Writing Strands

Writing Strands is a process-based composition program originally written by Dave Marks and now published by Master Books. It is one of the longest-running homeschool writing curricula in the United States, distinguished by an assignment-driven structure that walks students through narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive writing in self-contained units.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Subject-specialist / process-based composition
Worldview	Christian-ecumenical (Master Books editions add light Christian framing; Marks's original editions were broadly secular)
Grades	3–12 (Levels 1–7 align loosely to grades 3 through 12)
Formats	Print student book; teacher notes integrated into the student text
Cost tier	Budget
Parent intensity	3
ESA-common	Yes
Accredited	No
Established	Original Writing Strands published by National Writing Institute beginning in the late 1980s; Master Books edition relaunched in the 2010s (Master Books catalog)
Website	masterbooks.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	3	Solid process-writing foundation; lighter on grammar, mechanics, and rhetoric than the strongest competitors
Ease of teaching	4	Self-contained student text with teacher notes; minimal prep
Content quality	3	Sturdy assignment design; prose voice dates from the original Marks editions and reads accordingly
Flexibility	4	Levels are non-sequential within a grade band; mixes well with most spines
Value for money	4	Budget pricing for a multi-year writing program
Worldview scope	3	Master Books framing tilts Christian-ecumenical; original Marks content is broadly secular and remains usable across worldviews
Visual/design	2	Functional textbook layout; modest production values
Support resources	2	Limited online or video supplements; teacher support is the integrated text only

Who the publisher is

Writing Strands originated in the late 1980s as the work of Dave Marks, a high school English teacher who founded National Writing Institute to publish his own homeschool writing program. Marks wrote Levels 1 through 7 across the 1990s and early 2000s, with each level designed as a year-long student workbook covering narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive writing through process-based assignments. National Writing Institute operated primarily as a small homeschool-focused publisher distributed through Rainbow Resource and Christian Book Distributors, and Marks's program was widely used in the homeschool market through the 2000s.

In the 2010s, Master Books, the homeschool imprint of New Leaf Publishing Group, the Christian publisher associated with Answers in Genesis, acquired publication rights to Writing Strands and released updated editions under the Master Books label. The Master Books editions retain the core Marks assignment structure while updating examples, layout, and adding light Christian framing in some teacher notes. Master Books markets Writing Strands within the company's broader Christian-ecumenical curriculum line that emphasizes biblical worldview without committing to a single denomination.

The program's market position is as a budget-tier writing spine for homeschool families who want a structured composition program but do not want the depth (or the price) of Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW), the rigor of Brave Writer, or the academic-essay focus of high-school-only programs like The Lost Tools of Writing. Writing Strands serves families who want assignment-driven progression at a low price.

The core pedagogy

Writing Strands is built on a process-writing model: each assignment is broken into discrete steps, pre-writing, drafting, revision, editing, that the student works through across several days per assignment. The premise is that writing is taught through doing, not through grammar lectures or sentence-diagramming, and that the student improves by completing many short, structured assignments across years rather than mastering composition theory.

Each of the seven levels contains a fixed number of assignments, typically 12 to 20, covering the four traditional modes of writing: narrative (story-telling), descriptive (sensory writing), expository (informative), and persuasive (argument). Assignments are sequential within a level but the levels themselves are not strictly grade-locked: the publisher recommends Level 2 for typical fourth-graders, Level 3 for fifth- to sixth-graders, and so on, with families adjusting based on student writing readiness rather than chronological age.

Signature mechanics: (1) Multi-day assignments, each writing task spans three to seven days, with explicit pre-writing, drafting, and revision steps; (2) Teacher notes inside the student text, the parent reads alongside the student rather than working from a separate teacher manual, which keeps the program low-prep but flattens the pedagogical sophistication; (3) Mode rotation, every level cycles through the four writing modes rather than concentrating on one, which produces breadth but means a student finishes a level having written perhaps three persuasive essays rather than developing persuasive writing in depth; (4) Sample-paragraph anchors, most assignments open with a published or constructed sample paragraph the student analyzes before drafting their own.

Writing Strands does not teach grammar or mechanics. The program assumes the student is using a separate grammar curriculum (Easy Grammar, Rod and Staff, BJU, or similar) and concentrates on composition. This is sometimes a feature and sometimes a gap: families looking for an integrated writing-and-grammar program will need to layer.

A day in the life

A sixth-grader on Writing Strands Level 4 spends approximately 30–40 minutes per day on the program, three to four days per week. A typical assignment runs Monday through Thursday: Monday is pre-writing, reading the assignment introduction, analyzing the sample paragraph, brainstorming a topic, and outlining. Tuesday is drafting, composing the first version, typically a paragraph to a short multi-paragraph piece. Wednesday is revision, rereading, marking improvements, and producing a clean second draft. Thursday is editing, checking grammar and mechanics (often with parent help), producing the final copy. The next assignment begins the following Monday. Across a 30-week academic year, the student completes 12–15 assignments at this pace.

The parent's role is light but present: read the assignment alongside the student on Day One, conference briefly during revision on Day Three, and give final feedback on the polished piece. The integrated teacher notes guide the parent through what to look for at each stage. Multi-child families typically run different children through different levels in parallel, with each child's work staggered to limit conferencing demands on a single morning.

