Writing with Ease: Level 3 Workbook (The Complete Writer)

This is our second year using this program. My son loves the story excerpts that the author has provided and I love that the lessons are already done for me in an organized easy-to-follow program. Last year I would read the excerpts to him and this year he is reading them out loud. He does reading and summary writing one day and the other day I will have him narrate to me what he read and I will write it down and then we do copywork (in place of dictation). I used the dictation exercises in Level 2 - even though I did have to help him quite a bit with the spelling. In Level 3 I gave up using the dictation exercises within the first week - the sentences are extremely long and the vocabulary is not above his head as far as understanding but way above his spelling ability. You have words such as, influence, situation, ferocious, poisonous, scientists, etc. There are also hyphenated words and semi colons and neither of these concepts are covered up to this point in this book or in First Language Lessons Level 3. I use the dictation exercises as copy work. I have dictation that I use from First Language Lessons Level 3 and his spelling work that are perfect for him. The reading excerpts in Level 3 are not as interesting as they were in Level 2. Level 2 has great excerpts from classic children's stories, such as Pippi Longstocking, The Borrowers, and Dr. Doolittle. In Level 3 there is a lot of non-fiction entries and even entries from her History of the World books. My son does not like the excerpts from the history books since he has already heard it before and to be honest, it is not as fun as listening to Pippi Longstocking. My son is 8 and in third grade and tests in a seventh grade level for Language Arts and I am sure that this series is due some credit for that achievement. I would highly recommend this series since it does give you guided exercises for the entire school year, the material is rigorous for this age group, and the activities are consistent yet interesting with the variety of reading that is included (you read the excerpt then write/narrate/dictate about them). No matter what program you use you will have to make adjustments for your child and for me it was to change the dictation into copywork. I feel that he still gets benefits from copying these more complicated sentences and avoids both of us getting frustrated. Happy learning!!

The Complete Writer: Level 3 is exactly what I was wanting for my 8 year old son. He has always been a good reader, but did not love writing. Many of the writing programs that I have found focus more on handwriting without any content. This book is perfect for a child that is ready to move beyond just handwriting and into actually writing something that has purpose. For each lesson, you read a short excerpt from classic children's literature and then you have a writing assignment that also reinforces reading comprehension. The stories are my favorite part of the program. Some of the stories included are: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Paul Bunyan Swings His Ax, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Babe: The Gallant Pig, Anne of Green Gables, The Black Stallion, King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table, and The Jungle Book...just to name a few. The assignments that follow teach the student to become familiar with central themes, narrative threads, and reinforce grammar lessons and parts of speech. These are concepts that I struggled with in high school and college because I did not have a solid foundation in elementary school. I love this program and I feel it teaches children to begin to think critically. I would not recommend it for a child younger than 8 because it really begins to build on things that should be learned in the grammar stage. If your child struggles in reading and grammar, I might even wait until 4th grade or beyond to use this book. If nothing else, it builds a love of reading in children and produces creative thinkers and writers in the process!

This book has worked well for my 9 year old son, who doesn't like to write at all. It is easy to follow and is organized by week and day, with four days making up one week. The lessons so far consist of dictation, narration, or a combination of both from selections of different books. I like this the best because it has introduced my son to books such as The Story of Dr. Dolittle, Ginger Pye, and Paul Revere and I. The selections the author uses piques the interest of my son, so he wants to read more from these books! Anything that encourages reading is wonderful! The daily lessons don't take very long, sometimes as little as 10 minutes when there is a dictation lesson, but I have seen him progress and I know it's working for us!

Writing is definitely the most difficult subject for me to teach in our homeschool. I love that these lessons are scripted and ready-to-go, and I also love the exposure they give to classic literature, short stories, fables, etc. The lessons only take about 10 minutes a day, but drill such essential skills (holding ideas in your head, grammar and punctuation, finding the main ideas in a piece of writing and translating them onto the page, neatness and attention to detail) for later writing. My fourth grade son is simultaneously doing more "advanced" writing in a separate class, but The Complete Writer, Level 3 is helping us fill in basic skills that he didn't have yet and have caused frustration in completing the requirements of the class.

I have finally found the help we needed to improve my 9 year old dyslexic son's writing. Like another reviewer experienced, my son struggled with the summarizing of the reading the first week or 2. He obviously just needed to learn this skill and by week 3 he had no problem. After just 3 weeks, I can see my son's confidence in his writing has grown greatly. One of the techniques this uses that I believe has really helped, is for the student to dictate some to the teacher, while the teacher writes the sentences. Then, the teacher dictates the sentences back for the student to write. This has trained my son how to keep the words in his head and then put it on paper. Also, there is enough variety in the lesson each day to keep it interesting, for us both!

My daughter was pulled from public school to homeschool after her self esteem around Language Arts started falling fast. I was concerned about finding a program that would help her learn without causing undue pressure. This workbook team-style approach is wonderful for the timid writing student. Its fun to work together and gives the student practice. This workbook provides the passages so it also lets me rest easy and not have to do the background work of finding passages. I appreciate this very much as there is no concern about finding the "right" passage and no concern for my daughter as she trusts the book to "train her" in writing. So far, so great!

Pros: This book has four lessons per week. Half of the lessons require the student to read a short passage and create a concise summary. There are questions to guide teacher and student to the most relevant points. This is a really useful and good exercise and very worthwhile. I highly recommend these lessons. Cons: Other lessons involve dictation. The teacher reads the student one to two long sentences. With two repetitions, the student is supposed to repeat, then remember and write the dictation passage. The problems with these passages are: 1. The sentences are VERY long - I don't know if I could remember some of them. 2. The sentence structures are sometimes slightly unusual. They may be written in a more formal style than typical youth reading. 3. The vocabulary in the dictation passage often includes words which require highly developed spelling skills, so the student has to both remember a long passage and try to spell tough words at the same time. 4. The vocabulary is sometimes rather advanced. A good reader might get the general meaning of the passage, but not know exactly what some of the words are (e.g. "feat," the homophone of "feet" was in a recent lesson). It is hard to remember a long passage with vocabulary which is at the cusp of the student's understanding. Conclusions: For our child (age 8), these problems result in a total breakdown of both memory and spelling and it results in nothing but tears. We are no longer going to use the dictation passages, though we might occasionally use them for copy work. A good reader can use and enjoy the summary passage exercises and I'm glad to have the book for these lessons. To be successful with all portions of this book, your child needs an excellent attention span and sharp focus, good short-term memory, very good spelling skills (either that, or to be totally un-phased when he can't spell a word), and an advanced vocabulary. Our child is a little too young and flighty for the dictations. In my opinion, I'd recommend it for a gifted 9 year old or an average 10 year old.

My son was eight and nine-years-old when using this book. I chose it to supplement his public school language arts program because he did very little writing in school. We had not used the prior volumes, so it was a bit of a rough start. Despite being a strong reader with a broad vocabulary, he initially struggled with summarizing the excerpts. The first couple of lessons were trying and tearful. However, slowly and steadily, he improved a great deal and the journey was worth the early pain. We look forward to moving on to level 4 soon. Highly recommended.

Excellent condition of book and prompt delivery. I own most books written by Susan Wise-Bauer. My son and I enjoy learning with this classical method.

We used Writing with Ease 2 and stared with this one but my son didn't like it ...considered it boring ...we went through it so fast there was nothing challenging about it ...the readers were from well known classics but I and my son found it very childish for his age and we stopped continuing studying with the textbook...