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5LittleMonkeys

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Everything posted by 5LittleMonkeys

  1. The upcoming 6th grade boy is fascinated with these decades so I'm looking at putting together a humanities study that will cover each. I know it's a long shot that there may be something already out there, but perhaps I could pull from different resources so that I'm not starting completely from scratch. What I'd like to cover: Literature and Poetry Movies Art Clothing\Decor\Food Daily Lives Inventions People Major Events Political\Social\Economic trends I'm not even sure what this would look like on a daily basis so would love ideas if anyone has done something similar. Not even sure if I would do all 3 decades in one year or spread them out. I've considered having him keep a journal and timeline in order to make connections between events, ideas, and people, but that really is as far as I've gotten. Thoughts?
  2. Example - The 11th Doctor loves bow ties and fezzes. Often, he can be heard exclaiming, "Bow ties are cool!" and "Fezzes are cool!" The child has bibliography cited for each episode that these quotes came from...how would she cite within the sentence? Thanks!
  3. Thanks! As the person evaluating this student's writing I'm trying to "teach" mechanics without squelching creativity. I think I like the hyphen.
  4. A light rain trickled through the fall leaves orange like a sunset hanging above my head. Thanks!!
  5. Freesia - have you begun using this yet? I've looked at the website and downloaded the samples and like what I'm seeing so far. I'm not seeing writing instruction...are you familiar enough with it to give more details?
  6. I'm using this right now with a group of highschool students ranging from 9th to 11th (the older ones were a bit behind in this area). Along with the Jill Pike Syllabus it is a full credit for an average or young student. The syllabus has the students go through Teaching the Classics over the first few weeks and also adds in work with To Kill a Mockingbird, Jane Eyre, and Hamlet. Jill blended the additions of those three works with the WttW materials beautifully. WttW itself uses many short stories and poetry to teach and practice the skills. You could easily add in additional reading and writing assignments to further practice the skills covered. Combined, these resources have made an engaging, fun class for my students. Like the pp, I have LOVED teaching this program. I wish I could find another program just like it to move these students into next year!
  7. I'm currently teaching a class of ten 9th-11th graders with the Windows to the World\Jill Pyke Syllabus combo. It has been a great year so far. The students are responding well to the program, the parents are pleased with the improvement in skill, and I'm pleased with how easy it is to teach from. I've been asked to teach this group again next year. I would love to find something similar to what I've used this year. The syllabus homework pages for the kids has been wonderful in keeping them on track each week and the grading rubrics help them see what type of grade they will receive based on their work. Most of these students are not strong readers - they have varying degrees of dyslexia. In addition, I feel most of these students need far more instruction and practice with writing all types of essays. They are improving, but for many, my class is the only time they write papers. Some of them will be in 12th and have had no instruction on writing a research paper either. The parents have requested that our focus be American Literature. So, I'm looking for suggestions on complete programs or individual programs that would work well together. I've not really done any research as of yet so all suggestions are welcome so I have a pool of ideas to look into.
  8. Mosdos with the workbook and without the teacher's guides has been a success for independent literature for several of my dc.
  9. For PreK we always do one period (we have 3) where we focus on one book, talk about the story, characters, setting ,etc. , then we do a craft based on that book that helps with fine motor control, writing, gluing or cutting practice, or it could just be fun. For example if you read Corduroy you could have a craft where the kids "sew" big buttons onto a precut pocket (large buttoms, embroidery thread and plastic needles) and then they glue the pocket onto a cut out of Corduroy wearing his overalls. When we did Caps for Sale we mad paper hats out of large brown paper bags and let the kids decorate them and we also had the teachers all bring in different kinds of hats and they sorted and counted them. You can find tons of ideas like these on Pinterest. You could do a figurative language class for the 1st-3rd. Read a story each week that highlights specific figurative language then teach and play games to focus on that element. We did idioms, hyperbole, metaphor, simile, personification, onomatopoeia, alliteration, and a couple others that I can't remember. Again, I found all the books and activities for this class on pinterest. I just searched "books to teach idioms" and then "activities to teach idioms" and found many, many resources.
