's complete you can "renew" the course for another month, or for a longer period of time.  Below you'll find links to several samples of our course, as well as course reviews, and some comments from families who have enrolled.  Please review them in order to gain a better idea of what to expect should you decide to enroll.