Encountering fewer and fewer competent writers in her classes, Susan Wise Bauer has created a manual for teaching the fundamentals of the English language. Focusing primarily on the early elementary years, students will learn to put ideas into words and put those words down on paper utilizing copywork, dictation, and narration skills. During grades 5-8, students work on organization, including turning sentences into short compositions. Finally, the high school years emphasize rhetoric, persuasive expression of ideas, and creating papers with style and substance.

Writing with Ease will walk the teacher step-by-step through each level of assignments. A week of complete scripted lessons with reading passages, narration, and copywork assignments are given, which may be extended with personally chosen supplements. 4 levels are included, covering grades 1-4. Each is designed to be completed in a 36-week school year. 249 indexed pages, softcover.

Average Customer Rating:

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(6 Reviews) 6

Rating Snapshot (6 reviews)

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3 out of 475%customers would recommend this product to a friend.

Customer Reviews for Writing with Ease: Strong Fundamentals

Review 1 for Writing with Ease: Strong Fundamentals

Overall Rating:

5 out of 5

Writing With Ease Strong Fundamentals

Date:April 9, 2012

Kathy

Top 100 Contributor

Location:Southeast Wisconsin

Quality:

5 out of 5

Value:

5 out of 5

Meets Expectations:

5 out of 5

"Writing with Ease Strong Fundamentals" is authored by Susan Wise Bauer. She is a faculty member of the College of William and Mary and co-author of "The Well Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home."

"Writing with Ease" teaches the student on how to take inarticulate ideas, put the ideas into words and how to put the words down on paper. The curriculum is divided into three stages: Writing with Ease (Grades 1-4), Writing with Skill (Grades 5-8) and Writing with Style (Grades 9-12). In Years 1 and 2 the student will focus on practicing narration, copy work and dictation. In Years 3 and 4 the student will focus on putting the steps of narration, copy work and dictation together. In Years 5-8 the student will focus on Diagramming: Sentence-Level Ordering, and Outlining: Composition-Level Ordering. In Years 9-12 the student will focus on the Thesis Statement: Deciding What to Write About, The Progymnasmata: Techniques of Persuasion and Constant Short Papers.

"Writing with Ease" is divided into four parts, Part 1: Understanding the Process, Part 2: The Lessons, Appendices and Bibliography of Excerpts. Part 1: Understanding the Process consists of four sections: Why Writing Programs Fail, The Three Stages, Using This Book and Where Should I Begin. Part 2: The Lessons consists of five sections: Preschool and Kindergarten, Year One, Year Two, Year Three and Year Four. The appendices consist of four sections: After Year Four, Troubleshooting, Frequently Asked Questions and Resources. The bibliography of excerpts is included as a reference resource.

To accompany each level of the curriculum the author has created teacher/student workbooks.
Each work text is divided into a scripted four day lesson plan for 36 weeks, student pages and a reading selections index.

Presently the "Writing with Ease" curriculum consists of "Writing with Ease" hardcover book and workbooks for
Levels 1-4. "Writing with Skill" Level 1 workbook is scheduled to be released in 20112. Subsequent levels of "Writing with Skill" and "Writing With Style" are in development.

I would highly recommend purchasing the hardcover book along with the teacher/student workbooks.

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+4points

4of 4voted this as helpful.

Review 2 for Writing with Ease: Strong Fundamentals

Overall Rating:

2 out of 5

tedious and narrow

Date:January 4, 2012

momof5

Age:35-44

Quality:

2 out of 5

Value:

2 out of 5

Meets Expectations:

2 out of 5

This program has been a disappointment. I am using level 2 for the second time around (with a second student) and am having the same sense I had last time: is my child learning anything? She is actually doing very little writing - almost none of it original or creative. The copywork is short, and the summarizing, summarizing, summarizing gets very old.

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-1point

2of 5voted this as helpful.

Review 3 for Writing with Ease: Strong Fundamentals

Overall Rating:

5 out of 5

Date:August 5, 2011

Homeschoolma

Quality:

5 out of 5

Value:

5 out of 5

Meets Expectations:

5 out of 5

So far so good. We are enjoying this program, and for the first time my kiddos are writing with out complaining. Yeay! I would say if you buy the book you don't really need the workbook. Also, if you buy the workbook you probably don't need the book. They basically have the same information...the workbook just lays the whole year out for you.

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+2points

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Review 4 for Writing with Ease: Strong Fundamentals

Overall Rating:

2 out of 5

Not a complete program

Date:July 4, 2011

Anne

Top 50 Contributor

Location:Baltimore, MD

Age:35-44

Gender:female

Quality:

3 out of 5

Value:

3 out of 5

Meets Expectations:

2 out of 5

This book is the guide book. You do not need it if you want to use the program. The one valuable piece of advice in the book is that you can substitute passages each year if you feel the passages that were chosen aren't right for your kids. I have used this program for 2 full years and am now going to use it for only 6 or 7 weeks in year 3. There is no creative writing in the program and my daughter cannot write a story or paragraph or descriptive sentence as a third grader. There are strengths to this program--learning to summarize and immitate good grammar (because of the repetitive copywork), but I would not recommend this program.

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-3points

3of 9voted this as helpful.

Review 5 for Writing with Ease: Strong Fundamentals

Overall Rating:

5 out of 5

Date:August 5, 2010

Charity Wittenburg

This book makes the most sense of any writing program I've seen. It's been a real lifesaver for our homeschooling.

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+2points

2of 2voted this as helpful.

Review 6 for Writing with Ease: Strong Fundamentals

Overall Rating:

5 out of 5

Date:August 26, 2008

Kathleen

In Writing With Ease, Susan Wise Bauer explains how speaking and writing differ and how to help your child develop the skills needed to move successfully from the former to the latter. This is not just a writing pedagogy designed to take your child from learning how to speak clearly to being able to write clearly, though. The most valuable thing about Writing With Ease is that it teaches the teacher why narration, copy work, and dictation are so vital in building the foundation of lucid, coherent writing. Mrs. Bauer not only tells you what to do, she explains why you are to do it. The book lays out a detailed four-year plan to take your student from learning how to speak in complete sentences to writing short summaries and taking 25-30-word dictations, all the while teaching basic grammar. Also included is an appendix on troubleshooting problems such as "My child cries when he writes. What do I do?" and "My seventh grader can't write at all, and I don't know where to start," as well as appendices with frequently asked questions and additional resources. To reduce preparation time and streamline the application of the principles in this book, I highly recommend using the accompanying student workbooks (Level One is available at this time).

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+5points

5of 5voted this as helpful.