  10. We are doing To Kill a Mockingbird first. :) Great suggestions. Thank you all. Some of these I admit I've not read but think they may be a good fit, so I've got some reading to do. :)
  11. I'm going to be teaching Windows to the World with the Jill Pyke Syllabus to a group of children this coming school year. Many of these kids have dyslexia and dysgraphia so I'm going to be adapting and customizing in an attempt to provide a thorough but enjoyable 9th grade English credit for them. I know these children, mostly boys...have taught them for a few years...and I know they are NOT going to be able to work through Jane Eyre. Even if we took it very slowly they aren't going to enjoy this book and part of my goal is to get them to not shy away from all classics just because they are "classics". Could anyone suggest another classic that would be more readable for children who have not been exposed to many classics before, in addition to having content that would be more liked by a mixed class of boys and girls?
  12. I did see the sample but I'm so bad at getting a sense of the whole program from a sample. I think I'll go ahead and pick up level 5 since I'll use it for my younger dc, but you may be right that the writing part of it may be well below her ability. I may find the grammar part is below her ability as well which would leave me with a reading schedule, some poetry, and a picture study. Not enough to warrant me using the program. I'm all for tweaking the WWS to fit her needs, and know that I'll need to add something to it so I'll look into some of your suggestions OhE. Thanks for the convo ladies. :)
  13. The bolded is why I'm struggling. :) I've used WWS before with my two older dc (however, they are COMPLETELY different learners than this dd is), but I've not used the higher levels of ELTL so wasn't sure how the writing instruction differed in ELTL. Your explanation is helpful, but now I'm left wondering if I should do both! It's the grammar, copywork, dictation, poetry, and picture study of ELTL that is so appealing to me and something that I'd like to get back to doing for this dc. Upon looking through the WWS again I know there are parts she will not need repeated practice in, such as one level outlines, since she's already doing two level outlines. I think she'll be able to skip Part I and move through Part II pretty quickly since she's good at writing narratives\summaries from across the curricula. So, I'm wondering if she could do both WWS and ELTL. Guess I just need to purchase ELTL level 5 so I can look through it. :)
  14. Dd12 is going into the 7th grade this fall. For writing she has completed WWE 1-3, did one year of IEW, will have completed Essentials in Writing by August, and writes summaries in science, history and literature. She also can do a two level outline. For grammar she has completed season 1 of Analytical Gramamr. We had planned to start WWS the beginning of 6th, but it was a little advanced for her so decided to go with EiW since I needed something non-teacher intensive for this past year. EiW served it's purpose this year but I don't want to continue with it because, while she did the work, it is not at all inspiring or interesting and I don't feel that it gave her enough practice to really perfect what she learned. Same with AG...it got the job done but it wouldn't hurt dd's feelings to put it on the shelf. So, for 7th, I had thought to continue AG in addition to starting WWS but now I'm looking at ELtL more closely for her (ds did parts of 2 this year and will be doing 3 next year while dd6 will be starting 1). I love the incorporation of the literature and see that both 4 and 5 start with written lit responses...something dd as not done yet. I also like the addition of poetry, copywork\dictation, and picture study. All things that I know are valuable but would not pull individually into our lineup unless they are part of a program. I'm not able to get a sense of how the writing instruction in WWS compares to that in ELtL though and worry that she is beyond the instruction in ELtL 4 or 5 although I do think she would enjoy that program more than WWS. I also worry about getting her writing skills where they need to be at least by 10th. By then I want her to have the basics of essay writing down and be able to focus composition instruction on perfecting a thesis and lengthier research papers. So, can anyone compare WWS 1 with ELiL 4 or 5, or give any insight into which program you think would be best for us to move to?
  15. I'm in the same boat with a rising 4th grader. We've been working on this for well over a year and I'm not seeing a whole lot of improvement so I'm beginning to wonder if there is some kind of other issue going on...though I can't imagine what it would be since he doesn't have trouble reading the words. I've even taken to going through some of his reading material and having him circle all of the punctuation prior to reading, which does slow him down and help him, BUT I certainly can't do this with every single thing he reads, especially library books! I'll be listening in!
  16. I've tried Apologia years ago and it wasn't a good fit for me. I'll check out Christian Kids and Guest Hollow. Thanks.
  17. We switched to individual science programs for each child for this past year and it has just about killed me, not to mention that I don't think any one of them got enough attention doing it that way. I want to look at what my options would be for something mulit-level but that would work with a 1st, 4th and 7th grader. Keeping in mind that the 1st grader is really just along for the ride. :) I have a few things on my shelf that I could make work but am curious what is out there already designed as mutli-level.
