Top 8 Homeschool Writing Curriculum Options for High School
The time to choose a homeschool writing curriculum has come. Not sure where to start?
There are many curriculum options in the market, and it’s essential to compare the top choices so that you can find the perfect option for your high school student’s specific goals and needs.
Keep reading to learn about the crucial elements of a good writing curriculum, and find the top eight high school students’ writing curriculum options.
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The Basics of a Writing Curriculum
What we call a “writing curriculum” is a loose term that refers to “a set of materials used to teach a writing course in a traditional school or a homeschool.” It’s usually part of the high school program.
There is a wide array of homeschool writing curricula in the market. Although they all have their differences, most focus on composing for an authentic audience and developing writing skills such as handwriting, punctuation, grammar, and spelling.
Top 8 Homeschool Writing Curriculums for High School
I’ve put together this list of the best writing programs for high school homeschoolers, from the cheapest (or free) to the most expensive ones.
1. The New York Times Writing Curriculum
The New York Times offers a free school-year curriculum in 7 or 8 units (depending on the grade you need) based on real-world writing.
This curriculum is perfect for middle and high school students.
Goal: “To encourage students to go beyond simply consuming media to becoming creators themselves.”
Instructional Style: Each unit is based on writing featured in newspapers and includes editorials, reviews, profiles, and even podcasts. It also provides writing prompts, mentor texts, and commentaries from the Times writers.
Standards: It doesn’t follow any standards.
Assessments: There are no formal assessments, but The Times organizes a contest that teachers use as a final project.
Additional Resources: Webinars and other educators’ materials and strategies.
Price: Free.
2. Lightning Literature and Composition
Lighting Literature from Hewitt Learning is a curriculum designed to spark the love for literature in children and young students.
The “Lightning Lit & Comp” at the high school level covers tone, conflict, character, persuasive writing, and rhyme and meter in poetry.
Goal: “To equip families to educate their own children using the best resources available.”
Instructional Style: It follows a (reusable) student workbook and provides a teacher’s guide and a booklist. The “Lightning Literature” programs don’t include vocabulary or grammar at the high school level.
Standards: It doesn’t follow Common Standards.
Assessments: Comprehension questions only.
Additional Resources: Weekly planning schedule, teacher’s guide, and bibliography.
Price: $34.95.
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3. WriteShop
WriteShop is an award-winning writing curriculum providing programs for elementary, middle, and high school homeschool students.
Their WriteShop II program is specifically designed for teenagers and develops the foundations in “descriptive, informative, and narrative writing.”
Goal: “To create materials that teach children how to write and parents how to teach.”
Instructional Style: Incremental lessons that take students through the different stages of writing: brainstorming, writing, and self-editing.
Standards: It doesn’t follow any standards.
Assessments: Placement quiz.
Additional Resources: Graphic organizers and skills chart. A copying and dictation booklet and a teacher’s manual are sold separately.
Price: Student workbook from $62.
4. Essentials in Writing
Essentials in Writing provides a homeschool writing curriculum through easy video lessons. They also offer literature curriculums, scoring services, and online lessons.
The design is aimed at homeschool students, and each course focuses on different topics, including sentence structure, essays, writing processes, and more.
Goal: “To provide high school students the writing skills needed for high school and university writing.”
Instructional Style: 150 class periods with more than 63 videos per grade and workbooks with over 160 pages. Video lessons take the student through the writing process step by step.
Standards: The combination of “Essentials in Writing” and “Essentials in Literature” earn one English credit.
Assessments: Assessments are included throughout the course.
Additional Resources: Assessment Resource Booklet, grammar lessons, rubrics, checklists, and worksheets.
Price: Digital version $62 and print version $87.
5. BJU Press Writing and Grammar
The BJU Press Writing & Grammar curriculum covers every aspect of writing throughout the three years of high school. From the eight parts of speech and sentence logic to literary analysis and adverbial nouns.
The curriculum offers English faith-based programs from grades 1 to 12, and their high school kits are widely popular among homeschool families.
Goal: To create ”materials that help parents deliver an education based on sound educational principles, inspire joy in learning, and are rooted in a solid biblical worldview.”
Instructional Style: Each unit includes writing assignments such as an editorial, a research essay, a persuasive speech, or a narrative poem.
Standards: It doesn’t follow the Common Core Standards.
Assessments: 10 assessments included.
Additional Resources: Teacher’s edition, CD, and answer key.
Price: $112.60 per grade.
6. Brave Writer
Brave Writer specializes in two main areas:
- To create user-friendly materials.
- To provide online lessons.
They provide high-quality, secular programs for ages 5 to 18, and they even have families option for multiple generations.
Brave Writers offers a High School program, but depending on your child’s age, you may be inclined to choose the College Prep Writers Bundle for kids aged 15 to 18.
Mission: To empower parents to be writing coaches for their kids.
Instructional Style: A fun and easy-to-use manual written for teenagers and five handbooks that pair with novels. All the materials are in PDF formats.
The program includes 15 modules, six exercises, nine lessons, and two key essay formats.
Standards: It doesn’t follow the Common Core Standards, but they claim that its program “was designed with much care to address the most important markers in learning to write.”
Assessments: No assessments.
Additional Resources: Samples and models for feedback, webinars, lesson plans, and discussion board.
Price: $129.
7. Institute for Excellence in Writing
The Institute for Excellence in Writing provides a series of writing, grammar, and literature programs and courses for all levels. From Kindergarten to college students.
For high schoolers, they offer their widely popular “Structure and Style for Students.” This is a 24-week course with daily assignments, vocabulary words, and literature suggestions, among other things.
Instructional Style: Two video lessons per week. The students should complete their assignments before moving on to the next lesson.
Standards: It doesn’t follow Common Standards.
Assessments: No assessments.
Additional Resources: Articles, videos, audio, newsletters, additional downloads, checklists, teacher’s manual, portable walls, and grammar books.
Price: $289.
8. Memoria Press
Memoria Press provides classical Christian materials for homeschool and private schools.
The Memoria Press Classical Composition program is based on a classical teaching writing method that involves learning fourteen skills.
They claim that this method produced writers like Shakespeare and Milton.
Instructional Style: It’s a classical method focused on developing 14 skills, including fable, narrative, maxim, refutation, confirmation, common topic, encomium, invective, comparison, characterization, description, thesis, and law.
Standards: “This class is worth one high school credit in English, Language Arts, Writing, or Composition.”
Assessments: Quizzes and final drafts.
Additional Resources: Teacher guides.
Price: $650.
Find the Right Writing Curriculum for Your Child
As you can see, there’s a wide variety of homeschool writing curriculums on the market, each offering something unique and different.
Choose the one that fits better with the kind of education you want for your child and help them to develop their writing and love for literature.
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