In This Series Sentence Island: Student Book Sentence Island: Teacher Manual Paragraph Town: Student Book Paragraph Town: Teacher Manual Essay Voyage: Student Book Essay Voyage: Teacher Manual Advanced Academic Writing, Volume One: Student Book Advanced Academic Writing, Volume One: Teacher Manual Advanced Academic Writing Volume Two: Student Book Advanced Academic Writing Volume Two: Teacher Manual Advanced Academic Writing Volume 2: Parent Manual GRADING CD

Writing Program by Michael Clay Thompson

The latest in the series of innovative and revolutionary English Language Arts programs by Michael Clay Thompson.

Writing is the summative skill that combines what is learned in grammar, vocabulary and poetics as part of producing a finished piece of writing.

Elementary Writing Development Sequence (pdf).

Teachers and homeschoolers find the grammar, vocabulary and poetics programs incredibly inspiring, successful and illuminating. This writing series should be used in conjunction with the rest of the program to teach students formal essay writing.

The Elementary level series, which begins with Sentence Island and finishes with Essay Voyage, is stunningly illustrated with original drawings from the art of noted American artist, Milton N. Kemnitz.

The Secondary level Series is illustrated by actual research papers and Michael Thompson's grading comments. It consists of Advanced Academic Writing, Volumes One and Two. Michael Clay Thompson:

“When we do advanced academic writing…we must learn not only to accept but to enjoy the relaxed pace of research, the meticulous construction of sentences, the gradual architecture of essays. The advanced process must be accompanied by an advanced attitude because so long as we resist enjoying advanced competence, we will be unable to achieve it.”

Gifted students need to be able to write academic English. This involves knowing how to formulate papers, how to write according to the MLA rules, how to avoid grammatical and punctuation errors, and how to structure their papers to achieve in any subject.

Michael Clay Thompson has emphasized the illustrated nature of the program because he knows that is very helpful to student progress. When they can see what is expected and what to avoid, students have a far better chance to succeed.

Michael Thompson has compiled comments for students’ papers over many years. He has decided to share this archive with teachers so that they too can encourage, develop and advance students’ writing skills and not merely grade. Each Teacher Manual comes with a CD of his actual research paper comments on hundreds of grammatical errors. Teachers can copy and paste these for their students as appropriate. This is an innovative and probably unique  practical resource for English teachers.

 You can see and hear Michael Clay Thompson talking about teaching formal writing to gifted students on our video page here.

Support Groups for users of Michael Clay Thompson's Language Arts series
Homeschoolers and parents are invited to join the Yahoo! Group: MCTLA
Teachers and educators in schools are invited to join the Yahoo! Group: MCTteachers

Michael Clay Thompson Course Packages
We have made available special packages of the curriculum to help make your ordering easier and to help you save money. Includes student book and teacher's manual for each stage of the curriculum: Homeschool Packages | School Examination Packages

Recommend this series to a friend or colleague

Sentence Island: Student Book

Class sets of 25 or more: $22.00 each; includes free teacher manual. (Order Code: 6683S) Add to Cart

In response to requests from English teachers who have discovered the results that can be achieved from using his grammar and vocabulary programs, we are pleased to present Michael Clay Thompson’s series about writing.

It begins with Sentence Island, a lavishly illustrated book for third grade, gifted or fourth grade regular students. Ideally, Michael would like kids to use Grammar Island first, and then proceed on to Sentence Island, all the while working with Building Language and Music of the Hemispheres. For information on these books and the complete series, go to Michael Clay Thompson's Language Arts Curriculum.

This volume features an array of quirky animals, birds, insects, a talking tree and an amazing fish—whose name is Mud. From each character, Mud learns a different aspect of sentence structure. These rules and concepts are the essential foundation students need for formal writing assignments.

This eagerly anticipated book teaches in a lively way some advanced concepts. Understanding these concepts enables students to write sentences that make sense, communicate ideas and impart information. Its approach and the wonderful illustrations, demonstrate too that it can be fun to write well.

The next book in the writing series is Paragraph Town.

Sample pages: 14 to 18 | 36 to 37 | 48 to 49 | 62 to 63 | 64 to 65

Sentence Island: Teacher Manual

The teacher manuals in the curriculum always include the student book overlaid with tips for teaching, plus: extra material containing wonderful original readings to keep the energy level charged with fun learning and, where applicable, pre and post tests, answers to questions and activities for specific topics.

Paragraph Town: Student Book

Class sets of 25 or more: $20.00 each. (Order Code: 6706S) Add to Cart

Paragraph Town is at the same level as Grammar Town, Caesar's English I and Building Poems. With these four books, teachers are now able to implement a full language arts curriculum strongly grounded in the fundamentals.

This new book gives children an entertaining and comprehensive introduction to the paragraph. It has an extensive and structured Teacher Manual with twenty lessons, in-depth exposition and assignments.