  18. We did projects from this two semesters ago. It was a huge success.
  19. This would be for 6th-8th grade. We are meeting for an hour every Monday, 32 weeks in the year. I'm going to have a variety of learning styles and a few learning challenges (dysgraphia\dyslexia), with the majority of the older kids being behind in writing and needing to do some serious work with paragraphs. I'm going to try very hard to meet each child where they're at so want a good spine to work from versus spending my time putting together a program on my own or having to heavily modify a program to work in this setting. Thoughts? Good or bad.
  20. Thanks for the responses! So, we've decided that each class will be taught by a team of co-teachers. How they split the actual teaching up is up to them (and most have said they would like to rotate during the weeks) but they must all know what is going on with the class and material so that any one of them could step in and do the teaching on any given day. This will hopefully prevent classes being left with no one to teach them as there will be 3 to 4 in each teaching team. The attendance policy is a bit severe, BUT we will make exceptions for extenuating circumstances if the person comes to me (the director) to explain. You may miss up to 4 days within a 16 week semester due to vacation, illness, or emergency. If there are no extenuating circumstances and you miss that 5th time then you are removed from the co-op and may not re-submit an application for membership until the following year and then only after you've met with the director. So far most of our returning and interested families have agreed that this is a very generous attendance policy with only a few that were on my waiting list deciding that the policy wouldn't work for them. Which is why I wanted it in place really..do deter those who aren't reliable from joining.
  21. Yes. I'm adding this to our 6th-8th grade schedule at co-op next school year. Our semester runs for 16 weeks though and the lectures will take up 12 weeks, so I have to come up with 4 classes worth of extra material. I think I would do one to two classes on note taking - actually having the dc work through taking notes from different resources in different note taking methods. While most the dc in my at home class knew how to take notes there were a few who were fairly confused about the process and could have benefited from some guided practice. I also think I would add in at least one class on test taking...having some practice tests that represented different types of questions (multiple choice, matching, written) and guide them through the strategies for those. Then perhaps the last class as a open forum for the dc to share how they've improved over the semester and to talk about areas they might still struggle in so that the class could offer support and ideas for improvement. Hope it works out great for any others thinking of using it!
  22. Coming back. :) Time is not my friend lately so here it is 5 weeks later and I've not kept up with weekly updates. However, we had our last session tonight so wanted to just post about how it went overall and to add some observations that might help someone else interested in doing a group seminar. If you are looking to do this seminar and have the option of doing it with a group of kids who all know each other I highly recommend it. They shared SO much with each other about struggles and frustrations brought to light by the topics in the lectures, and it was great to see them encourage and support each other. If you are doing it with a group of children that don't know each other I might even even have a "get to know you" get together prior so that the kids are at least familiar with each other and so may not be as shy about group discussions. Early on I realized that having parents attend with siblings in tow was NOT going to work. With my open floor plan it was just too distracting to have younger siblings in and out the back door and up and down the stairs. I explained to the parents that if they had to bring younger siblings those kids would be required to sit quietly at my dining table and read or do a quiet activity. I explained that this was not a play date for them. They all chose to just drop off and pick up the older kids after that, which turned out well since part of their homework every week was to go home and explain to the parent what they learned in the lectures. I would have the parent initial their notebook to show that they kids had done it. It was a great way for them to review the information. Anyway - I mention this so that anyone else considering doing this just goes ahead and makes it a drop and pick up event versus trying to have the parents with siblings in tow stay. We watched two lectures during each session. When the kids got there I'd allow them a few minutes of chat time and then had them load up on snacks to munch on during the lecture. After the first was over we would discuss\talk for about 20 minutes, then I'd let them get up and stretch, get more snacks and chat for about 10 minutes before starting the next lecture. After the second lecture we'd discuss again for about 20 minutes and then they would help put my living room back in order and clean up the snacks and trash then they could leave. This routine worked out really well for all of the kids ... about half of these kids need to be doing\moving to pay attention so the finger foods helped keep their hands busy, but I also provided large fuzzy pipe cleaners and squishy balls. The only additional material I added to the lectures were a few worksheets for them to practice recognizing some more common fallacies found in writing, and a couple handouts about traditional outlining. I didn't feel it necessary to add anything else. There were plenty of topics in the lectures to discuss and most of the chapters had suggestions at the end for ways to carry the topics further, many of which I assigned as homework. Keep in mind that this is designed for public school children so you will have to discuss how the children can apply the strategies to the homeschool situation. Hope this helps anyone wanting to do this with a group. I highly recommend it - I think, even if the students only go on to apply a few of these strategies, that it is worthwhile. :)
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