Why you should work on TWTM skills - copywork, narration, dictation, outlining, etc.

[FO4UR]

Faithe - Thanks for sharing that! What a relief to hear of your successes...I am *so* ready for another week of plugging away now. (Figures, it's a zoo day tomorrow.:tongue_smilie:)

 

I love that quote, Elizabeth!

 

And the tape on the books to organize by skills...I am going to be chewing on that one.

[Poke Salad Annie]

My parents always told me age was just a number. How wise they were in hindsight.

 

My kids are wiggly, observant, conversational. We talk. I use BIG words...a lot! They understand big words and use them in their daily conversations.

 

Point is....I needed to keep at the basics....keep building the foundation.

 

I have learned so much using the WTM guidelines, CM's writings, Ambleside articles and just watching and learning FROM my kids and how they learn best.

 

Anyway, thanks Nan for writing this, and I also hope my experiences with my kids will help someone to feel better about where their kids are at, and continue to homeschool with confidence...knowing how important those firm foundations are, and laying them down strong, returning to them when necessary and not feeling like a loser when you have to.

 

Blessings,

Faithe

 

Yes! This really resonates with me. We use big words here too, and it really does work. I try hard to make this part of every day, and when I am diligent about doing so, I can see the results.

 

Faithe, I agree with so much of what you posted, but especially the parts I quoted above. We are working on that "firm foundation" here too. It's not always fun, but it has to be done. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and experience with all of us.

[Jami]

:iagree:

 

Thanks, Nan!

 

And, I will add my favorite why the 3Rs are important quote.

 

"The Teacher" by Jocob Abbott, 1844. From p. 64:

 

 

 

So, go sharpen your axe and the trees will take care of themselves.

 

Fantastic quote.

 

This is also why Dorothy Sayers says that students who use the Trivium as the foundational tools of learning will often be BEHIND their peers (educated in other ways) in terms of particular content as they reach the "logic-stage" years. But they have the tools that will take them much farther in self-education all their lives.

[i.love.lucy]

So, I read this thread and the others. I've had some big epiphanies lately regarding dd and her learning "differences". Mostly she's okay, on track, but she does have deficits with working memory that has made math a real challenge for her. At any rate, we have a plan for that skill area.

 

I'm rereading TWTM right now to figure out how to implement all this on a daily basis with 2 kids widely apart in abilities. Originally, I think I got overwhelmed and just jumped in to homeschooling. I then found curriculum for each of the content areas or important subjects, and dove in. I have not been consistent or diligent about adding copywork, narration, dictation, etc to our days and now I have to figure out what that looks like. Fortunately I think we do have our grammar and writing studies nailed down (from CC) and dd is doing very well with it. But I need to do something about adding the skills we've discussed here to the other things we study and I am not sure yet how that looks.

 

Anyways, I wanted to thank you all so much for your encouragement. I get so caught up in comparing to other kids, or eager for my kids to show off the content that they know to the detriment of the skills they should have. This thread has been a great reminder for me to get back to what I know they really need. I have to STOP looking at shiny new curriculum and focus on what we have and using these great materials we already have in hand to implement these skills.

 

Thank you!

[Critterfixer]

I think that a good deal of struggle felt in focusing on skills rather than on content is in the thinking shift that we all have to make. I think many of us were schooled to focus more on content than on skill. Even as a home-schooled student myself, I always found it easier to just go find the answer for a worksheet, and success was measured in work completed, not in how I got it done.

I know I struggle with teaching in a way I did not learn in. And the uncomfortable truth is, that I have to let go of my pride in "knowing" and become humble, and admit that while I "know" plenty, maybe I never really "learned". That's more than a little scary. When I resist teaching things that I feel are not so necessary, is it because I really am afraid to admit to myself that I don't really know how to do it?

The river of knowledge is often broad and ripples with information, none of it related, and much of it superfluous (or just plain wrong); wisdom is knowing which way to travel, which currents are strong, which ways lead to stagnant thinking or hydraulic pits that never allow you to come to a conclusion. There is so much more water (information) in that river than I ever thought possible.

