Jump In is for grades 5 – 8. Younger students likely will be frustrated with the material. Older students will want to use The Power in Your Hands: Writing Nonfiction in High School.

Absolutely! Jump In was developed to take the burden of teaching writing from the shoulders of homeschool moms, and it has been used successfully in co-ops and Christian schools as well.

Fifth through eighth graders will learn how to write in all four modes of writing: persuasion, exposition, description, and narration. In the exposition section, they’ll learn how to write a report with documentation, along with other expository essays like a how-to and newspaper writing. The table of contents for the student edition and the teacher edition are available by clicking “Free Sample” under each book cover at the top of the page.

Each day’s work is labeled a Skill. The first chapter of Jump In has eight Skills. The first seven are daily activities. The last one is the writing assignment. There are more than 180 skills in the workbook, which leads to the next question . . .

• When public and private schools give a writing assignment, the students do their work at home and still have classes during the day. This schedule is not necessary in homeschools. You can assign the essay at the end of the chapter and then follow the Suggested Writing Schedule found at the bottom of that page. The daily tasks found in the Suggested Writing Schedule can be done during your normal writing class time. The book will last for two years with this schedule, and your student won’t feel hurried. (And neither will you!)

• The Lifeguard’s Locker (the teacher’s manual for Jump In) contains a fun writing-prompts program called 10-Minute Writing Plunges. You can use this program for a whole year before or after you use Jump In, or you can take a break from the Jump In chapters for a few days or weeks by using the Writing Plunges. It’s a fun way for your student to write on an interesting topic without being evaluated on everything he or she writes.

If you combine those two suggestions, you can use Jump In for three years. This will give your children a thorough knowledge of the material at a leisurely pace.

The Lifeguard’s Locker, the teacher’s guide to Jump In, contains a grading section with evaluation forms/rubrics and a very practical guide called “How to Earn an A,” “How to Earn a B,” and so forth. The examples there are from real papers by real students and explain exactly why the papers earned those grades. Teachers may want to grade more leniently early in the school year and then use more questions from the evaluation forms as students learn the material in the workbook. If students know ahead of time what questions teachers will use to grade their papers, students have a better idea of what to aim for.

Yes, indeedy. The Mistake Medic, a one-page proofreading tool, teaches students how to catch their own mistakes by asking the right questions. Students have two copies of The Mistake Medic in their workbook, and teachers have a copy of it in The Lifeguard’s Locker.

I’m glad you asked. The sequel to Jump In is now available. The Power in Your Hands: Writing Nonfiction in High School is just as practical, incremental, and conversational as Jump In. Click here for more info on this field-tested textbook that gets real results from both college-bound and inexperienced writers!

Yes! Click here to contact Sharon Watson, the author of Jump In.