Writing With Ease

"This alternative plan for teaching writing combines the best elements of old-fashioned writing instruction with innovative new educational methods and explains why so many writing programs fail" -- p. [4] of cover.

This simple-to-use scripted guide to grammar and composition makes successful teaching easy for both parents and teachers. It uses the classical techniques of memorization, copywork, dictation, and narration to develop a childs language ability in the first years of study.

A new series on teaching writing, from the author of The Well-Trained Mind. In Writing with Ease, Susan Wise Bauer lays out an alternative plan for teaching writing, one that combines the best elements of old-fashioned writing instruction with innovative new educational methods. The workbooks provide lessons, student worksheets, and teacher instructions for every day of writing instruction. Each covers one year of study. Used along with Writing with Ease, Level Two (second in a planned four-volume set) complete the elementary-grade writing curriculum.

A student-friendly supplement to Writing with Ease. This companion text to Writing with Ease walks students, step by step, through the difficult transition into original writing. Scripted, fully-developed lessons equip parents and instructors with all the tools of the professional writing teacher. Selections from classic children's stories are designed to hold the student's attention and fire her imagination, while accompanying exercise allow the young writer to develop her own composition skills. Designed for older elementary students, The Complete Writer: Writing with Ease Workbook 4 builds on the groundwork laid in earlier volumes. Both challenging and reassuring, Workbook 4 begins the all-important preparation for the middle grade years. Grades 3-5.

These workbooks provide lessons, student worksheets, and teacher instructions for every day of writing instruction. Each covers one year of study. Used along with Writing with Ease, the workbooks complete the elementary-grade writing curriculum. Level Three is the third of a planned four-volume set to accompany Writing with Ease.

Traditional principles. Contemporary methods. Unparalleled results. This groundbreaking new writing series combines time-tested classical techniques—the imitation and analysis of great writers—with original composition exercises in history, science, biography, and literature. Skills Taught: • One- and two-level outlining • Writing chronological narratives, biographical sketches, descriptions, and sequences across the curriculum • Constructing basic literary essays on fiction and poetry • Researching and documenting source material • First volume of four that will prepare students for high-level rhetoric and composition Features of the program: • Writing assignments are modeled on examples from great literature and classic nonfiction • All source material for assignments is provided—no other books are needed • This Student Workbook encourages independence by directing all assignments to the student • Instructor Text (sold separately) provides scripted dialogue to use when the student has difficulty, plus detailed guidance on how to evaluate the student’s work • First volume of four that will prepare students for high-level rhetoric and composition

The enduring and engaging guide to educating yourself in the classical tradition. Have you lost the art of reading for pleasure? Are there books you know you should read but haven’t because they seem too daunting? In The Well-Educated Mind, Susan Wise Bauer provides a welcome and encouraging antidote to the distractions of our age, electronic and otherwise. Newly expanded and updated to include standout works from the twenty-first century as well as essential readings in science (from the earliest works of Hippocrates to the discovery of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs), The Well-Educated Mind offers brief, entertaining histories of six literary genres—fiction, autobiography, history, drama, poetry, and science—accompanied by detailed instructions on how to read each type. The annotated lists at the end of each chapter—ranging from Cervantes to Cormac McCarthy, Herodotus to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Aristotle to Stephen Hawking—preview recommended reading and encourage readers to make vital connections between ancient traditions and contemporary writing. The Well-Educated Mind reassures those readers who worry that they read too slowly or with below-average comprehension. If you can understand a daily newspaper, there’s no reason you can’t read and enjoy Shakespeare’s sonnets or Jane Eyre. But no one should attempt to read the “Great Books” without a guide and a plan. Bauer will show you how to allocate time to reading on a regular basis; how to master difficult arguments; how to make personal and literary judgments about what you read; how to appreciate the resonant links among texts within a genre—what does Anna Karenina owe to Madame Bovary?—and also between genres. In her best-selling work on home education, The Well-Trained Mind, the author provided a road map of classical education for parents wishing to home-school their children; that book is now the premier resource for home-schoolers. In The Well-Educated Mind, Bauer takes the same elements and techniques and adapts them to the use of adult readers who want both enjoyment and self-improvement from the time they spend reading. Followed carefully, her advice will restore and expand the pleasure of the written word.

From social media to school success—take student writing to the next level! Your students may not realize it, but they’re already writers. All those informal text messages, Instagram captions, and Facebook posts have given them skills they can use as a springboard to the formal, content-specific writing they’ll need for success in school, college, and careers. The key, of course, is practice—plus a little guidance from you. And you’ll be ready, no matter what subject you teach, because this essential reference is packed with relevant, contemporary teaching strategies that are easily customizable to work across content areas. Inside, you’ll find: Engaging exercises based in the kinds of writing students already do Versatile "parachute writings"—quick bursts of practice to drop into a day’s lesson Strategies for introducing academic vocabulary and making it stick Skill-boosting strategies for successful summarizing and using textual evidence Variations specific to all disciplines and content areas Students should be writing daily, in all their classes, and they should be writing a lot, both inside and outside school. With this practical guide, you’ll be ready to help them up their writing game—and make literacy relevant, valuable, and authentic.

A workbook to accompany the acclaimed series on teaching writing, from the author of The Well-Trained Mind. In Writing with Ease, Susan Wise Bauer lays out an alternative plan for teaching writing, one that combines the best elements of old-fashioned writing instruction with innovative new educational methods. The Complete Writer workbooks (each sold separately) complement this plan with lessons, student worksheets, and teacher instructions for every day of writing instruction. Each covers one year of study. Used along with Writing with Ease, The Complete Writer, Level One (first in a four-volume set) complete the elementary-grade writing curriculum.

"Writing allows each of us to live with that special wide-awakeness that comes from knowing that our lives and our ideas are worth writing about." -Lucy Calkins Teaching Writing is Lucy Calkins at her best-a distillation of the work that's placed Lucy and her colleagues at the forefront of the teaching of writing for over thirty years. This book promises to inspire teachers to teach with renewed passion and power and to invigorate the entire school day. This is a book for readers who want an introduction to the writing workshop, and for those who've lived and breathed this work for decades. Although Lucy addresses the familiar topics-the writing process, conferring, kinds of writing, and writing assessment- she helps us see those topics with new eyes. She clears away the debris to show us the teeny details, and she shows us the majesty and meaning, too, in these simple yet powerful teaching acts. Download a sample chapter for more information.