About the SPROUTS writing program
SPROUTS is a writing program with clear, direct teaching on grammar and sentence writing techniques plus a series of tools to develop strong writing.
How it Began
After graduating my university's teacher's college, I walked away with an idea about how to teach writing and reading comprehension: Teach children the skills, and then they will be able to use those skills with any content.
While this sounded good to me at the time, I quickly realized that trying to teach writing skills in isolation wasn't easy. I would deliver a beautiful lesson, inspire them with a personal, open ended prompt, and my students would freeze. "What should I write?" "It's Writer's block." "I don't know what to say."
The method I had learned, teach the skills, wasn't working. It turns out that having something to say is the foundation of writing. It's difficult to write effectively, or to write at all, if you don't have something to write about.
As a homeschooler, I found that I loved many of the topics I studied with my children. We read fantastic books and learned about science, history, and geography. We leaned into narration, and my children became adept at "telling back" what they heard. When it came to writing, often, the curriculum would present writing tasks, like, "Write a brochure about the place we just read about!" or "Pretend you travelled to this time period. What would you see and do?"
Those work well for some students, and I love the creativity that my kids could come up with. Still, a "Writing Task" is not the same as actually being taught how to write.