Writing with Sharon Watson Jump In, 2nd Edition Review

I am enjoying helping C improve his composition skills with Jump In, 2nd Edition from Writing with Sharon Watson.  This program can be purchased as physical books or as a digital version.  We were generously given the digital versions for the Student text/workbook and the Teacher's Guide (both are needed for this program).

Student Book

Table of Contents for Student Book

Writing is not C's favorite subject and he struggles with knowing what to write.  Writing is hard for my son.  This is an easy to use program specifically designed for more independent learning with a conversational student book.  So, what does this mean?  C can grab our Ipad and dive in.  The student book is appealing and has color mixed in throughout.

This program starts out gently asking students questions about how they feel about writing.

One of C's worksheets

I like that it quickly shows students different methods for brainstorming:  the sticky-note method and cluster method.

C using sticky-note method

In this program, students learn story writing, poetry, nine types of essays, a research report, and more!  There are 98 bite-sized (not overwhelming) daily lessons.  The Student Book walks them through topic sentences, main ideas, in-text citations, and other building blocks of writing.  It has a light tone with a bit of humor and is engaging which suits C well.

Here, you can get a feel for the light-hearted tone of the student book.

I like that students get practice writing paragraphs before diving into essays.  Each essay assignment comes with a suggested writing schedule along with a checklist to help students proofread their work.  I really like how students are led through the process of proofreading with practical lessons.  This is such a valuable skill.

Writing Checklist

There is a digital lesson on the webpage on how to create a works cited page.  This is great because methods for citing sources often change so a digital form can be corrected and updated as needed.

 C reading a lesson

 

Teacher's Guide

The first page of the Table of Contents in the Teacher's Guide.

The Teacher's Guide has so much information to help make teaching writing as pain free as possible.  It shows how to evaluate an assignment which is super helpful.  It also has specialized grading grids to help make grading the essays easier!  It also includes sample schedules, answer keys, checklists and more!

There are flexible schedules so that students can complete the program in a year or take longer depending on their needs.  The incremental steps used throughout this course can help more reluctant writers and those that struggle with writing really find their voice.  I'm thankful that this curriculum has bite-sized lessons that walk students from thoughts and ideas to writing paragraphs and then through to writing essays.  This is a great program to help middle-school students improve their writing skills!

I plan on finishing most of this curriculum with C and then using it for D (most likely starting next year).  Want to know more?  Be sure to click on the banner below to visit the Homeschool Review Crew blog to read more reviews of Writing with Sharon Watson.  As always, feel free to ask me questions too.

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