Exploring the World through Story takes students from foundational writing skills like oral narration, copywork, and dictation, through sentence- and paragraph-level composition, and on to three-, four-, and five-paragraph essays. What writing skills should high school students learn after completing EWS?
There are three additional writing goals to consider for high school students, especially those who are college bound. First, students can expand their essays from five to eight or more paragraphs. Once they understand the essay format, this is a matter of adding more outline points and should not pose a problem for most students. Write By Number will serve you well here. Next, students should learn how to write a research paper. In my experience, it’s best to teach this through history rather than literature, using both primary and secondary sources. Since students will need to marshal multiple sources, this is also a good time to teach one or more of the common citation methods. Finally, students should have some experience with persuasive writing. I like to teach persuasive writing in the final year or two of high school as part of a rhetoric course. AP Language and Composition covers this well, or you can approach it by way of history and civics by having the student analyze famous speeches before composing their own. With these three additional skills in their writing toolkits, high school students will be well-prepared for college writing tasks.
Copyright 2025 by Drew Campbell, PhD. All rights reserved.
Drew Campbell is the author of Living Memory, I Speak Latin, and Exploring the World through Story, and co-author, with Courtney Ostaff and Jennifer Naughton, of How to Homeschool the Kids You Have. She is a veteran homeschooler and has worked as a classroom teacher, private school administrator, and independent tutor.