The Power in Your Hands

The Power in Your Hands  Writing Nonfiction in High School by Sharon Watson

For Grades 9-12
writingwithsharonwatson.com/
writingwithsharonwatson.com/the-power-in-your-hands/

Student Book $39.98
Teacher Book $14.98

Order from Create Space

Student Materials

This writing course is designed to be used by high school students over the course of a year. It contains 23 chapters, some of which are designed for more than one week of instruction and writing. The final section is toolbox of many helpful charts, lists, and information for writers. It is designed to be used in school classrooms, homeschools, and coop settings.


What you will find in The Power in Your Hands  Student book

Writing Persusaion

• What is it?
• Writing Logically
• Comparison and Contrast
• Morals and Ethics
• Emotional Appeal
• The SAT Essay
• Proofreading

Expository Writing

• Letters (Condolence and Thank You)
• Process Writing
• Position Papers and proper documentation
• Devotionals
• Newspaper Writing
• Biographies
• Compare and Contrast
• Literary Analysis
• Definition Essays

Description

• Descriptive Essays

Narration

•  Personal Testimonies/ Spiritual Journies
•  Turning Interviews into Narratives
•  Personal Narratives

Each of these topics is defined and described briefly to help the student learn what makes them an unique type of writing. There are also many helps to direct the student to edit and improve their own work. Instructions on proof reading are also included.




Teacher Materials

The teacher's book contains answers to questions and exercises in the student book, but it does not contain the entire student text.

Unique to the Teacher's Book

The teacher's book (well, the whole course) is designed so that a parent can conduct a professional writing course on a schedule appropriate for their needs. To facilitate this some of the topics you will find in the teacher's book include:

• Grading and Evaluation Rubrics and Forms   "What does an A paper look like?"  "What does and F paper look like?" and all levels in between.
• Ideas to help Reluctant Writers
• 14 Minute Writing Power Surges  - ideas to write about for 14 minutes - for the whole year
• Answers and Discussion ideas for the student work corresponding to each of the chapters
• Tips for Proofreading and making exciting word choices

For additional helps and ideas Sharon maintains a blog and offers weekly writing prompts by email.

 Sharon Watson has also written Jump-In, a writing course for junior high and Writing Fiction [In High School].

My Thoughts

I used this course with my 13 year old daughter. While she is below the target age range for this course  I felt she could handle this material based on her previous writing experience. She did fine. The topics and examples used  feature teens or teen issue, but not material I felt was inappropriate for her. A couple examples are teen driving and texting, the dilemma of giving teens a credit card,  and high school classes. Most examples and sources are science or history topics, literature, and personal stories.

Various types of paragraphs ie. direct, climatic, transitional are discussed and explained. This course also contains a fair amount of instruction about constructing introductions and conclusions. We did not spend a lot of time on these sections as I wanted to get a feel for multiple sections of the book during our limited review period, but there is a lot of valuable information to help students learn and master these challenging skills.


By the end of this course students will have completed a wide variety of writing projects for many different occasions and needs. This I find to be very beneficial.  I also like the writing prompts as I want to give my daughter the opportunity to practice the step by step skills she has learned with the text examples, but this way I don't have to come up with the ideas on my own. I could do it, but having it done for me is a time saver.

Another feature I found helpful were the ideas regarding requirements for writers of different skill levels. Most major writing assignments give a word count. While these are realistic targets, they can also be intimidating to younger students or those with less experience.   Thus by giving the instructor 'permission' to require less of newer writers this course should be easily adaptable for most students.

My daughters' thoughts:

"I think it is a really good book that is written towards a student rather than a group of people. During the lesson at some points it is funny so that makes it more fun to use. If I had gotten it earlier in the school year I would have wanted to continue using it as I found it more fun than the program I was currently using. For what I have used of it the topics it chose were interesting as they talked about things teenagers are interested in."

I was surprised by the amount of  Christian content in the book as the only mention I saw of this in online information was one line at the very bottom of the order page. As you can tell from some of the topics listed above there are lessons for writing several types of Christian literature. There are also numerous Bible verses throughout the text. One chapter talks extensively about making moral judgements. (An example in this chapter mentions abortion and lesbianism.  My daughter is aware of these issues and the conflict the letter discusses). It gives good ideas regarding writing about moral issues where people have differing opinions, but it is definitely slanted towards a Christian world view.

I will continue to use The Power In Your Hands with my daughter along with the next volume of the writing course she has just completed. There are many valuable skills to be learned and practiced from The Power in Your Hands  which will increase her writing proficiency.


Read what other Home&School Mosaics reviewers thought of this and Sharon's other writing programs on the Home&School Mosaics blog.

Disclaimer: I received  free copies of the student and teacher books reviewed above for the purpose of writing this frank and honest review. I have not been compensated in any other manner. All opinions expressed here are solely my own.

Curriculum for Sale

I have the following items for sale. Postage costs for buyers choice of shipping method is in addition to prices. Items are from a pet free, smoke free home. Pictures are available upon request. If you are interested leave a comment or email me at martharf95@gmail.com


Teaching Textbooks 6
Book, Answer Book, CD's $100
One year old, used by one student


IEW Student Writing Intensive A
Binder, Student Pages, CD's $50
A couple pages are bent, but are all there.


