MomintheMountains Posted April 22, 2014 Share Posted April 22, 2014 ... how thankful I am for this board? My fifth grader needs a little help with writing and I don't feel that narration and dictation has been doing enough. I have been thinking about investing in IEW, but I don't feel this is the right time to start with it (variety of things including some financial constraints). So, I was looking for something I could get started with quickly and inexpensively to use until the fall. I have access to textbooks from a school that closed, so I grabbed a Houghton Mifflin English 5. I thought that surely it would give me some help in teaching and at least be good enough for a few months. Writing units. Pure. Garbage. So, based on recommendations from some threads I searched here, I decided to download Maxwell's School Composition from Google Books. I am so happy I could almost cry. It is so lovely and the quality is night and day from the Mifflin texbook. Really, what has happened to education? I am not always of the belief that older is better, but the vintage texbooks are so often just so lovely, amazing quality and they do what they are supposed to... teach. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MomintheMountains Posted April 22, 2014 Author Share Posted April 22, 2014 And a bit of irony... in the preface of School Composition I read, "The selections from Burroughs, Bryant, Dana, Fiske, Hawthorne, Holmes, Lucy Larcom, Longfellow, Sill, Warner, and Whittier are published by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., authorized publishers of their works." Hmmm, I think that Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. need to get back to their roots! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fraidycat Posted April 22, 2014 Share Posted April 22, 2014 I'm glad you found something that will work for you. :-) This board is Awesome Sauce! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Critterfixer Posted April 22, 2014 Share Posted April 22, 2014 Aren't some of those older grammar and comp texts awesome? I found Wheeler's Graded Lessons in English when I was picking up a download of his Graded Studies in Great Authors (Spelling) for my laptop so I could do dictation right from the computer without having to print out every time. It actually goes through teaching paragraphs, and outlines in a very straightforward way, so the boys will be working through that this summer. Just what I wanted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lea1 Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 I am very thankful for this board also. I am constantly using the search function to find out more about curriculum or a problem we may be having. I always find something that helps me. This board really is awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs Twain Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 I agree with you about Maxwell's School Composition. I have not found any modern writing curriculum which comes close to it in quality and elegance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
momto2Cs Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 Now I have to say thank you for this thread! I googled some of the titles mentioned above, and came across this one - Fleming's English Series: Child's Composition Book, and I love it! I think "year II" in it might be a great fit for my dd. I found lots of links here for this type of book. Off to check out some possible titles for ds! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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