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Caesar's English was awesome; what's up with WWW?


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I loved CE 1 and 2 because they were so open and go, and it was obvious how to use them.  Now I opened WWW1 for the first time, and I see each chapter has a long list of stems, but only one is actually discussed in detail?   In place of a detailed discussion of vocabulary words and how they are used, there is an essay on Greek history.  Huh?  

 

And why do they insist on placing the answers to the quizzes on the facing page to the quiz itself?  Why?  Why?  

 

I miss CE's mixture of stems and words, and detailed discussion of each stem and each word.  I also liked that there was just 5 or so words for each lesson, not 25 like WWW.

 

I'm not really sure how to use these books.  How do you use them?

 

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:lol:  I had to just let the books sit on my shelf for about two months before I could even get my mind around using them. . . . but now it's going fine.  I have the new version, and the student and the teacher book.  The way we do it is that she takes a week to memorize the 30 stems - by whatever method she chooses, she usually spends 5-10 minutes a day reviewing and learning 6 new stems each day - and then we spend a week going through the exercises in the book together orally, culminating in the quiz.  Then lather, rinse, repeat.

 

What made it so tricky at first was that the two books don't go together very well - each has components the other lacks, so it's weird trying to line it up.  I'm always saying, "ok, what's on your next page" to make sure we are looking at the same thing.  It totally annoyed me at first, but I let it go and now we're using the books fine and enjoying them almost as much as we enjoyed CE.  We're going through them half speed, though, at 2 weeks min per lesson.  

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We're also doing WWW at half speed with a 4th and 7th grader. We cover one chapter over 2 weeks  or 15 stems each week. Lists 21 - 30 are individual word lists not stems and we mix these in earlier as a nice break. So we did lists 1-2 then list 21, list 3-4 then list 22 etc.. You'll find there's a lot of overlap between the examples in the stem lists and the individual word lists in the back as well as with words from CE1 and 2.

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I'm not thrilled with the WWW1 arrangement either. I'm not sure why they didn't just write a history book...

I also am quite bewildered with the disconnect between the student and teacher books.

 

DD did learn quite a bit, though. She will finish WWW1 this week or next. I just realized WWW 2 has samples up for the new edition. I'm trying to decide if we'll continue or switch to a different program...stay tuned! ;)

 

ETA: At first we tried to do all the readings and exercises. That became too time intensive, so by the end we were doing a chapter a week. She just entered the words into Quizlet on Monday, studied Tues-Thurs, and tested on Friday. Basically it became a word list...an expensive word list.

 

ETA: I just remembered that it's the Magic Lens 2 samples I'm waiting on....they aren't up yet....

 

 

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I hate it. I've decided not to do MCT any further. I didn't like this and I hated Advanced Academic Writing as well. The disconnect w/ the teacher's book is beyond frustrating. How hard is it to make things simple? I think it does little more than provide a history lesson, some writing prompts, and a list of words to memorize independently. I find the discussion questions annoying and not that useful. The analogies are unclear and could easily go in several directions some times. Actually, I find that the answers to the analogies are completely wrong and defy the definition of analogies altogether. After struggling through it, I've just given the book to DS and told him to learn a few words a day. We may drop it completely. I hate dropping it and AAW because they were not cheap, but I don't think this is worth our time. Sorry....

 

 

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:blushing:  Sorry! :ph34r:

 

:lol:  :lol:  :lol:  Aw, no, I don't blame you!  You actually helped me figure out how to use it after I had bought it . . . When you said something like, "I send her off to learn the stems and then we do the exercises orally"  I was like, D'OH!

 

We don't mind the books, we found our groove and it's working out ok, but I share people's frustrations with the lack of organization, and the fact that they seem to be getting worse and not better with subsequent revisions.  My mad conspiracy theory is that they are trying to revise all the books such that you have to buy two of them - the TM and the SM - which is why some things are in one and not the other.  I think it's a dirty trick and will backfire on them when people get fed up and stop buying their products.

 

There, I said it.  :leaving:

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I remember someone saying that they switched to Vocabulary from Classical Roots after CE. That's what we were planning to do. Has anybody had success with that?

 

We have WWW so we'll probably incorporate it somehow, but we're not crazy about it. Big let down after the high of CE.

 

We just received our AAW books so I don't have any thoughts on that yet. I thought I remembered 8Fill not liking it and having issues with accuracy??

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Hmm. I can't say this is making me want to rush out and buy WWW. I'm wondering if we'll go another direction at that point. I've heard good things about Sadlier-Oxford, and I also like a program called VocabuLits, which uses literature excerpts and pulls vocab from them. I really like the stem approach, though....

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We're also doing WWW at half speed with a 4th and 7th grader. We cover one chapter over 2 weeks  or 15 stems each week. Lists 21 - 30 are individual word lists not stems and we mix these in earlier as a nice break. So we did lists 1-2 then list 21, list 3-4 then list 22 etc.. You'll find there's a lot of overlap between the examples in the stem lists and the individual word lists in the back as well as with words from CE1 and 2.