The protagonists who teach the concepts to be learned are two engaging ducks who explore the importance of organizing sentences into orderly paragraphs; some of the different kinds of paragraphs--dialogue, description, expository, comparison; punctuation as well as grammar.

Sample pages: 14 to 18 | 56 to 59 | 64 to 67

Paragraph Town: Teacher Manual

Essay Voyage: Student Book

Class sets of 25 or more: $20.00 each; includes free teacher manual. (Order Code: 6720S) Add to Cart

In what will be an indispensable book for English teachers and all teachers of gifted children, Essay Voyage explicates the elements of the correct, formal essay—the essay expected for essay exams, research papers, critical responses, and other formal analyses of academic subjects. With the use of extensive examples and thorough explanation, we see that formal writing involves the correct use of words, sentences, paragraphs, punctuation and other elements such as organized structure and unity.

The book has a journeying theme that takes us around the world. Each chapter is followed by exercises, challenging questions, examples of good essays and a discussion of the correct use of words taken from Caesar’s English Volume 2.

Essay Voyage Sample Pages 1.5 MB PDF document

Essay Voyage: Teacher Manual

Advanced Academic Writing, Volume One: Student Book

Class sets of 25 or more: $22.00 each; includes free teacher manual. (Order Code: 6744S) Add to Cart

The first volume in this new Secondary Writing series by Michael Clay Thompson is an important addition to his curriculum for formal language study and extends the writing series from Sentence Island, Paragraph Town and Essay Voyage into higher grade levels.

Students practice advanced academic writing with four assignments for which they must review their knowledge of grammar and punctuation, learn the MLA formatting method for research papers, know how to structure a well-written paper and use standard proofreader's marks for correcting their own work.

There are sample papers to illustrate good and bad writing, an explanation of grading expectations and ten new focus points after each assignment to use as a checklist.

This is a rigorous and detailed program, essential for gifted students and for anyone who needs to write formal academic papers. The accompanying Teacher Manual has an invaluable CD of comments for teachers to use when grading papers so that students can learn not only from their mistakes but also from when they do well.

Samples: (pdf files) Table of Contents | Page 13 | Page 19 | Page 24

Advanced Academic Writing, Volume One: Teacher Manual

The Teacher Manual consists of a book and a CD. The book contains the student manual pages with supplementary material throughout, implementation advice and punctuation quizzes.

The CD has Michael Thompson's extensive archive of his grading comments, compiled over many years and which English teachers may copy and paste to use in grading student papers; they enable teachers to do a thorough job of instructing and helping students in the grading process.There is also a slideshow of how to use the whole MCT Language Arts Curriculum.

Samples: (pdf files) Table of Contents | page 112 | page 113 | page 114 | (jpeg file) CD cover

Advanced Academic Writing Volume Two: Student Book

Volume Two's Student and Teacher books, published in November 2009, extend this exacting program from Volume One with more elaborate MLA format rules, more competent essay continuity to forge, more proofreader's marks and forty more actual research paper comments to absorb.

So that students and teachers do not have to juggle two books to find out what is in which book, Volume Two also contains the summaries of punctuation, usage and grammar rules of Volume One for review, with additional items and special comments.

The assignments:

• A Paper about Poetry or Shakespeare
• Comparison or Contrast
• Evaluating Ideas
• Creating an Academic Idea

Advanced Academic Writing Volume Two: Teacher Manual

The Teacher Manual consists of a book and a CD.

The book contains the student manual pages with supplementary material throughout and implementation advice.

The CD has Michael Thompson's extensive archive of his grading comments, compiled over many years and which English teachers may copy and paste to use in grading student papers, and also, in this volume, a 3 minute video of Michael addressing the student about the importance of excellent standards in academic writing.

Sample pages (pdf): page 4 and pp 127-130

Advanced Academic Writing Volume 2: Parent Manual

This Parent Manual for Advanced Academic Writing Volume 2 by Michael Clay Thompson is a new book for homeschooling parents who need to teach their children a proficiency in writing which they may not necessarily have themselves.  The book includes the pages of the student manual with special instructions and comments for the teacher/parent.

Whereas the Teacher Manual is for teachers and parents who are familiar with and at ease with instructing children in academic writing, many parents are not, and this Parent Manual offers several strategies so that they can address the needs of their children. Michael Clay Thompson offers special comments on almost every page, and a homeschool section at the back of the book.

Like the Teacher Manual, the Parent Manual contains a CD of grading comments and a short video of Michael addressing the student.

Sample pages: To the Parent, pages 124/5 

GRADING CD

Responding to teacher requests to use the CD of Michael Clay Thompson's grading comments with other books in the curriculum, we are making them available on a separate CD. This GRADING CD contains the full archive of more than 120 comments, both negative and positive, to be used in grading formal writing assignments, commenting on usage, essay structure, proof-reading, MLA format, grammar and punctuation. It also contains the video presentation to the student and the Secondary Level Implementation slideshow.