April 2012 - Page 2 of 2 - A Brave Writer's Life in Brief A Brave Writer's Life in Brief
  • Start Here
    • For Families
      Multiple Ages
    • Ages 5-7
      Beginning Writers
    • Ages 8-10
      Emerging Writers
    • Ages 11-12
      Middle School Writers
    • Ages 13-14
      High School Writers
    • Ages 15-18
      College Prep Writers
  • Digital Products
    • Core Products
    • Bundles
    • Literature Singles
    • Practice Pages
    • Homeschool Help
    • Special Offers
  • Online Classes
    • Class Descriptions
    • Class Schedule
    • Classroom
    • How Our Classes Work
    • Our Writing Coaches
    • Classes FAQ
  • Community
    • Brave Learner Home
    • Blog
    • Podcast
    • Calendar
    • Brave Writer's Day Off
  • Cart
  • My Account
    • My Online Classes
    • My Account
  • My Account
    • My Online Classes
    • My Account
  • Start Here

    If you’re new to Brave Writer, or are looking for the best products for your child or family, choose from below:

    • For Families
      Multiple Ages
    • Ages 5-7
      Beginning Writers
    • Ages 8-10
      Emerging Writers
    • Ages 11-12
      Middle School Writers
    • Ages 13-14
      High School Writers
    • Ages 15-18
      College Prep Writers
  • Digital Products

    If you’re already familiar with Brave Writer products, go directly to what you’re looking for:

    • Core Products
    • Bundles
    • Literature Singles
    • Practice Pages
    • Homeschool Help
    • Special Offers
  • Online Classes
    • Class Descriptions
    • Class Schedule
    • Classroom
    • How Our Classes Work
    • Our Writing Coaches
    • Classes FAQ
  • Community
    • Brave Learner Home
    • Blog
    • Podcast
    • Calendar
    • Brave Writer's Day Off
  • Search
  • Cart

Search Bravewriter.com

  • Home
  • Blog

A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

Thoughts from my home to yours

Archive for April, 2012

Newer Entries »

Thinking Differently about Writing

The Paradigm Shift

Sometimes moms have a hard time wrapping their brains around Brave Writer. They ask questions like:

  • What grade levels is it for?
  • Do I need any other writing program if I use Brave Writer materials?
  • What do I do once I’ve worked through Growing Brave Writers? Do I go on to some other program or can I keep going with Brave Writer?
  • What’s the difference between the Arrow and Partnership Writing?

So with all the new visitors and emails flying into my in-box, I thought I’d take a moment to give you another way to think about Brave Writer.

Brave Writer requires a paradigm shift
in how you think about writing.

Like any paradigm shift, it feels “wrong” at first, even though you also feel drawn to it. Brave Writer is not about programmatic writing. It’s not organized by grade level. It’s organized by developmental stages of growth.

The reason you may feel flustered by Brave Writer is that it requires you to consider each individual child’s needs and then match the right products to him or her.

That’s a bigger challenge initially than clicking on “1st grade” and buying the 1st Grade Package. But the upside is this: we offer TONS of support (email, phone calls, and the membership community, Brave Learner Home) to ensure that you buy the right products for your particular family. Once you enter the world of Brave Writer, we take care of you and your kids. You have access to me (Julie Bogart) and my staff.

We teach YOU how to be a homeschooling parent and writing coach simultaneously without damaging your relationship with your child, as well as provide tools with processes and exercises to help you establish a writing process that is tailored to your unique child.

It’s not: “Write a descriptive paragraph, using a topic sentence, an ‘ly’ word for the second sentence, and a clincher for the last sentence.”

It is: “Delightful child of mine: you have so much to say. Let’s see how we can get that captured on paper in any way we can so that you and I can play with your ideas and thoughts, so we can expand them, enjoy them, and share them with others. Let’s discover all the cool, interesting thoughts inside you. I’m on your team and I have some tricks up my sleeve for how we can make writing comfortable, interesting, less taxing, more satisfying, and even enjoyable. You deserve that. Have a brownie.”

See how different that is? It helps you to execute ANY writing you do with your child, in any other curriculum you are already using. It’s the manual that tells you how to teach writing, not what to teach.

Can you feel the difference?

Brave Writer

Brave Writer products facilitate writing growth
through a specific set of ideas about writing.

