Fourteen down, one more to go! Then we will have all 15 of our Write On downloadable books up for sale at the store, Teachers Pay Teachers, and Amazon! This post is to let you know about one of my faves—the Level IV book of the Peter Pan series. Take a look at the extensive sample pages for this book here at our store, and read on to find out why your kids will love our Write On books—and especially why your upper level students will love Peter Pan IV!

Here is what you need to know about the entire series of fifteen books:

1) They are called Write On (clever, huh?) and then a character’s name:

Write On, Peter Pan

Write On, Beauty and Beast

Write On, Mowgli (Jungle Book)

2) There are five books of each title—five levels:

I—2nd-4th grade writers

II—-4th-6th grade writers

III—6th-8th grade writers

IV—9-10th grade writers

V—10th-12th grade writers

3) Each book comes in print form directly from us (Character Ink store) and in downloadable format from our store, Teachers Pay Teachers, and Amazon.

4) They have a variety of writing types. Each store description tells what types of writing project each level contains.

5) They have our best and newest teaching methods. No vagueness. No writing ideas. You and your student will know what to do every step of the way.

6) Each project has a detailed sample of that project. I can’t stress this enough. All writing books should have a final product showing what the expectations are for the assignment.

7) They are incredibly fun and engaging. We have been testing them for four years now—and our kids love them! (We test all of our books with 100 students a year in various locations—live and online writing classes.)

8) Each book has at least a dozen sample pages to print off or look through where ever they are sold!

Here is what you will find in Write On, Peter Pan, Level IV:

A. This Level IV book is designed for beginning to upper level high school students and contains the following projects (from prewriting through final product with all the instruction and skills needed for each assignment):

I. Essay Writing—Three Reasons Hook Is a Good Villain or Peter Pan Is a Good Hero

ii. Original Story of Someone Getting Away From a Villain on Hook’s Ship

III. An Original Research Report About One Thing of Aspect in the Story of Peter Pan

B. Each project has detailed samples for students to see how the project was written by another student.

C. Each project has in-depth lessons of all of the skills needed in order to complete that project—

I. The 1-3-1 Essay Approach
II. Quotation Inclusion in Essay Writing (with punctuation lessons)
III. Thesis Statement instruction
IV. Directed Brainstorming Boxes
V. Sentence-by-Sentence Outlining, including links/transitions
Vi. Writing With a Series of Three or More
VII. Extensive Checklist Challenges
VIII. Dialogue Writing
IX. Said/Asked/ Exclaimed lesson
XI. Colon use in dialogue—and more!

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1. They use my Directed Writing Approach!

In my Directed Writing Approach, every detail of every project is laid out for your student. None of my writing projects are “writing ideas” or “writing prompts.” Every writing assignment contains step-by-step instructions with much hand-holding along the way. The student is “directed” in how to write and what to write at all times—from brainstorming to research to outlining to rough draft and finally to revising.

My Directed Writing Approach takes the best methods I have discovered in order to teach each type of writing—color-coded research for research-based projects, “Topic of Paragraph” commitment for teaching paragraph breaks, The Three P’s of Persuasion for persuasive writing, the “section-paragraph-sentence” method for longer papers, story writing mapping, Paragraph House for young writers, 1-3-1 essay outlines, my Checklist Challenge for revising, and much more. Each Directed Writing Approach “method” is tried and true after fifteen years of my writing one hundred books and over fifty thousand pages!

Click on the picture above to view free samples of these books!

2. They contain a combination of projects—those with “given material” to write from and those that are completely original (in which student finds material on his own to use as his source).

Students are taught a wide variety of outlining methods in all of my books—Key Word Outlines From Given Material, Directed Brainstorming, Persuasive Mapping, The Paragraph House Outline, Split Paper Technique, Sentence-by-Sentence (S-by-S) Outlining from original sources, Q and A Outlines, Five W’s outlines, Scene Outlines for Story Writing, Formal Outlines for research, and much more.

I teach most writing types/projects by giving the student source material to take notes from first—then having the student branch out and write that same type of writing finding his own source. It is this combination of “given material” first followed by student-found material that gives the student confidence to write that type of paper or story. This method keeps the student from becoming too dependent upon given source material while at the same time helping him learn to find source material (or create his own!) after using given passages first. It is a win-win method.

Click on the picture above to view free samples of these books!

