Write More Writing Program/Writing Works

by Alma A. Hoffman

Write More Education Resources

Racking your brain for interesting writing topics? Writing Works serves up 300 “story starters” and writing assignments, suitable for just about all ages. Some ideas are silly, some are serious. Writing Works is the "sparkplug" of the Writing More Writing Program, an easy-to-use program for just about all grade levels.

Ideas are presented in Writing Works, a 4 1/2” x 6” comb-bound book. Three related ideas per page center around topics like fruit, dogs, teachers, books, self-image, cereal, and animals. The first idea is a “quick thinking activity” that might be completed in 5 to 10 minutes. The second might be considered a journal topic that might take 10 to 15 minutes. The third is a lengthier creative writing assignment that might take 20 to 60 minutes or more. These different activities might easily be assigned to various age groups in home educating families, with briefest assignments given to the youngest students and lengthiest to the oldest. This takes no advance planning to use. Pull it out in the morning, give everyone an assignment, then compare results later in the day.

Author Alma Hoffman has created support resources that make it easy for parents/teachers to use the Writing Works Writing Program as their primary tools for a student’s composition work.

One of the most valuable of these resources is the Teacher Guide. It is only available within the Writing Program sets (for either classrooms or homeschools). I will describe the contents of the Homeschool Set since that set will be of interest to most of my readers.

The Homeschool Set includes the Writing Works book, two Write More Student Portfolios, a Write MoreOrganizer Pad, a Types of Writing Pad, a My Conference Record Pad, a Write More Rubrics Pad, and the Teacher Guide. The set has everything you need for two students.

Write More Student Portfolios are custom-designed pocket folders in which students store their work. Portfolios are printed with lots of helpful information, including 16 key points that students (and parents)  need to learn to make their writing more polished and complete. The rest of the set consists of five 8 ½ x 11 pads of printed pages. All five pads have 50 identical sheets per pad.

The Write More Organizer Pad is a graphic organizer to help students outline a paragraph or short composition. The Types of Writing Pad is for tracking different forms of writing a student has experienced. Blank lines allow you to add your own options. My Conference Record is for making notes from a student/teacher “conference” regarding a student piece. Likely to be the most useful of these pads is the Write More Rubrics. This is a checklist of items for which students might be held accountable in a written piece. There’s a column for “possible points.” The Teacher Guide has some great suggestions for using the rubrics form, using discussion about the form itself as a learning activity. The Decorative Border Writing Pad can be used for final drafts of writing assignments.