I've used WriteShop (before I started TOG), and found it really helped my children to write well. The way it works, the child takes 2 weeks to do one assignment (which are one paragraph until it gets into essays late in the program). I found this worked well - plenty of time to let the piece "sit" between drafts, so the student had a fresh look at it and saw new ways to improve it. I was taught in school to write a rough draft, then let it sit in the drawer for at least a day before pulling it out to revise it.

That said, the main purpose of WriteShop is to teach and polish writing skills, not so much to produce papers with meaty content.

So I was thinking of trying that with TOG writing assignments, not only to give my children more time to polish their papers, but also to ease up the schedule some (last year, it was overwhelming to many of them to try to write once a week - especially the G and D). Of course that means I wouldn't be able to cover as many genres and/or they wouldn't write as many papers on a genre.

I'd appreciate any ideas you ladies have about this! TIA,