3. The skills that are needed for each writing project are taught within that writing project.

To ask a student to write a paper using three sources and two quotations without teaching the student the skills to complete those steps is cruel! When a project is being taught in my books, the student is also taught whatever skills are needed to complete the project.

 
For example, if the student is writing a story about an animal escaping, he will be taught words and vocabulary that describe various sizes and types of animals as well as how to use onomatopoeia to describe animal sounds. If a student is told to write a persuasive paper, he will be taught the elements of persuasive writing first. If he is writing a research report in which quotes are to be cited, he will be instructed first in how to use quotations (in an earlier lesson) then in how to cite them for that particular paper. These many “how to” lessons give students the tools to write whatever they are assigned easily and with confidence.

Click on the picture above to view free samples of these books!

4. Books are tested with over one hundred students each semester!

My books are not written by grammarians behind closed doors or even by experts who seldom work in small groups with students. (While my undergraduate degree in elementary education and my master’s work in reading specialist do help me occasionally, it is homeschooling for thirty-two years and testing my books every year {and writing and rewriting!} that give me my writing credentials.)

 
Character Ink books are written by teachers who write meaningful lessons then take them out and test drive them for two to five years with over a hundred students each semester. (My new 10 II: Four Research Reports has been tested for six years now—and took over a hundred hours to write and perfect the MLA/quotation citation methods lessons alone!)

 
Every year Character Ink has local cottage classes for homeschooled students in which small groups of students (six to ten per class) take either our complete language arts (Character Quality Language Arts) or our composition-only (Meaningful Composition) classes. As we test our books, we make notes in the margins, discuss them with our students (why was this one so hard for you when the last one was easier?), talk among the teachers, then go back and fix the books, tweak the lessons, and even drop lessons that are too confusing or uninteresting to students. You can’t possibly know if a lesson or project is a good one until you have sat across the table from eight junior high boys to watch their expressions (and/or glossed over looks in their eyes!). This is how we know our programs work!

Click on the picture above to view free samples of these books!

5. Student writing samples are provided for all original writing projects and portions of samples are provided for smaller assignments.

Our books have a little extra something that is seldom found in textbooks and certainly never found at the level of ours—student samples! Each of the original projects have a full-length student sample of that project. As a matter of fact, we use the student samples in our books to teach from—starting with Thesis Statements, Thesis Statements “Reloaded,” and other LINK sentences on to paragraph breaks, proper quotation use, scene development in stories, and much more.

 
Students understand the writing project so much better when there are models for them to look at and when they see what the expectations are for the project. Parents love our student samples because it helps them measure their student’s skills in following the instructions for each project (and gives the parent confidence to know if her student is completing the assignment correctly).

 
Our student writing samples are provided in all types of projects—expository essays, biographical reports, research reports, short stories, twice-told tales, persuasive essays, and more. Your student will know from the beginning what each project involves as the book takes him through a sample to see what great project he will be doing! Student samples are invaluable!

Need further evidence? Go to our blog and print off two weeks of free Meaningful Composition samples at each level (or several pages of the downloadable books). Try before you buy! You will be amazed at how quickly your students become accomplished writers—and how pain-free teaching writing really can be! 🙂

*Write On downloadable and print books (Write On, Mowli; Write On, Peter Pan; Write On, Beauty and Beast); Meaningful Composition; Character Quality Language Arts; and other downloadable e-books.

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It’s finally happening! I am finished with the Write On, Beauty and Beast books (five books; five levels; downloadable AND print books)—and they are going up at my stores!

Yay! That makes five Write On, Mowgli! books; five Write On, Beauty and Beast! books (by the end of next week); and two Write On, Peter Pan! books (with the other three coming the first of April). Check out the description of the Write On! books here.

The first one available is the Junior High book, and I love it! I have been testing the assignments with our one hundred cottage class students over the past two semesters, and it has been a blast!

This Level III book is designed for junior high students and contains the following projects (from pre-writing through final product with all the instruction and skills needed for each assignment): Expanded Writing Boxes With Beauty and Beast Story and Original Essay of Three Castle Objects You Would Choose as Friends.

Can someone say FUN and CUTE!?

So you might be wondering what makes these books (or any of my writing books) different from other writing books…I’m glad you asked!

There are a few secrets to my books’ success in getting kids to write (and like it!):

1) Interesting topics—Um, yeah, our Book-Movie-Book line up of books contains super interesting topics

2) Directed Writing Approach—never a writing idea book; never starters; never vague instructions about what a student should do…but hand-holding, step-by-step instructions that take a student from idea to final product with all of the steps in between

3) Skill Building along the way—I don’t ask students to write a type of paper that contains certain things without also teaching the skills that are needed to complete that project. (Have you ever had an assignment in which a student was supposed to include a quotation but the assignment didn’t actually teach the student how to write with quotations? So sorry!)

