I’m looking for a good writing curriculum for my middle child for
next year. He’s been in public school, and will be joining my youngest
in homeschooling next year (wants to try it out). He would be in 6th
grade next year if he continued in public school.
A bit about him…He’s very literal…so has trouble with figurative language.He
struggles with writing in general. He’s a bit of a perfectionist. He has
trouble coming up with ideas, and trouble with coming up with enough
content (his teachers get on him for not including enough detail, or
just not making his writing long enough for the assignment). If
there’s anything in school that makes him cry and pull his hair out,
it’s writing. Some of his finished product is pretty good…but he’s a
perfectionist about it and prefers things with one answer/cut and dry,
like science and math. So, I’d like a to find a curriculum that
is more for those who struggle with the creative side of writing than
for those who naturally gravitate towards that (I’m that kind of
person).
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
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I can’t help but like your post… everything you wrote sounds like my daughter (2nd grade). It’s definitely a struggle! Teaching writing and pulling out creative details without spoon-feeding can be so challenging. We use Voyages in English (Loyola Press) - it does step by step writing units and grammar units (usually each month has a writing assignment broken into many small steps and a correlating grammar unit). I can’t speak to the higher grades as we have only used grades 1-2, but thus far it has worked great for my daughter who sounds very much like your son. I first used the program in a school system and the older grade teachers had good things to say about it, but again, I’m only going off of what I’ve heard. Good luck! 
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Essentials in Writing might work. I used a whole load of ‘inclusive’ curriculum hoping that writing will come naturally and it didn’t. This year we decided to try EIW and I have seen results. The first half of the EIW year is grammar, we rushed through that section because that part was easy for my children, we have then moved on to the writing section, Matthew takes the time to go through writing one step at a time, you change words for one part of the assignment, add more details in one part etc… until they have a finished work they can ‘publish’. My children went from not being able to write anything at all to writing interesting paragraphs. Hope this helps.
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