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Running head: WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 1 Writing Strands: A Homeschool Curriculum Charles B. Lawing Argosy University December 6, 2010 CITE THIS WORK: Lawing, C. (2010, December 6). Writing Strands: A Homeschool Curriculum. Unpublished manuscript.

Writing Strands: A Homeschool Curriculum

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An interview with Writing Strands's Renée Lyons -- by Charlie Lawing

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Running head: WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 1

Writing Strands: A Homeschool Curriculum

Charles B. Lawing

Argosy University

December 6, 2010

CITE THIS WORK: Lawing, C. (2010, December 6). Writing Strands: A Homeschool Curriculum. Unpublished manuscript.

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 2

Writing Strands: A Homeschool Curriculum

Cultural Influences

Marlene E. Bumgarner, Ed.D., was a homeschooling mother when at her home in 1980

she interviewed John Holt—recognized by many as the father of the modern homeschool

movement—for Mothering magazine.

“I don’t believe in formal fixed curriculums,” Holt told Bumgarner, as he played in the

garden with her two children. “My advice,” for homeschooling parents, said Holt,

is always to let the interests and the inclinations of the children determine

what happens and to give children access to as much of the parents’ lives and

the world around them as possible [ . . . ], so that children have the widest

possible range of things to look at and think about.

[ . . . ]How that’s done depends very much on the family’s circumstances and

their interests, and the particular interests of the children. Some kids are

bookish, some children like to build things, some are more mathematical or

computerish, or artistic, or musical, or whatever. The mix is never going to be

exactly the same. (Bumgarner, 1980, para. 7)

Eleven years prior to his conversation with Bumgarner, Holt had written Underachieving

Schools (1969), his third book advocating free schools, students rights, and education reform.

Reprinted in 2005, Holt had remarked in 1969 how “astonishingly hard” it was for his fifth-grade

students—who “usually of high IQ, came from literate backgrounds, and were generally felt to

be succeeding in school”—”to express themselves in speech or in writing” (p. 855).

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 3

Asked to speak, my fifth graders were covered with embarrassment; many

refused altogether. Asked to write, they would sit for minutes on end, staring

at the paper. It was hard for most of them to get down a half page of writing,

even on what seemed to be interesting topics or topics they chose themselves.

(ibid.)

As Gaither (2008) observes, “Holt’s fame, rhetorical skill, and tireless activism quickly

make him the de facto leader of the homeschooling movement” (p. 126). But it was also his

experiences as a student and teacher in traditional school settings that shaped Holt into an

outspoken and influential leader.

As a child, Holt studied with private tutors and “at some of the most prestigious boarding

schools in the country” (ibid., p. 122). For high school, he attended Phillips Exeter, and in 1943

graduated from Yale with a degree in Industrial Engineering. After serving for three years in the

Pacific as a lieutenant aboard a submarine, he taught for four years at Colorado Rocky Mountain

coeducational free school; in Cambridge, MA at a “select private school” (ibid., 123); and as a

visiting lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and at the University of California

at Berkeley.

Yet despite—or, rather, because of—his formal positions and training, he remained

convinced that “school” is better a verb than a noun. “The proper relationship of the schools to

home,” Holt concluded, “is the relationship of the library to home, or the skating rink to home. It

is a supplementary resource” (Bumgarner, para. 3).

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 4

The Tipping Point

Around 1978, another professional educator came to that which may have been a different

conclusion. Dave and Lea Marks’s son Corey was in the fourth grade and his parents “were

unhappy with the language arts training [he] was receiving in public school[ . . . ,] so they

decided to do some after-school work with him in language arts” (R. Lyons, personal

communication, November 24, 2010), focusing particularly on developing Corey’s writing skills.

But rather than looking at the school, as did Holt, as the supplementary resource, the Markses’

supplementary resource was their home.

