MCT Town level questions

[silver]

I've been doing MCT Island level as a supplement with my daughter. We read through all of Grammar Island and then after that she picks a book to read from once a week and another day we do several sentences in Practice Island. I only bought the teacher book for Sentence Island and Practice Island. But then I found that most of the "assignments" in Sentence Island are weird. We did a few of them, but for the most part, we just read and discussed the book.

 

I'm wondering which books I need the teacher manuals for in the Town level if I plan on continuing as we were (supplemental, snuggled on the couch reading/discussing together). Do I need the implementation manual for CE if I don't plan on doing the quizzes? Are the writing assignments in Paragraph Town better/less weird than the Sentence Island ones? When we've done the Practice Island sentences, I put a boogie board over the answers in the book and we use the boogie board to write the answers on. Then we slide it down and check the answers against the teacher book. Is Practice Town formatted in a similar way, with the sentence to analyze at the top, and we can cover it with a notebook/boogie board/something else while we do the work? The poetry book has been our least favorite in the Island level. Is the town level poetry book better/different? Or is it more of the same, just deeper/more topics?

 

My daughter loves language, and is loving MCT. She inserted herself into her older brother's English curriculum (ELTL) when she was in Kindergarten, and there would be no way that she'd be willing to stop doing that with him. That's why we use MCT as a supplement rather than her only curriculum. 

 

 

 

Thanks!

[Mike in SA]

Paragraph town has the best exercises of any of the levels, and should be done. That's the only IM you really should get.

[Jackie]

I do things the opposite - I default to buying only the Instructor's Manuals, and then only occasionally buy the student books. For Town:

 

Paragraph Town - IM only. There's a couple weird assignments, but overall quite good.

Practice Town - formatted exactly the same as in Island, so stick with IM

Caesar's English - an exception for me. We use the student books only. I've only used the IM for the quizzes, and we stopped using those.

Building Poems - IM only

Grammar Town - IM only

 

I'll also mention that there is very little new info in Grammar Town. If I were doing it again, I'd skip that and Practice Town altogether and then do the grammar pieces of Voyage when we got to it.

[desertflower]

Jackie - I was wondering, since you said that there wasn't a whole lot of new grammar introduced in Grammar Town, if Grammar Town had a new "story" or a new way of telling the grammar, but with the same story like feel.  I hope I'm making sense. 

 

My oldest would not like repetition, but if it had a new way of explaining grammar in a "story" like form then that would be okay. 

[Jackie]

Jackie - I was wondering, since you said that there wasn't a whole lot of new grammar introduced in Grammar Town, if Grammar Town had a new "story" or a new way of telling the grammar, but with the same story like feel. I hope I'm making sense.

 

My oldest would not like repetition, but if it had a new way of explaining grammar in a "story" like form then that would be okay.

Sadly, no. DD also would have taken to it better with a good storyline. As it is, we skipped most of the sections for parts of speech and parts of sentence. The new material was mostly introducing appositive phrases, gerund phrases, and complex/compound sentences.

[Jackie]

Oh, and possibly worth mentioning for those who haven't seen Town but are familiar with Island...

 

Caesar's English is seriously massive. We spend about 1.5 hours a week just on vocabulary.

 

Paragraph Town fairly quickly moves into the writing assignments being more than one paragraph each. I'm using this with a young kid, and we had to shelve the writing portion for a while.

 

Island was a 40-60 minute per week commitment for us, finished easily within a school year. Town is 2 hours, and it's likely to stretch close to 1.5 school years at that pace. I was caught off guard by the jump in intensity for vocabulary and writing. That said, Caesar's English is one of my kid's favorite parts of schooling this year.

[Mike in SA]

Oh, and possibly worth mentioning for those who haven't seen Town but are familiar with Island...

 

Caesar's English is seriously massive. We spend about 1.5 hours a week just on vocabulary.

 

Paragraph Town fairly quickly moves into the writing assignments being more than one paragraph each. I'm using this with a young kid, and we had to shelve the writing portion for a while.

 

Island was a 40-60 minute per week commitment for us, finished easily within a school year. Town is 2 hours, and it's likely to stretch close to 1.5 school years at that pace. I was caught off guard by the jump in intensity for vocabulary and writing. That said, Caesar's English is one of my kid's favorite parts of schooling this year.

 

In case you are buying second hand: there are two versions of CE: the newer versions with color are the big ones, and they are impressive courses by themselves.  Very well done.