What they do exceptionally well

The process model carries. Writing Strands does the basic work of teaching students that writing is iterative, that a first draft is not a final draft, that revision is a real activity rather than a copy-edit, and that an outline precedes a paragraph. Many homeschool families teach writing intuitively (write a paragraph, parent corrects it, move on), and Writing Strands's main contribution is replacing that informal pattern with a multi-day rhythm that produces stronger habits.

Genuine breadth across modes. Each level covers narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive writing, which means a student finishing seven levels has written across all four modes for nearly a decade. Narrower programs (essay-only high school courses, story-only creative-writing programs) miss this breadth. A Writing Strands graduate has at least encountered every major writing mode they will face on the SAT, in college applications, and in undergraduate coursework.

Budget-friendly multi-year arc. The Master Books editions of Levels 1–7 are priced low enough that a family can assemble the full sequence for under $200 across the entire grade-school span. Compared to comparable multi-year programs (IEW, Bravewriter), Writing Strands is among the most affordable structured writing curricula in the homeschool market.

What they do poorly

Depth on any single mode is shallow. The mode-rotation structure that produces breadth also produces shallowness: a student finishes a level having written only three or four persuasive essays before rotating back to narrative. Programs like IEW's high school writing course or Wordsmith Apprentice concentrate longer on a single mode and produce stronger results within that mode. Writing Strands is breadth-first.

Modest grammar and mechanics integration. The program leans on a separate grammar curriculum and on parent editing for mechanics. A family without that scaffolding will find Writing Strands graduates with weak surface-level mechanics, comma usage, subject-verb agreement, paragraphing, even if their composition structure is solid. The publisher is transparent that this is by design; it is still a real gap.

Dated voice in the original assignments. Many of the sample paragraphs and assignment topics in the Marks-authored core date from the 1990s and early 2000s. Master Books editions have updated some material, but a careful reader will still notice prompts that read as artifacts of their era. Sophisticated middle-schoolers sometimes find the examples flat. The program works despite the dated voice rather than because of it.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Writing Strands if: the family wants a structured, multi-year writing program at a budget price; the parent prefers a low-prep, integrated-teacher-notes format over a separate teacher manual; the student needs explicit process-writing instruction across narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive modes; a separate grammar curriculum is already in place; the household is comfortable with the Master Books editorial register and light Christian framing.

• Skip Writing Strands if: the family wants integrated writing and grammar in one program; the student needs depth in a single writing mode (essay writing for SAT prep, creative writing for fiction students); the family prefers the literature-based Charlotte Mason approach to writing (better served by Brave Writer or narration-based programs); the student is highly visual and would benefit from video-driven instruction (better served by IEW); the household specifically wants a non-religious writing program and prefers to avoid Master Books's framing.

Cost honest assessment

A single Writing Strands student book on the Master Books website runs approximately $20–$28 as of April 2026 depending on level, with the full Levels 1–7 sequence available for under $200 if purchased over time. Master Books does not publish a separate teacher's manual for Writing Strands, the teacher notes are integrated into the student text, which keeps cost down compared to programs that require a paired teacher edition.

Compared to Institute for Excellence in Writing Theme-Based Writing Lessons (approximately $89 per theme plus $189 for the Teaching Writing Structure and Style training video), to Brave Writer (approximately $99–$139 per program plus optional class enrollments), and to Jump In by Sharon Watson (approximately $35 student / $35 teacher), Writing Strands sits at the bottom of the writing-program price range. The all-in cost across grades 3–12 is below the cost of one IEW theme-based course, which is a meaningful budget consideration for families running tight curriculum spends.

ESA eligibility notes

Writing Strands is published by Master Books, which is a registered vendor or available through reseller marketplaces in most state ESA programs that accept Christian curriculum. ESA approval typically tracks the broader Master Books catalog: Arizona's ClassWallet ESA, Florida's Step Up For Students, West Virginia's Hope Scholarship, Iowa's Students First Scholarship, and Arkansas's LEARNS marketplace generally permit Master Books titles. The Christian framing is light enough that families in ESA programs with religious-content restrictions sometimes find Writing Strands clears review where heavier Christian curricula do not. Families should still confirm vendor status with their state ESA administrator.

Alternatives

• Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW), a family would choose IEW over Writing Strands because IEW provides explicit structure-and-style instruction through video-led training, deeper depth on each writing mode, and better-known teacher training (the Teaching Writing Structure and Style course is a standard IEW credential).
• Brave Writer, a family would choose Brave Writer over Writing Strands because Brave Writer's Charlotte Mason–derived approach treats writing as outgrowth of family reading and conversation rather than as a discrete process-writing curriculum, which fits literature-rich households better.
• Jump In (Writing with Sharon Watson), a family would choose Jump In over Writing Strands at the middle-school level because Watson's program is single-author, uniformly written, and tightly focused on the paragraph-and-essay transition many seventh- and eighth-grade students need most.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Writing Strands product pages on masterbooks.com, sample lessons from Levels 2 and 4, and the Master Books catalog description of the program in April 2026. We cross-referenced against Cathy Duffy Reviews coverage of both the original National Writing Institute editions and the current Master Books editions of Writing Strands, and the HSLDA curriculum directory listing for Master Books. Pricing verified directly from the publisher's website and major resellers as of April 2026.