My favorite way to teach good writing to junior high students is through good reading.  I love to incorporate narration from the novels the kids are reading and to have them grow accustomed to reading well written words, which, in turn, hopefully leads them to writing well written words of their own.

But sometimes it’s also really helpful to have a little guide – a handbook, if you will.

I was excited to add Jump In: A Workbook for Reluctant and Eager Writers from Timberdoodle into my curriculum this year because sometimes I can forget what expectations are appropriate to have for my junior high writers.  This workbook is available individually through Timberdoodle or it comes as part of the their Fifth Grade Full Curriculum Kit.

I am using it this year with all three of my junior high students – sixth, seventh and eighth grader.  (I’m a few months into this school year and seeing that list of my students’ grades still makes my stomach quake a little.)  I don’t think it is at all limited to fifth grade in any way.

You can use this workbook as a straightforward guide to writing and work right through the book.  And that’s a great plan.  You can also use the book as a guide and a resource when you see a certain skill set lacking in your young writer.  Say your son is struggling with writing a persuasive essay, you can just go to that skill set in the workbook and use this as a guide to refresh or retrain their abilities in writing a persuasive essay.

This workbook is very student-friendly.  Very teacher-friendly too.  Because I didn’t receive three workbooks for writing this review, I have not actually been letting the kids write directly in the workbook and am instead having them write their essays in their own notebooks.  It’s not been a problem in the least, but using the workbook directly would be handy, of course.  There is no lesson planning for the teacher.  It is so self explanatory that if you, as the teacher, have forgotten the nuances of expository writing when trying to instruct your student, you’ll have no problem guiding them in that topic as you read along in this workbook.

The writing examples used to teach the students are written by other students and are regular and helpful.  The step by step process is fantastic.  You can rush through it or take it slowly, depending on how your student is responding to the writing workload.

I love this workbook as a guide for helping my kids to learn some of the typical phrasings used to describe writing in a more traditional setting than our homeschool.  My kids hear the word narration every day, but sometimes I forget words like exposition and persuasion and cause and effect.  We might be doing those styles of writing, but I don’t always label them with those words.  It’s good for my kids to be trained to recognize those phrases as well and to be able to follow those specific writing procedures.

A tiny, truly unimportant, side note – I do wish the cover looked different.  I think it looks a little childish and I know I am using it for kids slightly older than its target range, so maybe that’s my fault, but the cover looks a little more like it is intended for my younger students than for my older students.  I’d rather it just be a simple design on front.

I’ve been really pleased with all of our Timberdoodle review options and I think each item has been beneficial to our homeschool in various ways, but this product has probably met the most specific kind of need our homeschool has had this year.  It isn’t a product that just adds an additional something that I might not have been planning to add anyway.  This workbook benefits a primary subject that affects all the other subjects.  I’ll be keeping this on my resource shelf for certain.

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