 

For grammar repetition, that is part of the game plan for the curriculum.  If you skip out, you run the risk of developing "memory issues."  It definitely is annoying.  Our kids have not liked the practice books, but one sentence/day became the routine, and it worked out well.

 

[silver]

Thanks for all the good info! Knowing that it is a big step up and will take longer helps a lot.

 

So does the color version of CE have different content from the B&W version that RFWP still sells? Or is the difference only the paper quality and photos?

 

Would I be able to combine a language loving 3rd grader and a STEM focused 5th grader in CE? They are currently combined in ELTL and it works well for them. I've been wanting to do a word roots program with the older one, so if I can group them together, that would be great. (The younger one is the one I'm doing Island level with currently.)

[Incognito]

Yes you could combine them in CE.

 

We have the teacher's manual and two student copies - one copy in bw and one in color.  The kids each always hope it's their day for the colored one.  They are essentially the same book.  A few minor edits here or there.  The color looks nicer for the pictures, but it isn't a big deal.  FWIW, we could likely just use the student manuals on these, but I like us each having our own copy and there are occassional tidbits in the TM that are nice.

 

 

[SparklyUnicorn]

I had he TMs and I never used the assignments.  I didn't like the writing assignments at all.  We loved the books, but the assignments...meh. 

 

 

[Mike in SA]

CE works well for students from 4th-9th, so I could easily see a language-loving 3rd grader using it.

[Jackie]

The poetry book has been our least favorite in the Island level. Is the town level poetry book better/different? Or is it more of the same, just deeper/more topics?

 

I missed this question earlier. My daughter loves the poetry, so it pains me to write this, but Building Poems has the same flavor as Music of the Hemispheres. If you didn't like the first one, you're not likely to care for the second.

 

I concur with others that CE should be able to be combined. It is a meaty, dense book. My IM is b/w and our student books are in color, but since they're the only ones I have, I don't know how they compare to any other versions. We only actually use the student books, reading them curled up on the couch together.

[mamashark]

We are using Town level this year too, after Island last year. Here's how we are doing it:

 

Paragraph Town - We use both books here and take turns reading the parts. I couldn't do this without the instruction in the back of the teachers manual. I was excited about this being right on DD's level and it is - the assignments were much more normal to us than the sentence island ones, and we are able to tweak them as we wish to cover writing assignments for other subjects too, which is nice. I'm very pleased with the instruction here - we are half-way through and have seen a huge jump in my daughter's writing organization and output. 

Practice Town - We use just the teachers book, I usually write the sentences on a piece of paper for her to analyze then we go over it together.

Caesar's English - Thought this would be a huge leap in level but turned out it was just the right amount of challenge! We skip the word searches because DD hates them, but otherwise I like having both books. She doesn't like sharing a book with me so if I want to read with her, I need my own book. The quizzes are the biggest help from the Teachers manual though, so if you don't want to use them, you can get away without just the student book.
Building Poems - We tried twice to get into music of the hemispheres and while I personally loved it, my daughter is just not into it. She likes the idea of poems but she's too rigid in her writing to really do poetry right now. I figure we can always go back and do poetry later, so I'm not stressing over it right now.
Grammar Town - This was pretty quick for us - we slowed down when we went over the types of phrases, but this is gone over again in depth in paragraph town. 

 

Overall, we have loved this level, and personally I feel the vocab and writing are better than Island level.

[SeaConquest]

CE works well for students from 4th-9th, so I could easily see a language-loving 3rd grader using it.

My not very language-loving 2nd grader is doing fine with CE. If the kid is a prodigious (see what I did there?) reader, he or she will be fine. Good to know that Paragraph Town is so good. I have it, but haven't looked at it yet.

[StephanieZ]

FWIW, I wouldn't skip any of the parts of any of the Town MCT books. I think they are all *magic*. Just buy the whole package, and you're golden. 

 

I'm not much of a "do it all" kind of homeschooler, and I love to pick and choose, but MCT is too good for that. :) 

 

And, also, FWIW, my son got a 4 on the AP English & Language test last year, after blowing off 80% of his (great) AP class that year . . . I guarantee the 4 mostly came from his earlier MCT years (and plenty of good reading over the years). My eldest (4 on AP Eng Lng, 5 on AP Lit) also credits MCT with her doing so well, very easily, A+s, in her AP English classes. Both kids have super high SAT scores as well . . . (both are National Merit kids . . .) 

 

So, anyway, I'm an MCT lover . . . and I highly recommend using all the books. :) I really think it's AWESOME.