Sometimes my boys get so tired of paddling around in that old pond of narration, copywork, reading, and all that boring, tiring, WORK. Just knowing what the river is like out there helps me to stay the course--once more round the island, (grumble, moan) because Mom also needs to know the basics before we can shoot the rapids.:001_smile:

[FO4UR]

I think that a good deal of struggle felt in focusing on skills rather than on content is in the thinking shift that we all have to make. I think many of us were schooled to focus more on content than on skill. Even as a home-schooled student myself, I always found it easier to just go find the answer for a worksheet, and success was measured in work completed, not in how I got it done.

I know I struggle with teaching in a way I did not learn in. And the uncomfortable truth is, that I have to let go of my pride in "knowing" and become humble, and admit that while I "know" plenty, maybe I never really "learned". That's more than a little scary. When I resist teaching things that I feel are not so necessary, is it because I really am afraid to admit to myself that I don't really know how to do it?

The river of knowledge is often broad and ripples with information, none of it related, and much of it superfluous (or just plain wrong); wisdom is knowing which way to travel, which currents are strong, which ways lead to stagnant thinking or hydraulic pits that never allow you to come to a conclusion. There is so much more water (information) in that river than I ever thought possible.

Sometimes my boys get so tired of paddling around in that old pond of narration, copywork, reading, and all that boring, tiring, WORK. Just knowing what the river is like out there helps me to stay the course--once more round the island, (grumble, moan) because Mom also needs to know the basics before we can shoot the rapids.:001_smile:

 

Beautiful post!:001_smile:

 

The bolded question is convicting! Ouch! (Truth hurts!:lol:)

[FrogMom5]

I have been seeing that my oldest is weak in study skills too. We are backing up and going through these areas more thoroughly. Ds will hate it but he needs it.

 

Thanks for posting this info.

Denise

[Lizzie in Ma]

Thanks Nan, perfect timing. :D

[atozmom]

Wow. I spent last night reading over all the different threads and through sections of TWTM again. I remember when I read through TWTM the very first time and how excited I was to implement everything. However, when it came to actually putting the plan into action, I was completely perplexed by how to begin. Looking at it now, I really believe it was my own unease that led us away from these skills. So a word to a newbies.. don't let your own unease and fear steer you away from skills that are so valuable to learn.

 

When I began reading this thread, I had only my ds in mind. I now also see that I need to back up and revisit these skills with my dd. I know she won't be overly enthused about it, but I am not going to let her reaction stand in the way of learning skills that I know will greatly benefit her too.

 

Once again, thank you Nan! The timing of this thread was perfect.

[Nan in Mass]

My problem is that it is hard for me to believe that my children can't do some of these things. I feel like I learned nothing at all in school. Aside from struggling to remember things and having to think hard to do proofs and some of the word problems in math, the rest was easy. I wanted to make sure that didn't happen to my children, so I skipped many of the boring "easy" things. In retrospect, I can see that some of those non-learning things we did in school were probably skill-building at such a gradual rate that it didn't take any effort on my part, and that just because it was easy didn't mean I wasn't learning something. I had tons of school experience answering questions (narrating), having teachers emphasize somehow the important bits, summarizing things to memrorize them for tests, dealing with all the unspoken assumptions behind textbook questions, that my boys haven't had. Also, I am wired differently than my boys. Some of the things that are so easy and obvious for me, like summarizing and outlining, are hard for them. What I lacked was the ability to memorize easily, to spell, organization and the will to put in the hard work and the self-discipline to make myself stick to a schedule. Other than that, high school and undergraduate academics were a breeze. It took me years to figure that out. When we first began homeschooling with TWTM, I looked at something like narration, had my children try it, they had no problem with it (elementary level stuff), and I assumed from that that it would be as easy for them as it is for me no matter what level they were working at. Oops.

I am a bear of little brain compared to my family and friends, and my children have been asking me questions about things like particle accelerators, things about which I know nothing, since they were very young, so admitting that I don't know something doesn't bother me. I don't want to let my children down, of course. It hurts a bit when my oldest calls me and asks me why, when he follows the directions for sourdough, his loaves of bread don't have big bubbles like the ones in the store (which happened 5 minutes ago). But it is too common for me to have trouble admitting that it might happen. Too bad GRIN. It would have been lovely to have been able to hang onto the illusion that I was the omniscient parent for more than the first two non-talking years of their lives. It feels like I've been scrambling to keep up ever since.

