A Review of Persuasive Writing and Classical Rhetoric: Practicing theHabits of Great Writers

Writing is one of the more difficult subjects to tackle, in some respects because it is both subjective and objective, so I always appreciate the chance to check out a new curriculum. This Spring Silverdale Press LLC offered a few of their products to the TOS Review Crew, including a number of Unit Studies for grades K-12 as well as Persuasive Writing & Classical Rhetoric: Practicing the Habits of Great Writers for high school students. We were selected to review the Writing Course.

The material, which is a full 36-week course is offered as a digital download, and comes with four parts:

• Rhetoric Lesson Book: each Lesson is written directly to the student (Not requiring a parent/teacher for learning), with an overview of the week, a schedule, interesting, instructive text, ending with a "Profile in Rhetoric" featuring some of the greatest writers. 
• Rhetoric Reader: includes excerpts from the authors featured in the "Profile in Rhetoric" for the lesson. 
• Rhetoric Workbook: Also written towards the student (obviously), with four parts:
• Review questions from the lesson 
• Review questions from the Reader 
• A Writing Exercise that relates to the lesson
• A Writing Prompt for a 500-word essay each week, again relating to the lesson.
• Rhetoric Answer Book: Answers to the review questions from the workbook. 

The authors directly suggest that the students use the workbook to "correct" their own papers, but that it is very important for the parent/teachers to discuss and give feedback on the writing exercises and the weekly essay. A rubric has been included in the front of the answer book to assist with this, and to help the students see what is expected in their writing. 

This is very much a "Classical Education" approach to Rhetoric, based upon three main habits the authors focus on, Writing, Reading, and Thinking on a regular basis.

After two introductory lessons, the students focus on three stages of Classical rhetoric, with 14 lessons covering "Invention" including The Subject, Stasis Theory, The Claim, Inartistic Appeals, Logical Appeals (Deductive and Inductive), Emotional Appeals, and Ethical Appeals. This is followed by 7 lessons in "Arrangement" which include The Introduction, Statement of Facts, Confirmation, Refutation, and Conclusion. The final stage is "Style" and there are 7 lessons here as well, that speak to Correctness in Words and Sentences and also Punctuation, Clarity in Character and Actions, Zapping Clutter, Ornamentation and Propriety. The final 5 lessons discuss "real world" writing including knowing the audience, what real writers today do, pitching your work, and dealing with rejection.

This is a very complete course of instruction, broken down into step-by-step details, which should allow your student to become a successful writer.

The Author Profiles in the Lessons, and the works in the Reader cover a wide variety of people including Patrick Henry and Alexander Hamilton, William Wilberforce and John F. Kennedy, Dorothy Sayers and Jane Austin, Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill, and E.B. White and Augustine, among others. Your student will be introduced to some of the facts of their history, as well as some of the things they were known for in their writing. I found this to be an interesting aspect of this curriculum, and appreciate the personalization of the lesson being taught.

A portion of the lesson book pdf layout.
You can see where the profiles are, with photos of the featured writer, as well as other illustrations.

From a purely aesthetic point of view, the lesson book and reader are set up very well with color illustrations, bold text, bullet points and spacing that make it easy to see the organization of the text/lesson. My son appreciated accessing the text electronically, rather than having one more set of books to keep track of (Which is a little bit of an issue when you live in a "reviewing" homeschool...).

He also thought that the lessons were a very reasonable length, and felt that the daily writing (whether answering questions, doing the exercises, or the longer essay) worked well as a way to improve his skills. The "Great Writers Write" point at the beginning of the book appears to have stuck.

The Workbook was not set up in a way that worked well with my son, however, again from a purely aesthetic point of view (not speaking to the content here at all). As is often the case with workbooks, the lines for the answers often leave too much space, or not enough. I personally would prefer to have the workbook be a streamlined set of questions, that wouldn't take as much ink and paper to print, (Or viewing them on the screen with the questions from each section on a single page) with answers written in a spiral or composition book, but that is purely my opinion.

You can download a sample from the product page linked below.
Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: Silverdale Press LLC
• Product: Persuasive Writing & Classical Rhetoric: Practicing the Habits of Great Writers
• Ages: 14-18
• Price: $119.99

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Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Homeschool Review Crew and see what others had to say about this as well as the Unit Studies mentioned at the beginning of the reivew. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

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