Are you looking for a unique and fun homeschool high school writing course? Daniel Schwabauer of Clear Water Press has designed a great option in Byline. Your teen will learn essay writing in an engaging and fun way – by becoming a journalist covering some of the biggest stories in history! Here’s our review of Byline by Clear Water Press.
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Overview of High School English Requirements
During the high school years, you will want to cover all the main components of English instruction with your teen. English and language arts includes grammar, spelling & vocabulary, literature, writing, and even public speaking.
Check out our detailed explanation in exploring High School English options for your homeschooled teen. You have a lot of freedom and flexibility to craft a customized approach for your student.
By the time your teens reach the high school years, you may be ready to deep dive into full-years’ worth instruction in writing – as that takes all the grammar, spelling, and vocabulary instruction of earlier years and applies it.
And let’s face it – whether or not your teen intends to enlist in higher education post-high school, every person should be able to write effectively and communicate well. Being able to write essays is an essential skill.
But it can also be very boring.
And that’s the problem that Byline solves so brilliantly!
Why Should Your Teen Take a Writing Course in High School?
Your teens not only need to learn how to write well, but they need to learn to think critically, be able to persuade others, and separate fact from fiction. It is a critical skill to be able to see through propaganda in journalism. Your high schoolers will learn all this and more in the Byline writing course.
And if your student does expect to go to college, then a writing course like Byline will be essential in preparing him for the more rigorous coursework post-high school.
So how can you motivate a reluctant student to be engaged and actually (dare we say) enjoy writing? Enter Byline!
Byline takes 8th-12th graders on a wild quest for stories left untold in the forgotten corners of history. As they step into the role of a 1930s-era newspaper reporter, students train under Editor-in-Chief, Daniel Schwabauer, who takes students under his wings to teach them everything he knows. Along the way, and before they even realize what they are doing, students learn to write great academic essays!
Byline, Teacher’s Manual
Byline Writing Course Components
As soon as I learned about the journalism setting for the Byline course – and that your student time-travels back in history to cover exciting events and people – I knew my teen had to take this course. My kids love history (and so do I!), so this was the perfect course for our family. There was no problem with motivation.
Byline is created for high school students in grades 9-12. My teen took this course as part of his 10th grade year. We started with Cover Story last year.
However, there is a Flex Track specifically for 8th graders or struggling 9th graders that lessens the amount of writing projects in this course.
You’ll need several resources to complete Byline: instructional DVDs, Reporter’s Notebook, Training Manual, and the Teacher’s Guide. They’ll also include copies of retro-style newspapers called Metro World and Retro Metro for fun and inspiration.
The Training Manual is the student workbook for the course which includes the assignments, additional reading materials, and prompts with space for initial writing.
Byline lessons are divided into 6 units with 12 lessons each:
- Who
- What
- When
- Where
- Why
- How
Your student will complete 3 lessons each week, culminating in a total of 22 writing projects. They’ll be learning how to write news stories, editorials, advice columns, features, and more. While this is still academic writing, the journalism-angle makes it more fun and approachable for students. Teens need to investigate (research), learn note-taking skills and then retell these stories. Each of their writing projects will mirror common essay types that are required in college.
The Reporter’s Notebook gives the student a place to include probing thoughts and questions about the lesson topic. These questions might be the catalyst for an essay perspective. My student had a hard time using the Reporter’s Notebook each day. We did our best.
The lesson DVDs include the teaching for each lesson. Daniel Schwabauer takes on the persona of a 1930s-era newspaper editor and talks to your teens as if they are working for him. Using historical context and real-life stories, your high schooler will learn how to research, take notes, outline, and compose interesting writing for the newspaper. In reality, they’re learning essay writing without the normal boring instruction!
Video lessons are engaging and they’re also in bite-sized pieces. The longest lesson is just about 17 minutes long on the Op-Ed project. So if you’re worried about having to cajole your teen to watch a 45-minute lecture about academic writing – that is not this course!