-Nan

[MeganW]

I am SOOO glad I read this! I have heard time and time again "spend the first years focusing on the 3Rs", but I have gotten so excited about content and have spent all my efforts on that. (It's just so much fun to have your kids show Grandma that they know where each state is!) Time to refocus on the important stuff!

[Nan in Mass]

I've been worrying, so I added a PPPS onto my original post. : )

[Rivka]

Thank you so much for this thread. I'm just starting out with a K'er, and I'm not totally on board with classical homeschooling. It's so useful and interesting to see where things like narration are going to take us over the long haul. Right now, the obvious part is that it's a good check for comprehension. I know from WWE that it contributes to composition. From these threads, I see that it ultimately improves academic research and writing skills. It's so godo to have a road map!

[inthenightkitchen]

Just wanted to say thanks for this post... very helpful for a newly homeschooling mama! Blessings!

[Georgiana Daniels]

Thank you for the great post!

 

I'm going to crack open TWTM again. It's so easy to get away from the basics.

[Sahamamama]

Thank you Kerry, I am taping the label "Read Aloud" on the poetry book.

 

Just a thought about the read aloud:

 

Before I started homeschooling, I used to tutor boys who had fallen behind in LA skills. For example, a 5th grade student might read-like-a-robot on a 3rd grade level; spell, capitalize, and punctuate on a 1st grade level (maybe); and have the narration/outlining/summarization skills of a 2nd grader. So, a long way to go with these kids...

 

Enter Repeated Read Aloud. It's possible to do this with nearly any good book, and I found that some boys enjoyed listening again and again and again to the same rollicking poem. I would record myself reading the book, we'd read it together, I'd listen to the student read, and he'd take the book & CD home for repeated listening throughout the week.

 

I haven't found anything that builds reading fluency, rhythm, and expression faster than Repeated Read Aloud. When you think about it, this is the WTM method, applied to oral reading: (1) the teacher provides the perfect model (or at least tries to); (2) the student copies the model while the teacher guides the process; (3) the student practices independently; and (4) the student demonstrates mastery for the teacher.

 

I had boys go from reading like robots to reading fluently in just a matter of months. Their parents and school teachers were amazed. :001_huh: My theory is that those students never had the opportunity to hear the SAME piece of written prose or poetry read aloud, expressively, over and over -- enough to absorb the cadence of our language. KWIM? Listening to one passage, practicing it, mastering it -- this built the boys' confidence.

 

When I listen to my daughters read aloud, I realize that they read EXACTLY as they've heard something read. For example, my oldest was reading poems from "When We Were Very Young," and she sounded EXACTLY like Peter Dennis (adiobook narrator). When she reads Little House books, she sounds EXACTLY like Cherry Jones, twang and all. :D

 

Audiobooks are great for children who struggle with reading fluency, or just any kid -- because usually these books are read by good readers, and the children can absorb the way well-spoken readers handle the language.

[Nan in Mass]

When I read LotR, I read it to myself the same exact way my mother read it aloud to me growing up. The same with Pooh and Wind in the Willows. I do the same thing with Jeeves but with my husband's voice, since he read them to me in college. It took me awhile to like the movie version because Jeeve's intonation (? think I got the right word) conflicted a bit with my husband's version. I read Beatrix Potter my grandmother's way, and I can tell you from memory (even though I have a truly awful memory) that my mother reads them the same way her mother did.

 

Cool! What a good idea! I did this a lot with my children and they read well, both silently and aloud. Slowly, but well.

 

-Nan

[Critterfixer]

When I was young, my father read to me quite a bit, but for some reason he stopped doing this when my younger brother came along, and by the time my second brother and sister arrived, I think he had to work so hard to keep us all fed, clothed and educated, that he had no time for that! I do not recall my mother ever reading aloud to me, although she must have. In my early private school education it was all readers, phonics and drill. Yet I developed a great love of reading, probably because my father read to me early in life.