Dave Marks had graduated from Western Michigan University, earned a Master of Arts

from Central Michigan University, and completed 45 additional hours of graduate work in

English at Eastern Michigan University and Michigan State University (“About the author,”

para. 1); he was altogether qualified to teach Corey how to write. Moreover, unlike Holt, who

rejected formal, fixed curricula, Marks developed his son’s curriculum based on “classical

education models” (R. Lyons, private communication, November 29, 2010).

That year, 1978, signaled significant change not only for the Marks family, but for the

homeschool movement as well. According to Gaither (2008), “[b]y 1918 every state in the union

has a compulsory school law” (p. 179). It was not until the late 1970s when, writes Stevens

(2003) “the first public advocates of home education in the USA began concentrated efforts to

change the rules [ . . . ] about how children could be acceptably educated” (p. 91).

“The tipping point came,” writes Gaither (2008), “in December 1978” (p. 126), when Bob

and Linda Sessions won a legal battle in Iowa, “and their right to educate their child at home”

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 5

(ibid.). Time Magazine published an article about the nascent homeschool movement, and days

thereafter “John Holt appeared on The Phil Donahue Show with the Sessions family for a rousing

Donahue-style discussion of homeschooling” (ibid.). The so-called “modern” homeschool

movement took flight. Yet it was only after long—sometimes bitter and oftentimes protracted—

battles in the 1980s and 1990s that the legalization of homeschooling was realized for every state

in the country (Gaither, 2008).

Writing Strands

Ironically, though when the Markses decided to teach Corey in their home they did so

amid the cultural influences of the times, their purpose then was but to supplement his public-

school education, and certainly not to launch a thriving homeschool enterprise; but the series of

exercises they created for Corey in 1978 now make up Writing Strands, the Marks family’s

popular homeschool curriculum, with “several thousand copies” of their books printed every

year (R. Lyons, personal communication, December 1, 2010), administered through their parent

company, the National Writing Institute (NWI).

Renée Lyons, who came to work at NWI in 2005, is “responsible for reprinting the books

and making any necessary changes. Often,” said Lyons, “this means I go sentence by sentence to

check for errors, clarity, or dated references” (R. Lyons, personal communication, November 24,

2010). With a personal and professional interest in homeschool curriculum models, in November

2010 I posed (via email correspondence) a series of questions to Mr. Marks, who, I subsequently

learned, “passed away some years ago” (ibid.). However, while Ms. Lyons, who responded to

my query, “was not involved in the original creation of the series,” (ibid.), she had acquired

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 6

“multiple years of teaching and publication experience” (ibid.), and graciously agreed to answer

that which, due to her generosity and passion about teaching and NWI’s curriculum, evolved into

a growing list of questions (presented hereinafter in two parts).

Questions & Answers (Part I)

Charlie Lawing (CL): When you got into designing curricula, what could you say

necessitated such a project?

Renée Lyons (RL): My understanding is that Dave Marks and his wife, Lea, were

unhappy with the language arts training their son, Corey, was receiving in public school

(he was in fourth grade at the time). They decided to do some after-school work with him

in language arts, so they created the series of exercises that now make up our curriculum

[Figure 1]. Their son worked through the exercises over the next three or four years, at

which point it seemed he had mastered the fundamentals of writing. So, when Corey was

at the age of 12, they enrolled him in a college English course, and he aced it. Since the

exercises worked so well, they realized they could turn the materials into a curriculum for

homeschoolers.

Dave and Lea were passionate about learning and teaching, so it makes sense that they

wanted to share these successful exercises with other students.

CL: What is your goal with the curricula you design, and who will use the final

product(s)?

RL: Writing Strands is designed for students of all ages. While most of our users are

homeschoolers, we do have several school districts that use our books as well.

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 7

Figure 1. Curriculum: Writing Strands. Retrieved December 6, 2010 from http://www.writing-strands.com/curriculum.asp

The overall goal is to prepare students for a lifetime of writing—in college, in the

workforce, and in everyday life; but we also hope to teach kids that writing can (and

should be) a fun experience, not a tortuous one. We do this by breaking our assignments

into small, non-threatening, manageable steps that help students master concepts

incrementally day by day.

CL: Who is involved in curriculum design projects? What role does each person have?

