I purchased this book to use in our homeschool class with my third grader. It is 125 trait-based lessons that includes the teacher lesson plans, and the student page with the writing prompts. There is also a rubric that shows how the book recommends this to be graded. This book is a great resource for written work. Although children at this age don't need color, I personally prefer color on pages instead of plain black and white. My third grader is fine but I have a fifth grade autistic student who doesn't do well with written work; however when you incorporate other aspects such as color they seem to do better in areas that normally they have no interest in. The book is broken into five units: Ideas, Organization, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, and Voice. Each Unit then has Five weeks. Then each week has five days. As we homeschool we don't always stick to the Monday to Friday Schedule so we tend to use the book twice a week and do two of the days at one time and the other three at one time. We spend a little more time each time we are working in the book then it states is required. I love the fact this is both teacher and student manual as I am not in a position to pay the extra money to have both. The book is available for several grades starting with first and ending with 8th. We do incorporate other items along with the book as my children get bored with bookwork alone. I wish the book would give suggestions of other ideas and games as I do have to search and find them on my own.

This book is an interactive book between parents( the teacher) and the student. I like that you get to sit and have a discussion and help your child to learn the 6 traits of writing. I also like that it provides a page a day of activities. My daughter usually finishes a page a day, and we use this book along with paragraph writing by Evan Moor, and we use another common core narrative writing book to help her focus on her writing skills for third grade.