Fast forward some years. I was too young to read to my first brother, but my second brother and my sister got the full benefit of listening to me read to them all of my favorites, and some books that I thought we should try out. Both of them heard The War of the Roses, Kidnapped, David Balfour, Silas Marner, A Christmas Carol, anything we could find by Lloyd Alexander, LOTR (twice), and some of the Simarillion, Farmer Giles of Ham (several times). We would read chapters and chapters a night-Mom had to come in and send us to bed! I like to think that having books read to them when they were young helped both of them to have a great love of books, that they might not have otherwise had. My first brother never did have that great love of reading. I remember once, when he struggled through the War of the Roses on his own, he complained that the book was so boring. I took it and began to read where he had opened to the page. When I got to the bottom I looked up and he said, "I didn't know it was supposed to sound like that." So I do believe there is something to reading a book and hearing it in your mind the way it is supposed to sound.

If you compare the idea to music, I know it is possible (even important-alas!) to read the music to know how it is supposed to sound. But I know that I would never have loved music if I had never heard it played. And I would never have loved to sing if I had not heard and participated when my family would sing and play music together.

[MyLittleWonders]

Nan, or anyone else who would like to chime in ...

 

I can't remember which thread (I've read them all and printed out jewels to put in my plan book), I thought you mentioned that at one time, you were doing mainly skill work (narration, dictation, copywork, outlining) M-Th, and then content on Friday. That got me thinking, especially since I'm having a hard time getting everything done each day especially with an infant. So, I figured M-Th, we needed to do Latin, math, spelling, reading, grammar, writing, and literature. Fridays would be Latin, math, reading, spelling, and history and/or science.

 

So ... looking at that schedule, I'm trying to figure out where to fit the skills on M-Th. Spelling is AAS, which has built-in dictation. Right now we do two sentences a day (Fridays would be only sentences and probably be about 5). But I'm thinking maybe we need 4 dictation sentences from spelling each day to really work on holding onto longer bits of information. Literature (we are using WWE as our "guide" for our literature books) lends itself well to copywork and narration. Writing, though, is either Killgallon books or IEW. Oh, and for reading practice, ds#1 does have to tell me the main event or most important piece of information for each chapter and then write it down in a reading log.

 

Ok ... sorry for all that backstory. ;) My big question is: what did your days look like (what do they look like) so that you are working on the big skills M-Th. What subjects did you cover? Did you only do, say narration, with one particular subject and then dictation in another?

 

I plan on introducing very simple outlining to both ds#1 and ds#2 when we read the Usborne encyclopedia for history, just pulling out the main idea from each little paragraph. Science, as well, is good for narration and copywork. But, I'm wondering on our not-as-much content days where to put in the skills. (I have read WTM a couple times and plan on doing it again in my spare time :lol: but for now, I'm looking for some BTDT ideas. :D ) During literature, would it be too much to work on a copywork passage from the chapter we read, and then also have them write their own narration? Ds#1 needs a bit of remediation here, whereas ds#2 is more on-target with his age (and a little advanced in most all things language arts). Any ideas and suggestions?

[Sahamamama]

When I was young, my father read to me quite a bit, but for some reason he stopped doing this when my younger brother came along, and by the time my second brother and sister arrived, I think he had to work so hard to keep us all fed, clothed and educated, that he had no time for that! I do not recall my mother ever reading aloud to me, although she must have. In my early private school education it was all readers, phonics and drill. Yet I developed a great love of reading, probably because my father read to me early in life.

Fast forward some years. I was too young to read to my first brother, but my second brother and my sister got the full benefit of listening to me read to them all of my favorites, and some books that I thought we should try out. Both of them heard The War of the Roses, Kidnapped, David Balfour, Silas Marner, A Christmas Carol, anything we could find by Lloyd Alexander, LOTR (twice), and some of the Simarillion, Farmer Giles of Ham (several times). We would read chapters and chapters a night-Mom had to come in and send us to bed! I like to think that having books read to them when they were young helped both of them to have a great love of books, that they might not have otherwise had. My first brother never did have that great love of reading. I remember once, when he struggled through the War of the Roses on his own, he complained that the book was so boring. I took it and began to read where he had opened to the page. When I got to the bottom I looked up and he said, "I didn't know it was supposed to sound like that." So I do believe there is something to reading a book and hearing it in your mind the way it is supposed to sound.