WriteShop Primary Book C (Teacher Book) $25
Brand New - looked through first lesson, but never used



Artistic Pursuits K-3 Book 3 $25
Second Edition
Very Good Condition


God's Great Covenant New Testament Book 1 $30 for set
Student Book and Teacher Book
Very Good Condition



Evan Moor History Pockets Ancient Civilizations $7
Grades 1-3
Good Condition


Evan Moor How to Report on Books Grade 1-2 $7
Very Good Condition


QuikPix Addition and Subtraction game $3

Menu Math  $5
Very Good Condition



Also see this post for more books, games and learning activities for sale.

'The Fault in Our Stars' Book Thoughts and A Lesson

May is Get Caught Reading Month. I'm not really planning on doing anything special, except maybe introduce my children to some new genres or challenge them to read a type of book they don't usually read. Because of this focus on reading in May I thought I would use this month to share some of the books we're currently reading or recently finished.



Today my 13 year old daughter is writing about her current read. This is what she has to say.

My favorite book that I've been reading this month is "The Fault in Our Stars". I haven't finished reading it yet, but it is just so good that I had to write about it. This book is by award winning author John Green. I found out about the book on YouTube because the author is also one half of the Vlogbrothers, and has talked about the book on their channel.

" The Fault in Our Stars" is about a girl named Hazel Grace who has stage IV cancer. Her mom wants her to go to support group to make friends, much to Hazel's complaining, until she meets Augustus Waters. They immediately take a liking to each other and become friends. But this is tested when Hazel is waiting outside with Augustus he puts a cigarette in his mouth. When Hazel sees this she gets mad for smoking when she has lung cancer. She says, "Are you serious? You think that's cool? ... even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER. Let me just assure you that not being able to breathe SUCKS." Then Augustus tells her that it's a metaphor. He puts something that is able to kill him right between his teeth but he doesn't light it, he doesn't give it the power to kill. After this Hazel feels better about it. After they are friends for a while, Hazel tells him about a book she likes, "An Imperial Affliction". It is about a girl who has cancer like her, and the book ends on a cliff hanger. Augustus reads it and likes it as much as she does, Hazel tells him that she has written a bunch of letters to the author asking what happens, but he has never written back. The next time Augustus talks to Hazel on the phone, he tells her that he sent an email to the author's secretary and the author wrote back through his secretary. Hazel also sends his secretary emails asking the author the answers to her questions, but he tells her that the only way he could tell her the answers is if she came to Amsterdam where he lived, and talked to him in person.

This is as far as I've gotten in the book, so if you want to know what happens next you have to read it yourself. I can not recommend this book highly enough, because it is so good. I would rate it 1,000,000/10 stars it is so good. This book is great for teenagers, but I wouldn't recommend it for children younger than that. The movie is also coming out this year so if you like the book, you should watch the movie too.

Mom's Turn

Despite how much my daughter enjoyed this book I didn't allow her to finish it. While she was writing this I picked up the book and started reading parts of it. I was unpleasantly surprised so I continued to read it later to get a fuller understanding of the text. What I found disturbed me.

• There is a lot of inappropriate language used by the teens in the story. While I can't isolate my children from hearing this type of language, I don't feel it needs to be read.
•  I wasn't pleased with the attitude exhibited by the teens towards their parents.
• The main characters also engage in  a physical relationship inappropriate for children.
• The graphic descriptions of the physical deterioration and process of death didn't set well with me either.

Unfortunately I can't give it as many stars as my daughter or really recommend seeing the movie.  The latter is hard to say, but knowing how books are often changed for movies I really don't expect the movie to be improved in a way which addresses my concerns.

The Lesson

Because I wanted to have the opportunity to discuss the book with my daughter I hung onto it until we had the opportunity to talk. I shared with my daughter my thoughts about what I had read and my desire that she didn't finish the book. As I expected this was not what she wanted to hear. Fortunately, she was semi willing to listen to my point of view and problems with the book. We discussed the situations and language in the story and agreed the language was probably not a major point to keep her from finishing the book. I was more concerned about the actions of the characters, the physical deterioration of the characters and the utter hopelessness they had due to their lack of faith and how this influenced their behavior.

While I realize all of these things are issues that she will probably encounter at some point in her life I don't believe she needs to read about them right now. I hope she will have time and more maturity before she has to wrestle and deal with these complex issues.

The Result

I did let my daughter read a little more of the book, enough so she could learn the outcome of the characters visit with the Author in Amsterdam. While this did not avoid the language and attitude issues, it did eliminate the other topics I found objectionable.

I also learned I need to be a little more vigilant about reading selections. I usually know what my children are reading, but when something is recommended by a professional I thought it would be ok. In doing some online research after this incident I also found it enlightening how books are currently classified, the labels used by the industry are not as straight forward as they are made to sound. They also use different age ranges than other industries. So this is something I need to research more. Something else to add to my summer to do list.



I have tried to keep this semi short and not go into many details because you never know who maybe reading over your shoulder. :)  If you would like more details about the content of the book or why I found it objectionable send me an email at martharf95@gmail and I am more than happy to share more thoughts with you.