I just doubled check what the Loom had to say to make sure what I was saying was correct. It states that the Accountability Questions are an accountability guage but the Thinking Questions were designed to "prime the pump" for discussion. Marivi

My now 9th grader is ADD inattentive and dyslexic. I would recommend Math U See also (Not as many problems a day) and visual. Also for writing I would strongly recommend IEW. We use to pull our hair out when it came to writing; but now, although still not his favorite, he can do it. Thanks to IEW.

What year are you doing? I found that to be true more in Year 2. We also discovered that sometimes the "General Information" pages (first page of the student activity section) contain some answers. For a long time we ignored that page.

During my planning time (in the summer) I export TOG resource list to excel and then print it out. Next I go to my library's url and mark which books they have. Then I mark week on my "syllabus" (calendar with date matched with week number) with a star then I know to reserve the books a week before hand. I don't borrow most multi-week books though it really is easier just to buy them. All the books for the year are in a bins (one for each level: Rhetoric, Dialectic, and Lower Grammar). Each week my boys know where to go to get the books they need next.

My D level complaint is some of the materials he is reading do not give the information he needs on his accountability questions. Are there solutions to this problem? Holly My boys do the same thing. I try to remind them that the purpose of the Accountability Questions is just that Accountability....it lets me know they read the books. The goal is to read the books not just answer the Accountability questions. I don't post much (maybe once in the 8 years on the board) but have enjoyed this thread. We are in our 5th year of TOG. This year is my first with a Rhetoric student. TOG can be so overwhelming. I concur with all those who have said to make your kids responsible for organizing their week. It makes mine so much more manageable. Each child has a copy of the reading assignment yellow sheet and the student pages and last but not least a "syllabus" (a sheet listing beginning date of the week ie. January 23 and a column with the TOG Week we are covering ). We just do the History core/and In-depth, Church History, and Literature portions. They know each week by Friday the questions and map work need to be completed. If any of them are struggling completing the assignment it is his responsibility to come to me and ask for help. (Don't get me wrong...I do check on them...but they don't know how much I do). We discuss at least once a week but I find as the week progresses we find ourselves talking about the topics naturally. This year I have required the boys to on the main level of the house while completing school work. I found that after I had my instruction time with them, they would hide in bedrooms or the basement and we wouldn't see each most the day. This has also helped with the accountability of completing their school work. Hope this helps. Marivi

It's written by Harcourt Press, publishers of Standford Test.

for example: The bird is very big. It just an introduction.

This is what I have done ....after we cover a particular "dress-up" in IEW we do the exercises in the Killgallon book covering the same topic (ex: adverbial clauses and adjectival clauses) . It help the kids get the hang of the dress-up using complex sentences.

I purchase the SIC DVDs and syllabus for TWSS only the first year. I watched the DVD's with my son and then used the free lesson plans. We took extra weeks to practice the units covered. This year I got a few other families to split the cost of the Continuation course. We meet together and watch the videos. We will finish just over half of the continuation course this year. Next year we will finish the Continuation Course and then I'll be comfortable giving content related assignments. I paid a significant amount more than the other families so that I get to keep the DVD's to use for my other kids as they come up. I must say that the money has been well worth it. I would never have been able to pull it off as well as Andrew Pudewa does. Plus the DVDs allowed me to put more time into other areas of study eliminating lots of frustration.

I started with Classical Writing with my son in 3rd grade. I wasn't too sure about IEW and the progression they used so I went with CW. But after a year of fighting with a very frustrated son I gave up. My older son is a reluctant write. I ended up getting the SIC A last year (4th) and my son loved Mr. Pudewa. He actually would do his key word outline and paragraphs. without my argueent. It was work for him and he didn't totally get at first but as the year went on he got better. This year I purchased the the Continuation Course. I can't believe the improvement. This week he's working on a 3 paragraph essay. He has it outlined (with the sub-points actually relating to the main points). It would have been a lot more work and fights if we would have used any other way. I love the incremental approach. I understand IEW better now and totally buy into the approach it takes. My younger son now in third grade is going through SIC and doing well. Sometimes I'm tempted to try CW again but realize that IEW is working well for my boys. They can be independent and we have a lot less struggles. I think you can get by with the just the SIC and the teacher syllabus for the parent lectures as long as you watch the SIC also.