Those ideas are:

  • When growing a writer, you want to match the level of support you offer to the developmental skills of your child. Help helps!
  • It’s essential to separate the mechanics of writing from the original writing voice in the early stage of development.
  • We use someone else’s writing to teach mechanics.
  • We capture the child’s original writing voice on paper, on screen for that child until the mechanics take hold.
  • The writing process is more important than writing formats, particularly in the early years.
  • Writing growth happens through a series of papers, not in every single paper.
  • Writing with freedom, support, and modeling creates space for kids to access/delve into their own language that reveals their natural insight, vocabulary, and passion.
  • Parents make the best coaches and allies to their children.
  • Any native speaker who reads and writes can be his or her child’s writing coach.
  • Creating emotional safety for writing risks is the single most important skill a parent must master to grow a writer.
  • A language rich environment is more important/effective than spelling, grammar, vocabulary, literature, and writing workbooks.
  • Poetry Teatime is the gateway drug to all things Brave Writer.

A wonderful side-effect is that it will make you a better homeschooling parent, period. The paradigm shift away from “school,” to “home” is profound. You’ll find that you are suddenly much more able to be there for your kids, valuing their quirky individuality, no matter how skilled or unskilled they are in academics. You’ll discover that you love hanging out with these little people and you’ll be startled by how their mind life delights and fascinates you (rather than worrying that they are behind).

In other words, Brave Writer’s paradigm shift speaks to the whole of how you home educate but uses writing as the primary lens through which you re-envision what it means to celebrate, nurture, love, and lead your fabulous little people.

The Brave Writer Philosophy

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice, Language Arts, Writing Exercises, Young Writers | Comments Off on Thinking Differently about Writing

The Difference Between Brave Writer and Other Programs

The difference between Brave Writer and other programs

I got an email from Hayley, who lives in Australia. She brought up so many good points, I wanted to share my answers to her questions here for others who have similar concerns. We had been in dialog over the last few days so this is my final email to her.


Hi Hayley. Comments within.

Thanks for this Julie.  Will Brave Writer teach him the mechanics of writing, will he understand the formula.  Does Brave Writer teach predicates, topics, starts, middle, ends to a piece of writing?  What I mean by this is, there seems to be a strong emphasis (in all writing programs I have looked at) on learning the procedure of writing a successful piece of work.  Will Brave Writer teach this or teach me to teach it? 

Brave Writer will teach those things, eventually. Brave Writer is about a paradigm shift in how you understand the writing process. Those other programs are following the same tired ideas about writing instruction that have produced decades of flat, lacking-in-confidence, mediocre writers. I know because I talk to adults all the time and the vast majority feel nervous about writing, don’t think they’re good at it, and typically make comments like “I don’t know how to write” despite all the years of having formats pounded into them.

Professional writing instructions starts with a person – not a format. That’s why we are Brave Writer; not Brave Writing. The focus of our instruction begins with the idea that people have interesting thoughts and that these deserve written expression to be shared with an interested audience. We work with helping kids access language from within, helping them to feel safe enough to take writing risks. We (you the parent, and our instructors) support them at each stage of development with corresponding help/assistance.

Over time, formats can be introduced and kids with a strong sense of writing voice will learn them easily.

We do teach mechanics of writing through copywork and dictation and have tools to do that so that while the child is learning how to create original writing without a lot of structural pressure, he/she is also learning how to transcribe accurately and also internalizing quality writing with literary style.

These skills then flow into the child’s own writing as the two come together around ages 13-15.

Like I mentioned, I have looked at the website many times and I don’t fully understand how the ‘lifestyle’ works.  I would also want my son to be able to transition out of Brave Writer and into another program for example without having to start from the lowest level again, if we felt the need to.  I am having difficulty trying to articulate what I want at the moment (have a flu).  Am I making any sense?

Yes, you make perfect sense. You should not need to transition to another program. Brave Writer has been able to meet the writing and language arts needs of thousands of families. On the other hand, if you are interested in using another program or joining a co-op, your child will begin at the level he or she is at when that day comes. But it won’t be about whether he or she can write a business letter or a haiku. It will be about command of language—how well can this child access the language within and give it life on a page?

I love that Brave Writer will capture my son’s imagination and ideas, but I would also like to know I am training him from this early age to write with a correct ‘procedure’.  

But that’s not effective. Think back to speech. Did you worry at ages 4-5 that he wasn’t speaking according to formats in oral language? Perfect grammar? Able to give an oral presentation or speech or deliver a business lecture? When a child learns to speak, we support and encourage all spoken words, even the ones that aren’t quite right. We intuitively know that we don’t expect perfect etiquette at 2-3 or before fluency kicks in. We don’t teach a child how to “answer the phone” before that child is capable of talking and interacting naturally in person.

Likewise, if you begin with formats and “procedure,” you stunt the child’s ability to use his or her natural vocabulary, insight, gathered facts, quirky personality, and all that is available to the child to convey. Instead, the child dumbs down his or her vocabulary to suit the puzzle of the writing assignment and loses touch with what he or she wants to say. Perhaps, in some cases, the natural structure of the ideas is also over-written by the canned ideas of the particular curricula as well.