If you compare the idea to music, I know it is possible (even important-alas!) to read the music to know how it is supposed to sound. But I know that I would never have loved music if I had never heard it played. And I would never have loved to sing if I had not heard and participated when my family would sing and play music together.

 

Great post!

[happyhomemaker25]

Wow. I spent last night reading over all the different threads and through sections of TWTM again. I remember when I read through TWTM the very first time and how excited I was to implement everything. However, when it came to actually putting the plan into action, I was completely perplexed by how to begin. Looking at it now, I really believe it was my own unease that led us away from these skills. So a word to a newbies.. don't let your own unease and fear steer you away from skills that are so valuable to learn.

 

Once again, thank you Nan! The timing of this thread was perfect.

 

Yep, that's where I am right now. As I read through my copy of TWTM and these boards I remember how excited I was. I also know that when we started five years ago I tried to cram all of the skill and content together into one week for a 2nd grader and Ker that I'd just brought home from public school. I jumped in the deep end with every recommendation from the book. It was a disaster. I think that is one reason we have spent so much time floundering around with other ideas. I also agree with the fear of realizing that I did not have all those skills. I felt a sense of hoplesness.

The SWB lectures and Youtube videos along with the wise words here are really helping me to understand more about skills then I did five years ago.

Reading TWTM as stages instead of grades has helped me to understand the book so much better as well.

[Nan in Mass]

This applies to this thread so I am linking it here. I am still having nightmares about dooming children to years of drill with no fun stuff GRIN. I am one of the most out-of-the-box homeschoolers here, but many of you on the curriculum board don't normally read my posts so you don't know me. We're the ones who spent a whole fall reading The Iliad aloud together paddling our feet on the dock feeding the ducks, or cuddled up with the dog on our feet in front of the fire. I'm the one whose children vanish for months or weeks every year peacewalking in the middle of the school year. I'm the one whose 16 year old this year turned the temp on the refridgerator up so that it wouldn't cycle noisily on and off when he was using it as a soundproof box for a science experiment and we didn't discover it until a month later, after we finally decided that it might be our fault, not the grocery store's, that the milk kept going sour. This might help:

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2564001#poststop

 

: )

-Nan

[Nan in Mass]

Part two of: Why you should work on TWTM skills - narration, dictaion, outlining, etc

 

PPPPS LLLLOL

I have found that assignments that start with a blank piece of paper tend to require more from my children than assignments that áre more worksheet-like. There are good worksheets out there, good question sets that require thinking, but there are many that just require spitting back the information instead of doing something with it.

I have also noticed that the more adult the work, the more likely it is to involve doing research, writing a hypothesis and trying to prove it, or taking a stance about something and try to persuade people you are right. If you keep those end goals in mind, then you can ask yourself, "Is this assignment leading to being able to do that?"

Every so often the hive has a thread in which people whose children have graduated from college come back and post about encouraging thinking. They always say one thing: talk with your children. They say that discussing things was the most important thing they did. They talk about discussing what everyone is learning and what is happening in the family and what is happening in the world. They talk about encouraging their children to defend their (the children's) points of view and question their parents' points of view.

 

PPPPPS LOL -

You might want to think about whole-to-parts and parts-to-whole.

 

Some people learn better if they can see the big picture - what this little thing is a part of, where it fits in, how it relates to the other parts, how it is used in real life. If you teach them the little parts in an unconnected way, they have trouble remembering them long enough for enough the little pieces to accumulate that the big picture emerges. They also may have trouble making the connections and putting the pieces together, even if they manage to remember them. On the other hand, some people are driven nuts by situations that present the big picture first. They want to learn the little pieces thoroughily first and afterwards figure out how to put the little things together into a useful picture or job. It seems like more work to try to swallow everything at once. They object to doing the whole job badly while they wait until they have managed to figure out how to do a reasonable job on the pieces.