RL: In the beginning, Dave and Lea worked together to come up with the exercises, but I

believe Dave was responsible for writing them up and putting them in book form.

CL: Regarding curriculum design (or re‐design) who reports to whom? Is there a

flowchart or organizational structure? What feedback systems are in place?

RL: In our current setup, I am responsible for reprinting the books and making any

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 8

necessary changes. Often, this means I go sentence by sentence to check for errors,

clarity, or dated references. Since we’re trying to maintain Dave’s legacy, there haven’t

been new exercises, but I do generate resources for parents. When I do want to make a

somewhat radical change to the material, such as adding a new resource for parents, I

check with my boss, Amy (Corey’s wife, director of the company), who otherwise is no

longer involved in day-to-day operations.

When I first started at the company, I ran all my changes by Amy, and she ran major

changes by Lea. At this point, I have a great deal of discretion when it comes to editing.

My coworker, Cathy, whose main job is to attend homeschooling conventions as a

vendor, will sometimes send suggestions as to how to make exercises more modern or

easier to follow. She is responsible for generating the content for most of our newsletters,

which offer tips and strategies for teaching language arts. Since I revise the newsletters,

Cathy and I generally spend about a week or two on each newsletter sending drafts back

and forth.

CL: Whenever you introduce a new curriculum, is there a timeline for turning around a

curriculum project?

RL: I generally spend about a month revising a book before reprinting, depending on

how extensive the revisions were on the previous reprint. Newsletters, as I said above,

take about two weeks.

CL: How can homeschoolers use your curricula? Is there flexibility in the design?

RL: Our books are directed to homeschoolers. In most of the levels (Writing Strands 3

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 9

and up), we speak directly to the student, and they work independently through our

materials, only getting feedback from their parents at the end of each day. Though we

offer a breakdown of what to do on each day, older students who are reviewing lower

levels can work more quickly. If a student needs to repeat a lesson to master the skills, is

working in a “younger” book, or works best with more creativity, he or she can change

the topic of the given lesson.

Our books can also be adapted to the classroom setting. Students will still work

independently, and the teacher can either visit each student during their work or just

provide individualized feedback in writing. (ibid.)

Questions & Answers (Part II)

CL: Are you able to describe the reason(s) for Mr. & Mrs. Marks’s unhappiness [in

1978]? Was the public-school training too “advanced” or too “slow” (I put those words

in [scare-quotes] because I recognize those are wholly subjective values)? Did Corey

(and his parents) dislike the competitive atmosphere? What was/were the problem(s)?

RL: I believe they felt Corey wasn’t being challenged and wasn’t learning the

fundamentals of good writing. Based on what I know of Lea and Dave (and Corey), I

know it was too “slow” but was also perhaps too focused on abstract grammar drills and

the like, which have been shown to be unhelpful to learning to write. I don’t think the

problem was that public school was competitive, but rather that they thought Corey could

accomplish much more with individualized help.

CL: Can you describe some of those first exercises? What did Corey actually do?

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 10

RL: The Writing Strands exercises start off simple. I’m not sure exactly which exercises

Corey started with, but our early books start with building complicated sentences and

paragraphs from simple ones by adding little pieces of information step by step.

CL: What can you say can be attributed to Corey’s mastery of those fundamentals? What

did the Markses do different?

RL: One of the fundamentals of our program and of Dave/Lea’s approach to teaching

writing is that mechanics/surface features (grammar, spelling, syntax) can and should be

taught on a need-to-know basis. Public schools have a hard time doing this since they

have so many kids to handle. By focusing on a student’s writing as the source of surface-

feature lessons, the lessons become more relevant and more concrete. Also, the program

advocates focusing on one problem at a time until the student has mastered it (can self-

correct; can teach it to others). Another element that helps build mastery (and that

probably contributed to Corey’s mastery) is that the lessons build on each other and,

while no two exercises are the same, return to the same concepts multiple times. For

example, we have students work on describing fictional characters’ movements and

thoughts in a few exercises each book. Over the course of the series, that adds up to a lot

of experience for the students.