The Teacher’s Guide is helpful, and you’ll find information about grading along with grading sheets, unit tests and answers, tips for using this curriculum with a group, weekly lesson guides, and assigned readings.
How it Works
Students are asked to travel back in time and report on historical events as 1930s-era newspaper reporters working for Metropolitan World.
Specifically, they’ve been hired as chronojournalists, reporters who dig up forgotten stories from the past and make them relevant to modern audiences.
Byline
The Teacher’s Manual includes a helpful overview of the entire course – including the video lesson length, required project, points possible, and related readings. Byline is written with the homeschool family in mind. That means your teen can be mostly independent as he works through the course.
Each day’s schedule is mainly the same: watch the video lesson, complete the assignment in the Training Manual, take notes in the Reporter’s Notebook, and continue working on the project. While your student can work independently, I found that my teen needed weekly help with processing the instructions and coming up with a plan of action for his assignments. Your teen might be different. Here’s where you’ll need to figure out the best approach.
Weekly Lesson Guides are helpful in the Teacher’s Manual for giving the parent a good overview of the skills and overview of that week’s project. You’ll want to read that each week before your teen begins his work so you’re knowledgeable about how to help.
Parents are encouraged to grade all the work for each unit at the end of the 12 lessons. The Teacher’s Manual includes simple rubrics for knowing how to assign earned points for each project and grading sheets for keeping track of a current grade.
Once each month, your student will take a 10 question Unit Test. These are included in print in the back of the Teacher’s Manual, or you can find an online and auto-graded version on the Clear Water Press site!
What We Thought
I love that Byline, as with other Clear Water Press courses like Cover Story, is written with the homeschool family in mind. That means that it is very user-friendly, with and open & go format. The publisher intends for your teen to be moving toward more independence as a learner. That is essential for a homeschool parent, especially if you’re teaching multiple kids!
However, as with any curriculum, there is a learning curve for the student and the parent as you get used to the daily and weekly process. As mentioned above, my teen struggled with using the Reporter’s Notebook, which was a bit more open-ended.
As a parent, my struggle was with the weekly oversight and direction when my student needed help. I’m used to being a more hands-off parent in the high school years (for better or worse!). Grading was also a challenge. When you don’t grade as often, I find it more challenging to jump in once a month and look up rubrics again.
I’m also not as used to curriculum that requires me to read a weekly lesson summary. Most of our other curriculum is even less-parent involved. That is not a criticism of Byline – the writing does need graded! But they make it as easy on the parent as possible.
Since I’m very insistent on my teens keeping track of their own progress through student grading sheets, I did love that Byline included reproducible grading sheets for the student to be responsible for keeping track of points earned.
I would have loved to use this course with two or more high schoolers at the same time in order to have multiple kids working through the same assignments. I personally find it more challenging with just a single kid using a curriculum. Maybe that’s just me.
And in full disclosure, my teen didn’t finish the entire course. While I had intended to use Byline for an entire academic year, plans changed. We started Introduction to Public Speaking the previous spring but still wanted to finish it. So, my teen finished his public speaking course in the fall before starting Byline. That’s why we didn’t complete the entire Byline course. And I’ve already mentioned that we almost stop homeschooling most subjects by 11th grade in our homeschool since our kids dive into dual enrollment. If we didn’t already have plans for English in the fall of 11th, we’d definitely be finishing Byline. Just wanted to give you a run-down of how it actually played out in our high school plans.
Listen to Our Chat with Daniel Schwabauer
Daniel Schwabauer, founder and instructor at Clear Water Press, joined us on episode 209 of the Homeschool with Moxie Podcast to discuss teaching writing in homeschool. You can listen to episode 209 below or on your favorite podcasting app.
Other Clear Water Press Courses
If you are looking for writing courses for your middle and high school students, you will not be disappointed with the engaging courses from Clear Water Press.
- Cover Story (6th-9th)
- One Year Adventure Novel (9th-12th)
- Byline (9th-12th)
- Other Worlds (Sci-Fi and Fantasy)