 

Obviously, some jobs lend themselves more to one form or the other. Sometimes it is dangerous to do the job badly and figure out the pieces as you go along. Sometimes it is difficult to disentangle the pieces to teach them separately. Usually the pieces aren't much use unless at some point you pull the pieces together and practise the job as a whole.

 

I think part of what makes reading and writing difficult to teach is the fact that we ask children to read and write for other subjects while we are teaching them the pieces that will help them to become better readers and writers. In other words, we expect the "bad" job (the age appropriate job). Then, being homeschoolers without much experience in what is appropriate for different ages, we suddenly raise our expectations and begin a new round of teaching. Or even worse, your expectations go up but you don't begin that new round of the teaching of the pieces, or you continue to teach the pieces but never offer opportunities to put them together into something useful.

 

(1) If you have a child who is especially good at figuring out those pieces while practising the whole job, then teaching the pieces separately might not be a good use of your time. On the other hand, a child that struggles with the whole job can be doing so for two reasons: (2) It might be that you have a child who can do the pieces but struggles to put them together, then you need to put extra time into showing them how to do the whole job, possibly by modeling it over and over. (3) Or it might be that you have a child who can't do the whole job because he can't do certain of the pieces. You have to figure out which of these three scenarios matches your child at this particular time AND THEN KEEP CHECKING TO SEE IF IT STILL IS TRUE AT THE NEXT LEVEL.

 

 

-Nan

Just trying to keep all the bits together in one place. Or at least in two places.

[LibraryLover]

:iagree: And I would like to add one thought that rattles around in my head all the time:

 

Take it slowly. Do not burn out a 5 or 6 or 7 year old --no matter how bright or gifted. There is no point in pushing WTM before it's time. Listen to Susan and Jesse; fill the young child's head with stories and wonderful information. Let their fine motor skills and attention and imagination develop. Let the joy in stories of the past, the stories of adventure *be*. The block kindgoms should come before copywork. Let all of that bloom and grown and make a child hungry for more.

 

 

You're a doll for writing all that up.

 

there seems to be seasons on the board where people are very...creative...in their application of TWTM, not seeing the point of the foundational stones.

 

Posts like these are an excellent reminder of the whys.

Edited March 28, 2011 by LibraryLover

[Nan in Mass]

I waited until 7 to begin written seatwork, even though by then my son was reading well and knew how numbers worked well enough to do quite complicated word problems in his head, ones that involved multiplication and division, was taking piano lessons and learning to draw. We just did things informally, as they arose or as he asked. I am very glad I didn't push earlier. Those stories and that hands-on building and experimenting are SO important.

I'm glad you posted this. : )

-Nan

[Miss Tick]

This thread is great - cautionary but encouraging. I am just starting out, and I hope this thread comes back in 3 or 4 years when we move to the next level and then again 4 years after that! I'm sure to need reminding once in a while. Thank you for your honesty!

Sigfile.doc

Sigfile.doc

[Walking-Iris]

I'm not sure what the etiquette is with bumping older threads, but I really found the posts in this one inspiring.

 

I'm sort of new to WTM method. I really started exploring the WTM and CM concepts of narration/copywork/dictation last year. I still wasn't completely sold on the idea. And then I read The Writer's Jungle from Bravewriter. And now I really feel drawn to this way of homeschooling.

 

Now I feel like I am sort of scrambling to give my oldest a solid foundation in some skills he missed when he was younger.

 

And I also feel like I am getting my feelings and thoughts about WTM etc in order so that I have a solid plan with my younger two.

 

So some of the posts in this thread were helpful and inspiring. Maybe they will be to someone else new to this path. (or just needing reminders)

[Colleen in NS]

I'm not sure what the etiquette is with bumping older threads, but I really found the posts in this one inspiring.

 

:iagree: I think it's great to bump old threads like this one!

[blakereese]

I'm not sure what the etiquette is with bumping older threads, but I really found the posts in this one inspiring.

 

:iagree: I think it's great to bump old threads like this one!

