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 compare and contrast. 

Each day’s work is labeled a Skill. The first chapter of Jump In has eight Skills. The first seven are daily lessons. The last one is the writing assignment. There are 98 Skills or daily lessons in the workbook, which leads to the next question . . .

If you would like to stroll through Jump In, 2^nd Edition at a more leisurely pace, feel free to use the following plan:

Complete “Get Your Feet Wet” through “A Report” in the first year. In the second year, finish “A Biography” through “Poetry.”

When students get to the essay assignment at the end of each chapter, put the textbook aside as they work through the assignment, suggested writing schedule, and the accompanying checklist. That way, students can concentrate on their current essay assignment without being bogged down with new information from the next chapter.

When the essay is completed on time, move to the next chapter.

This pace also gives you time to repeat a lesson or section if you see that your student does not understand the material or could use more practice in it.

Dip into the 10-Minute Writing Plunges program during the year (page 41).

Grading essays just got a whole lot easier! The Teacher’s Guide contains grading grids for every essay assignment and many of the fiction-writing assignments as well. You’ll evaluate an essay based on very specific questions, give a defined number to the question, and then add up all the numbers for an objective grade. For instance, “Is there a topic sentence for each point?” is worth 1-10 points.

The Teacher’s Guide to Jump In also contains 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. 

Yes, indeedy. The Mistake Medic, a one-page proofreading tool, teaches students how to catch their own mistakes by asking the right questions. Checklists for each essay assignment also guide students through the proofreading process. Students have two copies of The Mistake Medic in their workbook, and teachers have a copy of it in the Teacher’s Guide.

I’m glad you asked. The sequel to Jump In is very popular with teens. 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.