 

Oh!  I skimmed through the intro to the parent manual and it didn't say anything about words.  I like your approach (back and forth between stems and words), but I'm not sure it would work for us because the quizzes are cumulative?  

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:lol:  I had to just let the books sit on my shelf for about two months before I could even get my mind around using them. . . . but now it's going fine.  I have the new version, and the student and the teacher book.  The way we do it is that she takes a week to memorize the 30 stems - by whatever method she chooses, she usually spends 5-10 minutes a day reviewing and learning 6 new stems each day - and then we spend a week going through the exercises in the book together orally, culminating in the quiz.  Then lather, rinse, repeat.

 

What made it so tricky at first was that the two books don't go together very well - each has components the other lacks, so it's weird trying to line it up.  I'm always saying, "ok, what's on your next page" to make sure we are looking at the same thing.  It totally annoyed me at first, but I let it go and now we're using the books fine and enjoying them almost as much as we enjoyed CE.  We're going through them half speed, though, at 2 weeks min per lesson.  

 

I think we're going to copy this approach.  Memorize, then pick and choose from flawed analogy problems then take the quiz.  

 

But I miss the detailed descriptions of individual words, how they were used by authors, all that good stuff from CE.  Now all you get is a stem and list of words using that stem:

 

mir: miracle, mirage, mirror, mirabile dictu, admire, mirabilia

 

Mirabile dictu??  Wouldn't that be a nice topic to read about?  Instead, I have an essay on "Sparta and the Education of Boys."

 

Okay, enough WWW-bashing.  I'm just sad that there isn't a CE 3.   

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Yep, basically we're using it as a glorified word list too. The reason I continue to use it is that it provides some structure for me and it gets done. We do the mystery questions in the teacher's manual and a few other exercises but basically just review the stems and words. I got the earlier edition because I knew I wouldn't use the history sections. While I like the concept of the roots study, I find some of the stem and word choices too arcane and I think some of the definitions could be clearer.

 

 

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Okay, you all had me worried. I just went online to check out the sample. Maybe I'll feel differently when we get to WWW, but from the sample chapter for WWW1, I liked it. I think we'll skip the history portions if I find they drag on, but it seems more concise and straight forward for me. We love CE1 (we'll be doing Voyage next year, so CE2 at that time as well), but I have to admit that I get bogged down and quite bored with how in depth they go some times. Some times it doesn't bother me, but lately I've found myself skipping things in CE1 because we get the point, and we're just ready to move on. LOL WWW seems to be at our speed. ;)

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Yep, basically we're using it as a glorified word list too. The reason I continue to use it is that it provides some structure for me and it gets done. We do the mystery questions in the teacher's manual and a few other exercises but basically just review the stems and words. I got the earlier edition because I knew I wouldn't use the history sections. While I like the concept of the roots study, I find some of the stem and word choices too arcane and I think some of the definitions could be clearer.

That's another thing that drives me batty. I'll go over the study guide DS makes for himself and I'll be sure he made a mistake or copied a lazy definition like writing the short easy 3rd definition instead of the long 1st one or something. But, nope. The definition that the book has given DS for a word that I know well is frequently misleading and not the best choice at all. It's not that the definitions are technically wrong, but they give ones that don't reflect the most common usage or imply a meaning or connotation that isn't generally true. 

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Jensen's Vocabulary is another option if you want a stem/root/prefix/suffix type of approach. http://cathyduffyreviews.com/spelling-vocabulary/jensens-vocabulary.htm

 

FWIW, AAW is also radically different from EV.

8Fill, can you post a link to your review/comments on AAW? I tried to find it but it didn't come up. We're taking a hard look at it for next year and I'm now starting to gather info. Thanks.
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Now you all have me worried! I love MCT, but the analogies in Caesar's English are totally wacky. (And I know analogies - I was an SAT pro, back when analogies were the backbone of the test. Long, long ago.) We always skip them, but love the quotes from classic literature and the detailed discussion of words and roots. I'm sorry to hear that those aren't included in WWW. Oh well, at least we have a year (or more) to enjoy CE2. Then we'll have to decide what to do. 

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What we liked this year about WWW was that once dd12 did the first 20 chapters, the subsequent lists 21-30 were easy for her. That proved to me that the system worked. Memorizing all the stems translated into being able to decode new words. That is what I wanted for her. She enjoyed the "micro-poems" hidden in the words. She also now frequently recognizes stems in her other academic reading. We skipped most of the history too.

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How sad is it that I didn't even realize that the last 10 lessons were whole words?  I like the looks of those much better, actually.  I have a fantastic vocabulary that I gleaned from copious amounts of reading, but I have a really hard time memorizing stems.  Granted, my brain is much older, but it does make me wonder if stem memorization is all it's cracked up to be . . . I like the combination of stems & words in CE, and it's nice to see these all-word lessons at the end of WWW.