Each project in all of my books has detailed samples for students to see how the project was written by another student and in depth lessons of all of the skills needed in order to complete that project.

In the case of Write On, Beauty and Beast III, the following skills/lessons are taught in the two writing projects (Writing Boxes and Three Castle Friends Essay):

1. Sentence by Sentence Writing Boxes for Beauty and Beast, including adding describers to each sentence and ending with multiple paragraph writing (and extensive Answer Keys)

2. Brainstorming Boxes and organizing material for castle friends

3. Research objects in a castle

4. Quotation inclusion

5. Notetaking from source

6. Transition lessons

7. Paragraph Writing From Notes

8. Thesis Statement

9. Thesis Statement Reloaded; and more!

Each write on book (five Mowgli, two Peter Pan, and two Beauty and Beast) has sample pages. Check them out! See if my new downloadable AND print short books might work for you!

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One of the best ways to get to a kid’s writing heart is to give him two things: (1) Writing projects with clear, “Directed” instructions every step of the way and (2) Fun writing topics!

Thankfully, my new Write On books offers both of these!

For those new to this series (this is the seventh book out of fifteen that will be available within the next six weeks!), here is a description of them:

“The Write On! series of books is from Character Ink Press’ Book-Movie-Book line of publications that are starting to come out in spring 2016. The Write On! books are writing/composition books of two to four lengthy lessons each, between 60 and 120 pages per book (depending on the level).

These books contain writing projects based on old books/current movies that children and adults love. The program contains all types of writing, especially focusing on research reports, essays, and stories.

Buy Write On, Peter Pan Level I here!

 
The projects in the series all use the author’s signature “Directed Writing Approach,” which takes students by the hand every step of the way from prewriting (brainstorming, character and plot development, research, etc.) to skill building (for projects requiring certain skills, such as quotes or imagery or persuasion, etc.) to outlining (based on the type of writing) to writing rough drafts to editing (via the Checklist Challenge) to final copy. No vagueness. No questions as to what to write or how to write.”

 
These books are about three popular movies that have been re-made in the past year or so—movies that were originally popular, classic books for families. The movies (and the books) are fun, creative, imaginative, interesting, and engaging. I am trying to bring out writing books for kids that are creative, imaginative, interesting, and engaging as well!

So far, we have these three book/movie combo writing books written (five books/five levels for each movie):

Write On, Mowgli (April 2016)
Write On, Peter Pan! (February 2017)
Write On, Beauty and the Beast (March 2017)
These books in this Write On! series are available as downloadable e-books (at Character Ink Press and Teachers Pay Teachers) and as print books through Character Ink Press and Amazon.

Current and upcoming titles (five books in each title) include the following:

Level I: Early Elementary
Level II: Upper Elementary
Level III: Junior High
Level IV: High School
Level V: Advanced High School

Projects in Write On, Peter Pan Level I (Early Elementary)

This Level I book is designed for early elementary students and contains the following projects (from pre-writing through final product with all the instruction and skills needed for each assignment):

 
Project 1: Expanded Writing Boxes With Peter Pan Story
Project 2: Who Am I—Original Riddle Essay About Peter Pan Characters
Projects 3 & 4: Question and Outline for a Ship Report (Ships During the Time of Captain Hook).

 
Each project has detailed samples for students to see how the project was written by another student and in depth lessons of all of the skills needed in order to complete that project—Sentence by Sentence Writing Boxes for Peter Pan Story, including adding describers to each sentence and ending with paragraph writing (and extensive Answer Keys); Brainstorming Boxes and organizing material for riddles; Research characters from story; First Person Writing instruction; Notetaking From Paragraph Source; Answering Questions From Paragraph Source; Paragraph Writing From Notes; CAVES for Sentence Writing (Capital, All Makes Sense, Verb, End Mark, Subject); Synonym Brainstorming; Final Product.)

Check out our five Write On, Mowgli books (early elementary through upper high school) by clicking on the image below (print and downloadable):

Check out our other Peter Pan book, Write On, Peter Pan III (Junior High) by clicking on the image below (print and downloadable).

Watch for Write On, Beauty and the Beast in March at our store (five levels)

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