CL: Why are most users homeschoolers? Why and how have school districts started

using your books?

RL: I think that most of the users are homeschoolers for two main reasons: 1) Dave and

Lea saw it as a market where their materials would be relevant; the public school market

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 11

is heavily dominated by big name publishers (e.g., Houghton Mifflin, HarperCollins), and

many states have boards that determine what textbooks may be used in public schools. 2)

The Writing Strands program depends a lot on individualized instruction—responding to

rough drafts and teaching surface features on a need-to-know basis. That makes it easier

for homeschoolers to use the program since it can be difficult to offer that kind of tailored

teaching in a classroom (I try, but it’s tough). That said, we do have some schools that

use our materials. They are mostly schools in California and Alaska; some of them are

charter schools, some entire school districts. I believe the regulations in those states make

it easier for schools to adopt materials outside the state-mandated curriculum. I can only

assume they chose our program because of the way we teach students how to write (as

opposed to just saying, “Write in your journal for 20 minutes” or, “Write an essay about a

butterfly.”).

CL: I appreciate that your aim is to prepare students whether they’re going off to college

or joining the workforce (there’s something egalitarian in the philosophy). I particularly

appreciate the philosophy that writing can and should be a fun experience, nor a tortuous

one. Where do public-schools miss out? Why is it so often so tortuous? It’s ironic that the

Markses program prepared Corey for college, but the same program can make learning

fun for those who won’t go to college. Do our public (and, perhaps) private institutions

tend to prepare students only for college, and thus those who will be entering the

workforce get ignored and become frustrated with learning? If your small

non-threatening, manageable steps help facilitate mastery, are the public schools

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 12

delivering too much for students to manage? Is it just too much for students to master?

RL: Public schools struggle to make writing fun for a few reasons. First, I think there’s a

lot of pressure to have students perform well on standardized tests—that pressure gets

transferred to the students. It also restricts the creativity of the students and teachers when

it comes to the many possibilities that writing can offer. Second, the fact that

individualized instruction is so difficult in a classroom often means that teachers feel they

have to cover everything for every student, the result being that students don’t get a

chance to master a concept before the next is presented. Then, to make matters worse,

teachers mark everything wrong on each paper, which is discouraging [and] not

particularly helpful. I think this problem is more to blame for students getting frustrated

with school than the focus on college-prep is. Along the same lines, public schools have a

tendency to demand big projects from students without really showing the students how

to accomplish them. For example, schools make fourth graders write full-blown “research

papers” before the kids even know how to write a good paragraph. Does this stem from a

desire to combine lessons (e.g., English and history) or a canon of what we are

“supposed” to teach? Perhaps both; but the result is overwhelming for both students and

teachers.

CL: Is there something else I should know [about Dave Marks’s background]?

RL: Dave and Lea both taught for 30+ years. Dave also suffered from dyslexia and wrote

the books with the idea that any student should be able to work in them, even if they have

a learning disability.

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 13

CL: Can you describe what some of [the] more radical changes [that you would like to

see in the Writing Strands curriculum] have been? That is, resources sound simple

enough; are there some [changes] that you would want to avoid?

RL: Here’s an example of a “radical” change I haven’t proposed yet but would like to. In

Writing Strands 5 or 6, we give a lesson to students on how to write a good business

letter in response to a bad product or service. I’d like to add a section that teaches kids

how to write a professional email and why that skill is important. This would be mostly

all-new content, so I’m not sure it will happen, but it could be helpful in modernizing the

books.

CL: Is Amy mostly retired now? What have her contributions been over the years?

RL: Amy has a second job outside the company that takes up most of her time. She used

to run the company, from editing to growing the business to deciding on

printers/distribution.

CL: Are Lea and Corey involved?

RL: Lea used to oversee the book revisions and would attend a few conventions a year.

She’s now retired. Corey is not involved.

CL: Can you tell me how you got involved [in the company]?