Like you say most other programs concentrate heavily on the formulaic component, however for me, I would like to concentrate on getting him to put words on paper and feeling confident to do so, but at the same time be gently teaching him the correct formula.

There is no one correct formula. There are lots of ways writing can be shaped but it’s harder to learn these if they are taught ahead of fluency in written self-expression.

I hear many good reviews about Brave Writer, but I also hear about parents purchasing the text, reading it, liking it, but then not really knowing how to put it into practice.  From what I understand, an issue is that it is too ‘unstructured’? 

The difficulty with Brave Writer is that it is not a schedule, but a process. That process can be applied to any writing a child does. I do give ideas in the appendix for what kinds of writing a child might do at each level. Honestly, you can google how to write a descriptive paragraph, if you are looking for specific guidance on structure. What is missing is the process. How do you coax out the rich insight and vocabulary of your child to get a quality descriptive paragraph, not just a formulaic response to a wooden question?

It takes time and trust (courage) to put into practice, and I offer to help throughout. Anyone who emails me gets a response (like this one!). So there’s no reason to get stuck, if you’re worried about that.

Sorry if I am rambling and this email is all over the place.  Thanks for listening.

You’re welcome. The last thing you might like knowing is that our next set of products do give specific writing projects to go with the developmental levels. These would be done at the pace of one per month and are meant to be a way to use the writing process with an intended goal at the end. The reason I resisted writing them for nearly 13 years is that I worry that moms will not make the paradigm shift first—really grasping how important it is for kids to have full access to their original writing voices first.

Hope that helps! Feel free to share it with others who may have similar questions where ever it is you post.


Please do share this information in your homeschooling communities. A paradigm shift takes time. Realizing that writing is not so different from learning to speak, from weaning a child from breastfeeding to food to table manners, from early dependency on you, the parent, to independent living as a young adult is the beginning. Then Brave Writer helps you get there with support to silence the ghost of public school past that sits on your left shoulder.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Email, Homeschool Advice, Young Writers | 2 Comments »

Friday Freewrite: Write around

Friday Freewrite: Try this with your writers today. Each person writes a sentence at the top of a page (moms included). Pass it to the right. Add a sentence (it should follow along, building on what’s already there). Pass it to the right again. Set the timer, now write!

Tags: Friday Freewrite
Posted in Friday Freewrite, General | Comments Off on Friday Freewrite: Write around

Newer Entries »
  • Search the Blog

  • Julie Bogart
  • Welcome, I’m Julie Bogart.

    I’m a homeschooling alum -17 years, five kids. Now I run Brave Writer, the online writing and language arts program for families. More >>

    IMPORTANT: Please read our Privacy Policy.

  • New to Brave Writer? START HERE

  • FREE Resources

    • 7-Day Writing Blitz
    • Brave Writer Lifestyle Program
    • Brave Writer Sampler: Free Sample Products
    • Freewriting Prompts
    • Podcasts
  • Popular Posts

    • You have time
    • How writing is like sewing
    • Best curriculum for a 6 year old
    • Today's little unspoken homeschool secret
    • Do you like to homeschool?
    • Don't trust the schedule
    • You want to do a good job parenting?
    • If you've got a passel of kids
    • You are not a teacher
    • Natural Stages of Growth in Writing podcasts
  • Blog Topics

    • Brave Learner Home
    • Brave Writer Lifestyle
    • Classes
    • Contests/Giveaways
    • Friday Freewrite
    • High School
    • Homeschool Advice
    • Julie's Life
    • Language Arts
    • Movie Wednesday
    • Natural Stages of Growth
    • One Thing Principle
    • Our Team
    • Parenting
    • Philosophy of Education
    • Podcasts
    • Poetry Teatime
    • Products
    • Reviews
    • Speaking Schedule
    • Students
    • Writing about Writing
    • Young Writers
  • Archives

  • Brave Writer is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees (at no extra cost to you) by advertising and linking to amazon.com

    Content © Brave Writer unless otherwise stated.

What is Brave Writer?

  • Welcome to Brave Writer
  • Why Brave Writer Works
  • About Julie
  • Brave Writer Values
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Speaking Schedule

Brave Writer Program

  • Getting Started!
  • Stages of Growth in Writing
  • The Brave Writer Program
  • For Families and Students
  • Online Classes
  • Brave Writer Lifestyle

…and More!

  • Blog
  • Classroom
  • Store
  • Books in Brave Writer Programs
  • Contact Us
  • Customer Service
© 2025 Brave Writer
Privacy Policy
Children's Privacy Policy
Help Center