Write for Success offers online writing classes for elementary through high school levels. The classes are taught by Ann Empfield, a certified instructor through the Institute for Excellence in Writing. Each of the courses are taught with the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) style. My student is in high school so we worked on the course Advanced 3. Our course had a perquisite of two years of high school level writing and a required text which had to be purchased separately for $29. Our course, Live with Evaluation, is $450 and the Recorded with Evaluation is $400.

The course we used was taught live once a week. Students were online on an Adobe Connect site. There is a chat feature that the students use for answering questions and interacting with the instructor. There is also another site used in conjunction which is Edmodo. This is where all assignments were given and submitted. Handouts were stored in our account and accessed and printed as well. To make this course work you will need full access to the internet, an email address, Adobe Connect and Edmodo.

The course was done in a PowerPoint style with Mrs. Empfield lecturing. As it was a live course, she was able to interact in real time with the students and each screen was updated with actual information talked about in the class. Our class ranged from one to five students each week attending. The first week was spent going over the technology of Adobe Connect and Edmodo before jumping into the class material. After each live class lecture my student was assigned homework that was due the day before the next class. As the weeks progressed, there was often more than one assignment due each week. Typically reading a chapter in the textbook, making corrections in the previous assignment, and then a new assignment. The goal of our class was working towards writing a research paper which is why weekly revisions on the assignments were helpful.

Write for Success Advanced 3 course is intended for high school students who have had experience writing. This is an advanced course and it moves at a fast pace. The live portion of the class takes about an hour, but the additional assignments take several hours a week. This class is perfect for a child who would like to go onto higher education because they will walk away with a solid foundation for what a research paper is and how to execute a proper paper.

We found this course to be rigorous. Mrs. Empfield is a wonderful teacher and she is easy to listen to and learn from. She presents the material that is practical for students. The technology to access the class and submit assignments was a little tricky. We had an experience one week where we could not access the class. Thankfully Mrs. Empfield was understanding and helpful to get back on track. We were able to watch the recorded class and not lose any additional time.

Because this is advanced college-prep work, it is important to remember and devote a solid time commitment to the coursework outside of the live class time. This course is a solid class that provided a wonderful foundation for research writing.

-Product review by Lisa Rupertus, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, November, 2018