RL: I got involved [five years ago] when Amy needed a new assistant; Corey was my

thesis director and [he] recommended me to her.1

1 “I studied under Corey at the University of North Texas [UNT] in the creative writing program, and he was my director for my

undergraduate poetry thesis. My master’s degree is also in creative writing, and I now teach in the UNT English Department” (R.

Lyons, personal communication, December 1, 2010).

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 14

CL: What is Cathy’s background? Do her suggestions come from those conventions? Do

homeschoolers make suggestions that find their way into your curricula?

RL: Cathy’s experience comes from the fact that she homeschooled both of her children

and continues to tutor kids in her community using Writing Strands. She also gives

workshops to homeschooling groups about our materials. Since she’s still involved with

students who are using the materials, she often has suggestions that are based on where

kids thrived or struggled. Occasionally, customers will call us with a question about an

exercise they don’t understand, and I then mark that exercise for revision.

CL: Can you tell me the size of the staff? How may full- and part-time?

RL: Cathy and I are the only employees actively involved; we’re both part time.

CL: Can you tell me some more about the newsletters? Their content and who receives

them?

RL: The newsletters are generally tips from Cathy about teaching language arts. For

example, we’ve had newsletters about teaching apostrophes and commas, teaching kids

to love reading for a lifetime, and giving gentle, focused feedback on student work. We

send it to people who have signed up or who have bought books online and not opted out.

We also include a coupon for our materials.

CL: What sorts of [book] revisions are typically made?

RL: Most of the revisions have to do with clarity and concision. I try to maintain Dave’s

style as much as possible, but often there are sentences that are imprecise or overly-

wordy. I also try to fix formatting (previous editions often used individual spaces to align,

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 15

rather than setting up tabs and indentation styles). A few years back, I revised our section

of helpful terms so that it would be clear for each term whether it was something to aim

for or to avoid; in each reprint, this gets changed.

CL: You [previously discussed] “lower levels” of learning. Do you follow any of the

standard “educational” schools of thought, such as Bloom’s Taxonomy for example,

which breaks student-learning into a hierarchy? Also, what “measures” of success are

recommended or implemented? Do you suggest levels of success leading toward mastery,

or is it less structured than that?

RL: Absolutely! Dave based a lot of his theory on Bloom’s Taxonomy and on classical

education models. Our literature program is heavily based in Socratic dialogue. In terms

of “measures of success,” we have a few ways that parents and students measure that. In

each book, we provide sheets for parents to keep track of recurring surface-feature

problems. At the front of each book is a list of each exercise’s objectives with a place for

the parents to mark whether the students met the objectives or need to continue working

on them. It’s up to the parents to decide how well the students meet the objectives.

Students are also responsible for keeping track of their progress. At the end of each

exercise, students fill out a “Record of Progress,” in which they write their best sentence

and one sentence that had an error in it that they fixed. (R. Lyons, personal

communication, November 30, 2010)

Summary

Even though, as Yuracko (2008) observes, John Holt “believed that children had a natural

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 16

proclivity for learning and learned best when encouraged to pursue their own interests rather than

being forced to follow an established curriculum as in traditional schools” (p. 126), and in the

1950s had, according to Stevens (2003) “created his distinctive homeschool pedagogy—one he

called ‘unschooling’” (p. 92), prior to the late ’70s homeschool advocates were considered part

of the radical fringe. Putting it mildly, home-schooling, writes Stevens, “was unconventional”

(ibid.).

Today, however, Gaither (2009) paints a wholly different portrait of homeschooling’s

future, one with “blurred boundaries” (para. 21). Not only has homeschooling gone

“mainstream,” but many public school districts, he writes,

having lost the fight to criminalize home schooling, now openly court home

schoolers. School districts around the country are experimenting with

programs that allow students to home school for part of the day but take

certain classes at the local public school. (ibid.)

These and other experiments have led to “public-private hybrids” (ibid., para. 25), such as the

Florida Virtual School, “founded in 1997 and operated by the Florida Department of Education

[ . . . which] partners with all 67 Florida school districts to bring a complete high-school

curriculum moderated by certified teachers to the homes of residents across the state” (ibid.).