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How sad is it that I didn't even realize that the last 10 lessons were whole words?  I like the looks of those much better, actually.  I have a fantastic vocabulary that I gleaned from copious amounts of reading, but I have a really hard time memorizing stems.  Granted, my brain is much older, but it does make me wonder if stem memorization is all it's cracked up to be . . . I like the combination of stems & words in CE, and it's nice to see these all-word lessons at the end of WWW.

 

I'm glad you wrote this, Chrysalis, because I was almost afraid to write that I thought deciphering stems could sometimes be more confusing than helpful.  Also, it gets boring.  

 

I also didn't notice there were actual words in the final chapters until I read 3andme's post.  I also prefer the approach in CE to mix them up.  

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  • 11 months later...

 My mad conspiracy theory is that they are trying to revise all the books such that you have to buy two of them - the TM and the SM - which is why some things are in one and not the other.  I think it's a dirty trick and will backfire on them when people get fed up and stop buying their products.

 

There, I said it.  :leaving:

 

I've finally had the time to track down this old post, because I'm on board with your conspiracy theory.  Why aren't the student quizzes in the--I don't know--STUDENT book?  Why does the parent book include all the essays about Greek history, all the word lists, all the exercises?  There's no need for the TM to contain more than the answer key for the quizzes and exercises.  But you'd have a hard time justifying a higher price for a 15 page answer key.

 

Despite this we just started on WWW2 and we're skipping everything except reading the word lists, going through the flash cards, taking the quiz, and moving on to the next word list.  

 

I also agree with another PP who said the word definitions are not ideal, and we've all but given up on the analogies, since they usually make no sense to us at all.  

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I just realized this was an old thread, but I have to agree with the notion stated above that the system starts to make more sense after lesson 20.  We used this in conjunction with other materials, so it wasn't that bad.  We did NOT force memorization until lesson 21.  The stems just "stuck" through the exercises.

 

ETA: To add, yes, the teacher's manual was atrocious.  We had to skip large swathes.

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Yep, basically we're using it as a glorified word list too. The reason I continue to use it is that it provides some structure for me and it gets done. We do the mystery questions in the teacher's manual and a few other exercises but basically just review the stems and words. I got the earlier edition because I knew I wouldn't use the history sections. While I like the concept of the roots study, I find some of the stem and word choices too arcane and I think some of the definitions could be clearer.

For roots study, how about Dynamic Literacy's Word Build?

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Any of you think the new Magic Lens which uses the vocab words would suffice to give kids exposure to these words instead of WWW? 

 

Do you like the new Magic Lens and is the parent manual good and needed? Or can I get by with just the parent manual for a kid that would be mainly reading ML for enrichment?

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First, thanks to all the folks with WWW experience who've posted here -- I'm so glad to have the benefit of what you've learned! 

 

A. and I will be doing Town level & Caesar's English 1 this year.  I expect we'll be done around Jan 2016 and will be about 2/3 through our Ancients History year.  I have two questions about WWW and would be grateful for answers/hints/ideas:

1.  Is the history portion of WWW worth trying to pull it in early?  As in, perhaps after CE1; or working through CE1 and CE2 over the next 6-9 months, then pulling WWW in at the end of our Ancients History course? 

2.  If one is studying Latin and Greek, is WWW still a good investment?  We are doing thorough Latin, and are beginning our Greek which I plan to be classically-based and hope to do well enough to tackle some original Greek literature in high school.  The Greek may not pan out, though....

 

 

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1.  Is the history portion of WWW worth trying to pull it in early?  As in, perhaps after CE1; or working through CE1 and CE2 over the next 6-9 months, then pulling WWW in at the end of our Ancients History course? 

 

 

I spent a couple of evenings reading through all the history essays in WW1, and it was certainly interesting, with lots of photos of artifacts with interesting commentary.  My kids aren't all that interested in in ancient history, so they didn't read any of it, though I encouraged them to do so.  It's too bad you can't just buy the essay collection separately for people who are just interested in the history.

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First, thanks to all the folks with WWW experience who've posted here -- I'm so glad to have the benefit of what you've learned! 

 

A. and I will be doing Town level & Caesar's English 1 this year.  I expect we'll be done around Jan 2016 and will be about 2/3 through our Ancients History year.  I have two questions about WWW and would be grateful for answers/hints/ideas:

1.  Is the history portion of WWW worth trying to pull it in early?  As in, perhaps after CE1; or working through CE1 and CE2 over the next 6-9 months, then pulling WWW in at the end of our Ancients History course? 

2.  If one is studying Latin and Greek, is WWW still a good investment?  We are doing thorough Latin, and are beginning our Greek which I plan to be classically-based and hope to do well enough to tackle some original Greek literature in high school.  The Greek may not pan out, though....

 

1.  Not really.  It's context, but an Usborne encyclopedia may be as good.

 

2.  Yes.  DS actually appreciates the reinforcement ("parallels," as he would call it).  The English derivative is not always the same, and the full color context of the English word is not taught in Latin or Greek.  For instance, "supercilious," as in "raised eyebrow bearing" instead of "haughty."

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