Course Description: The Individualized Writing Course

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."

General Information

Individualized Writing Courses

Resources

Skill Sheets
Letter Writing Program
TEACHLetter (a free monthly resource)

Individualized Writing Course:

Course Description

Students enrolled in our Individualized Writing Course work with their own private writing teacher (called a writing consultant), Monday through Friday on papers and projects of their parents' choosing. Your child's writing consultant will provide 100% individualized, hand-tailored instruction to meet his or her precise needs as a writer. The course takes the form of a friendly, daily (Monday through Friday) exchange of letters, papers, instructions, lessons, and feedback between the student and his or her writing consultant. All aspects of the writing process, including generating ideas, prewriting, outlining, research, taking notes, drafting, controlling tone, sentence and paragraph structure, literary and stylistic devices, grammar, punctuation, mechanics, editing, proofreading, and the process of revision. Because we believe that parents are their children's most important teachers, parents are welcome to communicate with their child's writing consultant, and in fact are an integral part of the course. The instruction is asynchronous, meaning there aren't any scheduled meeting times. Instead, a student can log into his or her account whenever he's ready to submit his work or ask a question, and his writing consultant will always reply within 24 hours. Our teachers provide approximately 30 to 45 minutes of work per day, with the understanding that the student has to submit the completed work before the teacher will provide any more. You can enroll for any number of months you wish, but the smallest block of time we can offer is a one month session.

Because the course is truly individualized, there can be no standard syllabus. Instead, parents work with their child's writing consultant to decide on one particular project, at which point the writing consultant will be able to discern the student's level of skill and experience. After the first project is complete, the consultant will be glad to recommend a new project based on the student's progress, or will work on any project provided or decided upon by the parent.

Courses can be scheduled to begin on any weekday, excluding company holidays. On your scheduled starting date, parents and students should both log into their own private accounts (accessible at http://www.mywriteguide.com) where they'll find their writing consultant's first letters to them. The writing consultant will inquire as to the parent's goals for the course, and will begin working with the student on any project that the parent selects or designs. As the student and teacher begin working, parents are encouraged to communicate frequently with the teacher in order to provide further direction and insight. Parents can monitor all correspondence that passes between the student and teacher, and are welcome to join in the discussion at any point in time.

Additional Information:

Traditionally, families have used four identifiable approaches when participating in our courses.

The first and most popular approach is to ask your writing consultant to work with your child on a "from-scratch" writing project that you yourself choose or design. You might know, for example, that you want your daughter to write a research paper this year, and that the paper should be at least ten pages long, citing a certain amount of references, etc. Or, you might ask your son's writing consultant to teach him how to write a five paragraph essay.

The second approach is to for a student and writing consultant to work together on a paper that has already been started.

The third approach is to request that your child's writing consultant work with him or her on one or more assignments from a particular curriculum or program. Some families ask their teachers to help their children with essays from school. Some ask them to guide a student through an assignment taken from a history or writing text. Many families ask their child's teacher for help in preparing for the writing portion of the SAT or ACT. As long as a parent can communicate the directions and parameters of the assignment in question, your child's writing consultant will be glad to help.

The fourth approach is to ask your writing consultant to take charge completely, selecting and designing all of the student's assignments.

It's important to realize, however, that because the course is individualized, and because we recognize parents as their children's most important teachers, you can switch between these four different methods as often as you like. Also, other approaches are possible! Our aim is to support a parent's goals and intentions as home educators, so we take our "marching orders" from you.

What to Expect During the Course:

Every time a student or parent writes to his or her writing consultant, the writing consultant will always 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 the student 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 message!   Upon hearing back from his writing consultant, a student should work on his paper, and should respond with one single message his or her account page. Parents can also send one message per day to their child's writing consultant, in addition to message or paper their child sends, resulting in a maximum of two messages 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), and so frequent parent input is both anticipated and appreciated.

Sharing a Course:

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 message 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.