 

 

I agree. And it's very timely for me. I had subscribed to this when it was originally posted and it is great for me to have the reminder today. Sometimes it is good to hear why I am doing some of the things I am doing, that it is all for the greater good, even on days when I want to scream. :glare::lol:

 

So thanks for the bump. :001_smile:

[Mom28kds]

Nan,

Just wanted to say thanks for your wonderful words of wisdom and encoragement. I just might be the "one" person you mentioned who needed this info! I've been trying to readjust our LA skills so much the last few weeks and trying to prioritize many of the things you mentioned.

 

I saw SWB speak in Greenville this weekend and once again, hearing her talk about writing was a breath of fresh air. I get so caught up in following a curriculum, finishing a curriculum, hurrying to do the next thing (because it's supposed to be the next grade level), that I don't truly focus on the "basic essentials" enough. Let me just say from my experience, hurrying does not accomplish anything but putting a checkmark beside an item on a to-do list. I must slow down and really see if my dc are retaining those all important basic skills that are foundational for all learning.

 

Thanks again for your great post! I'm sure many others will glean from it, too!

 

Jennifer

 

You are not alone. This is me too. I've just started reading TWTM and already feel like I've not done a very good job. Time to make some changes.

[AngelBee]

Great thread!

[sditz1]

Thank you so much for this post.

[Giraffe]

Another bump. This thread is GOLD!

[stm4him]

I haven't read all the posts linked (though I will asap) but I really enjoyed reading this! I also have a new book in my amazon cart- Marva Collin's Way, which I had never heard of before. I see there is a movie about her as well.

 

I don't use the curriculum recommendations from WTM (well, at least not most of them), but I read the book over and over for the methods and her audios are definitely my favorite because they are soooo practical and lay out exactly what to do, making it easy to adapt curriculum I already have. I also use her time suggestions for each grade level to know how long they should be reading. I am getting ready to re-read the suggestions again in all the subjects for the upcoming school year and make sure we are on track for my requirements in their writing across the subjects for next year. My other two favorites that I refer to very regularly are The Core by Leigh Bortins (and the Foundations Guide) and Teaching the Trivium by the Bluedorns. What we do in our house is a combination of the methods from all three books. Of course, there is much overlap there. Unfortunately, when you add up the time to do the methods from all three books it ends up being quite a lot! But all of their suggestions are so excellent that I can't seem to let any of them go. Some of them are stronger than others in different subjects. For instance, I like Leigh Bortin's best for math. I like the Bluedorns the best for languages. I like Leigh and Susan the best for grammar but all three are excellent on writing. I like Susan on science (not her cycles but her methods) and Leigh on history. I like Susan and the Bluedorns on early logic (and I start even earlier on writing), the Bluedorns and Leigh on phonics, and the Bluedorns and Susan on oral reading. I like Susan on literary analysis and Leigh on spelling. I like Leigh on geography and the Bluedorns on Bible. I like all three on fine arts and memory work. So I just read and reread the methods and make sure we are covering these things somewhere in our curriculum. I listen to all three of them on audio but the Bluedorns and Leigh tend to be less practical and a little more theory. Andrew Kern is all theory which is interesting at times but most often I want to hear the specifics!

 

The one or two things missing from the OP is speech and debate. I really think speaking skills and the ability to debate effectively are important skills for high school, college, and life in general. This thread was awesome for taking notes on why we use these methods and what abilities they lead to, which helps with making sure I actually implement all my plans and gives me a way to explain to my kids why I am making them do these things and how it will affect them negatively in their future studies if I don't.

 

I second the post about oral reading. My kids read from the McGuffeys aloud to me after I have read the passage and it is truly excellent! They are learning to pay attention to the punctuation and to read very carefully because if they don't they have to redo it for me starting at the appropriate number in the passage. The poems and passages are delightful and a mix of poems, fiction, and nonfiction with wonderful morals and reverence to God. I LOVE them! It has really helped improve their reading in many ways. And my children actually enjoy them and sometimes want to read more than one lesson.

 

Anxiously awaiting reading the other posts linked here! Thanks for reposting this old thread!