In some states, such as California, private companies “have taken advantage of charter

school laws [ . . . ] to make their services available for free to home schoolers” (ibid., para. 26).

And by 2006, there was a total of 147 virtual charter schools educating more than 65, 000

students in 18 states (Gaither, 2009). Gaither (2009) is thus optimistic about prevailing and

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 17

future homeschooling trends:

Trends toward accommodation, adaptation, and hybridization will likely

increase as U.S. education policy seeks to catch up to the sweeping

demographic, technological, and economic changes taking place. A movement

born in opposition to public schools ironically might offer public education its

most promising reform paradigm for the 21st century. (para. 33)

Homeschooling today reflects the ever-changing face of America. In an article as recent as

December 6, 2010, Ingersoll observes: “The incoming class of congressional freshmen includes,

Jaime Herrera (R-WA), the first homeschooled member ever, and Daniel Webster (R-FL) a

homeschooling activist” (para. 1). Ingersoll does not address the fact that it was not until the end

of the First World War when the country fully established compulsory school laws to ensure that

children would be inculcated with “middle-class Protestant notions of family life” (Gaither,

2008, p. 63), and thus most of our early-American political leaders were homeschooled—indeed,

Abraham Lincoln “never went to school more than six months” in his life (Gulliver, 1864, para.

3). But her point is relevant and well-taken, which is that currently one member of Congress was

homeschooled and another is a homeschooling activist—a significant paradigm shift, indeed.

Such data as those gathered by Ingersoll and Gaither shine light on the diverse movement

that homeschooling has become. In the beginning, “homeschooling” was a founding American

principle; in the 1970s, composed of left-leaning liberals on the “radical fringe”; and is today

dominated by conservative Christians, but comprised also of families who homeschool more for

secular reasons than for religious ones. As Lines (2008) argues, that which may be characterized

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 18

as today’s reemergence of home-schooling is an age-old American practice (para. 7). Likewise,

notes Gaither (2008), the modern homeschool movement has been recognized as simply a

“continuation of a process of education that has existed from time immemorial” (p.1).

In 1978, Dave and Lea Marks—innocently, intelligently enough—made the decision to

become a contributing part of that which by the first decade of the twenty-first century has grown

into a burgeoning “social movement” (Mitchell, 2005, p. 274). And though a significant arm of

that movement in 1978 had moved away from curriculum, the Markses moved instead toward it,

building a close-knit and committed family enterprise that today serves a customer base—which

includes individual families, charter schools, and entire districts—somewhere in “the six-digits

range” (R. Lyons, personal communication, December 1, 2010). Not only does the popularity

and growth of the Writing Strands curriculum point to the fact that homeschoolers are as diverse

as is our American community at large, but that individuality is that which learning is all about;

whether in “school” or at home, with a curriculum or without, we all learn in our own distinctly

individual ways.

WRITING STRANDS: A HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM 19

References

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Bumgarner, M. (1981). “A conversation with John Holt,” adapted from “Mothering interviews

John Holt.” Mothering, Issue 19, Spring 1981. The Natural Child Project. Retrieved

November 27, 2010 from http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/marlene_bumgarner.html

Collom, E. (2005). Home schooling as a social movement” Identifying the determinants of

homeschoolers’ perceptions. Sociological Spectrum, 25, pp. 273–305.

Gaither, M. (2008). Homeschooling: An American history. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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teaching a child at home. Educationnext. Winter 2009, Vol. 9, No. 1. Retrieved May 19, 2010

from http://educationnext.org/home-schooling-goes-mainstream/

Gulliver, J.P. (1864, September 4). “Mr. Lincoln’s early life: How he educated himself. The New

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mr-lincoln-s-early-life-how-he-educated-himself.html

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Lines, Patricia M. (2000). Homeschooling comes of age. Public Interest, (140), 74-85. Retrieved

June 2, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 55390286).

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CITE THIS WORK: Lawing, C. (2010, December 6). Writing Strands: A Homeschool Curriculum. Unpublished manuscript.