Includes: Softcover Printed Textbooks, Online Textbooks, Softcover Printed Teacher Handbooks, Online Teacher Handbooks, the novel Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, and Online Video Subscription. The 12-month online video lesson access comes with free renewals, free customer service and teacher support. Looking for a complete English course for all grade levels that is well organized, thorough in explanation, effective in teaching and easy to use in a homeschool or group setting? Then consider Essentials in Writing! Video instructor Matthew Stephens taught English at the elementary and high school levels for years, and he used his experience to good effect in authoring this course.Essentials in Writing is a well-organized grammar and composition course. Video instructor Matthew Stephens taught English at the elementary and high school levels for years, and he used his experience to good effect in authoring this course. Video Lessons are presented in bite-sized chunks, each focusing on one main point with supporting workbook activities as follow-up. The quality of the video and audio is good, showing Mr. Stephens teaching in front of a classroom using a white board. For younger grades, the teacher and student watch the videos together, then discuss. Students in middle school watch the videos on their own (instruction is always directed to the student) with follow-up teacher-student discussion of the material and assignments. Lesson lengths are age appropriate ranging from 3-4 minutes of video and 15-20 minutes total in lower grades to 7-8 minutes of video and lesson totals of 20-40 minutes in the upper grades. Grammar is taught in context (no diagramming) and covered more in the elementary courses. By levels 8-12, the focus is sentence and paragraph structure as used in essays, research papers and personal/business letters. The Workbook worksheets coordinate with the video. Ideally, the student and teacher would look at the worksheet before viewing the video for that day's lesson. Worksheets are used sequentially with some lessons being completed in one day and some being split into multiple days. Grading is made easier with checklists and scoring guides included right in the lesson and an answer key to specific exercises included in the back of the workbook.The Essentials in Literature program spans four main literature genres and utilizes video teaching, assignments, and assessments. For each genre, units introduce genre-specific modes including a variety of types. For example, the Nonfiction unit may include biographies, propaganda, and more, while learning about bias, purpose, and researching. Fiction lessons focus on genre and key literary elements. Study Novels in a separate unit, examining characters, conflict, theme, etc. The Poetry unit examines figurative devices, rhythm, diction, and more. The Student Workbook combines thorough, comprehensive instruction and analytical worksheets. Activities occur throughout the reading process and include analysis, vocabulary and literary composition practice. The Teacher Handbook contains a course overview, content handling directions (identifying difficult or questionable content), a course syllabus with clearly marked daily lessons and video clues, and a detailed answer key.Mr. Stephens, a Christian, taught in the public schools, so he designed this course to be used in either a secular or Christian environment. The courses were put together before Common Core came along and no effort has been made to make them compatible with Common Core. I believe that Mr. Stephens has given us a course that is easy to implement, with an effective teaching style, at an affordable price. ~ Bob