Tuesday, July 6, 2010

My bugaboo

Planning Language Arts.  Nah, this doesn't stress me out every. single. year.  You believe that, right?

I think I have a plan though.

Connor, 8th grade --
William, 6th grade --

  • Institute for Excellence in Writing, Student Writing Intensive B, working with me
  • Teaching the Classics - six week "seminar" this summer
  • Fix-It Grammar, the first story, Tom Sawyer, alongside his brothers
  • Caesar's English, alongside his brothers
  • Reading Assistant, Master Reader, etc.
  • All About Spelling
  • I'm debating Drawn Into the Heart of Reading
Thomas, 4th grade --

  • Institute for Excellence in Writing, Student Writing Intensive B, using some easier source documents and working with me
  • Teaching the Classics - six week "seminar" this summer
  • Fix-It Grammar, the first story, Tom Sawyer, alongside his brothers
  • Caesar's English, alongside his brothers
  • Sonlight Readers
  • All About Spelling
  • I'm debating Drawn Into the Heart of Reading 
Richard, 1st grade --
Katrina, age 4 --  well, her stuff we'll play by ear.  I'd love to start her on All About Reading, the new program coming out from All About Spelling, but I don't think I'll be able to afford that.  :(  Not for one student. 

8 comments:

Tristan said...

Wow, that is quite the list of things for each to work on. Why so many language arts programs for each child? (Nope, I'm not familiar with a lot of them, so maybe they all cover different things...)

About the IEW - we're working with IEW but all I have at the moment is the Teaching Writing Structure and Style teacher set. I'm having to find all my own source materials for Makayla, which is doable. I htink with as many writers as you have I would definitely want the SWI! I would love to have SWI-A anyway.... but it didn't fit the budget after buying TWSS. ;) Maybe next year.

Debra said...

It does look like a lot. I'm trying for an hour a day of English for Connor, in case we decide to make this year his first year of high school. I'm figuring:


IEW - basically writing - about 2 hours/week
TtC/Intro to Lit - literature study - I'm hoping roughly 1.5 hours per week, will cut back on IEW when we have writing assignments
Fix-It Grammar/Grammarlogues - 30-45 minutes per week
Caesar's English - I'm expecting around 45 minutes per week
All About Spelling - probably around an hour

So, that adds up to over 5 hours a week. I'll have to think more on that. The only thing I think we could cut is Caesar's English, and nobody wants to cut that.

Hmmm... I guess I knew it was going to be a bit of a LA intensive year though.

Thanks for making me think this through.

TerriG said...

I tried fix it last year with my 7th and 8th grade boys. The Tom Sawyer vernacular drove me crazy. It was distracting to see odd grammar in a grammar lesson. If I pick it up again, I will choose a different story.

Debra said...

Terri -- oooh, I'm going to have to look it over a bit more this week. Maybe I do want to go to story #2. Thanks for the heads-up on that.

Unknown said...

The Teaching the Classics seminar is a great program! Enjoy!

Shannon said...

Hi Debra! I so enjoy reading your blog! My 8th grade son has used Drawn Into the Heart the last two years. We both enjoyed it but found the projects at the end to be difficult at times. One has to be done with a group of kids (or with you). I found it hard with three other kids to be that involved with the group project. I LOVED the emphasis on character training, though! That was a true blessing! I am planning on doing Sonlight Core 100 with him this year and still emphasizing the character learning. I did love the program - just felt that you can only use it so many years. Hope you enjoy it!

hsmomma said...

Hi! I am following you from the TOS Crew. Please follow me back at www.alittlebooknook.blogspot.com. I look forward to working with you this year! :)

Heidi said...

I so need to get planning! I just realized that I never posted last year's plan for language arts. Avoidance!

I gave you a Beautiful Blogger Award!

http://chatterandclatter.blogspot.com/2010/07/beautiful-blogger-award.html