WriteShop Primary – Review

You may remember that a few month’s ago I reviewed StoryBuilders from WriteShop. They recently sent me a new writing book from the WriteShop Primary series to try out with our kids. ~ and again I am loving their products!

WriteShop Primary is a writing curriculum for K-3rd graders that uses various activities, crafts and books to teach writing skills. Your child doesn’t need any previous experience with writing and is eased into the process of writing a little at a time. Simple words and phrases are turned into stories and crafts and eventually projects to share. Book A is the first in the series and is currently the only one available, but books B and C will be released soon!

The Teacher’s Guide

The Teacher’s Guide for the Primary Book A is available in either print format ($26.95 plus s/h) or as an ebook($24.25 for immediate download and no s/h). The guide provides:

• planning schedules to use with your children to complete the book in one year or less (your choice)
• help for teaching children at different levels
• ideas/suggestions for creating a writing center
• thorough explanations on teaching each lesson (Book A has 10 lessons), including the purpose behind the various sections in the lessons. Lessons include: lesson focus, theme, objective, materials needed, any prep required, and all activities for the lessons (view a sample lesson here)
• step-by-step instruction (including sample dialogue) for using the lesson with your child(ren)

The Primary Activity Worksheets

The Primary Activity Worksheet Packs are reproducible worksheets that go hand-in-hand with the lessons in the teacher’s guide. The worksheet packs are also available in print format ($4.95 plus s/h) or as an ebook download($4.50 for immediate download and no s/h). The activity worksheets:

• are fun and appealing to children ~ the graphics are very engaging (view sample pages here)
• correspond to the lessons in the teacher’s activity guide and are an important part of the program
• contain evaluation charts to track your child’s progress ~ not to grade, but record your child’s growth

Our Time with WriteShop

We used Book A for a few weeks with the girls and had so much fun with it! The girls enjoyed the writing prompts and I was excited to see them gain a ‘fresh’ desire to write. After our morning time writing about our day, both girls sat down and wrote some short stories and McKenna even wrote a letter to her Daddy about her bad reaction to some medication. We skipped to the latter part of the book and worked on a writing activity about watermelons. The girls had to write seven steps on growing watermelons, so we researched a bit on the internet and then put together some mini file folders explaining the process. They even had a little art fun decorating their books.

Starting Your Child

If you are unsure where to start your child in the program, WriteShop has created a chart for determining where to place your child. Each lesson does include extra challenge activities if your child is more advanced. You can also view the full scope and sequence of all three WriteShop Primary books as well as a chart of writing and other activities that are included in the lessons.

WriteShop offers writing programs for children from kindergarten through high school, so if these books don’t apply to your children, be sure to check out the numerous resources that they provide for children of all ages! Don’t forget that they will have more books coming in this series soon ~ I can’t wait to get my hands on them.