Little Bits of Life: Writers in Residence Apologia Educational Ministries Review

Learning to write is just plain hard for some kids. While my oldest has a wonderful imagination she has a hard time getting her thoughts together. I was excited for her to try out Writers in Residence by Apologia Educational Ministries. This curriculum is for grades 4-8. My oldest will be in 4th grade in a couple of months. But I felt good starting it a tad early. This is a writing based language arts program. It teaches students everything from sentence structure,to capitalization and usage. This program is designed to help students learn how to create engaging stories that you actually want to read. It has a biblical based framework that I of course love.

Some of the main features that drew me to Writers in Residence:

It's a complete writing curriculum covers grammar, punctuation and capitalization. I don't have to teach a separate grammar class.
It has an answer key and teachers book so I get the help I need to teach well.
It's got color and the assignment topics are FUN !
It's and all in one student text and workbook.
The student text is easy to understand.

I am going to admit she was a little intimidated when she saw the size of this

student book. This thing is huge compared to the other books we have been using this year. The reason its so big is because its both the student text and the workbook combined into one. After some assurances that she did not have to complete the entire book tell the end of 4th grade she calmed down. Now that we have had it a while I would have preferred a separate student workbook. It would make managing the book easier. The student text/workbook gives a suggested daily schedule. It is set up to be a 4 day a week program. I started her out on three days a week because I was afraid she would get overwhelmed. We are working up to the 4 day a week schedule that we will use in a few more weeks. Each unit has a different theme or topic that they write about. As you work through the unit it builds from simple bite sized assignments that eventually give them the steps put together a hole story. Each day starts out with a lesson that you have to read. Then it gives an assignment that goes along with it. The first unit was themed When I was Young. The first assignment was thinking of a special place and writing it down. (Super Girl chose the Campground as her special place) The second assignment was making a memory chart. A memory chart was new to me but it was effective. It had her write down her favorite place at the top. Then it had her add in things like Favorite person or people, favorite thing you did with them, any specific details that she could remember. This simple assignments helped her get started and not feel afraid of writing. It broke it down into steps and that is exactly what she needed.

We are well into Unit 1 but it's going to take a while for us to complete Writers in Residence. It has been so good for her she is finally understanding the writing process and I am pleased that she is not dreading writing assignments quite so much. We hope they come out with another level for next year. I would love for everyone to click the banner and read some of the other Crew reviews on Writers in Residence.