I'm not sure I can remember all the programs we've done over the years. We were doing lots of programs for learning disabilities at one time that involved eye tracking and 'brain skills' types of tutoring. We also did A Measuring Scale for Ability in Spelling (Ayers) early on, but that became too stressful so we switched to Sequential Spelling (Avko). That helped somewhat but was progressing too slowly. I switched to Spell of Words and Spell Well. One year we just made our own lists of spelling words from his writing, but that just wasn't systematic enough for him at the time. It might work better now since he has cleared up many of the major problems. For now, having just repeated Spell Well for the second time (reviewing all the words he had missed or had trouble with there) we are going backwards through "Measuring Scale" (see above) trying to catch all those words that have fallen through the cracks of the other programs. I know he will never be a great speller (nor am I). But I do know that people do tend to judge others as unintelligent and uneducated if they see basic typos and spelling mistakes. He has been trapped so long within his dyslexic brain that I want everyone to see the highly intelligent, thoughtful mind behind the rocky spelling. He can write beautifully, and lyrically, but up until last year, you couldn't see that until you had read through his work twice and recovered from all the errors. His dad was also dyslexic. Still sometimes has some misspelled words, but things fell into place for him when a young adult and learning French in Quebec (French was his mother tongue, but he did not really know how to read, write it etc.).

Thanks, Barbara! He is dyslexic. His spelling is remedial rather than automatic - give him enough time and he can go back over his first draft and catch most of his mistakes. There isn't time for that in the SAT. He is fairly solid with grammar (but again, a second draft at writing will pick up some errors). I will look at your suggestions and try to apply all that work. I know for me, my English teacher was in despair (I grew up in England and so had a longer time to write exam essays, but the exam score summed up our entire high school experience - no such thing as continuous assessment etc). I was the best at English in my class, and yet it took approximately a year for me to get to the point where I didn't flunk the essay part of the English exam. I just had to write essay, after essay, after essay. Until I'd devised my own internal formula. But that is hard for me to 'teach' to my son who is less strong in English than I was at the time.

Thank you so much for your response. I will definitely take a look at Jeffery Freed's book, and try what you suggest. From my perspective, I have noticed great leaps of progress. But there is still some distance to travel!

While I'm not dyslexic, as an English major I have still struggled with timed examination essays all my life, and the SAT essay seems to take the biscuit! I have bought my son an SAT essay prep guide, but it is still an almost impossibility for him to complete an essay, free from spelling and grammatical errors, in such a short time. Any tips about how to approach this, since I'm really not able to help him much with this?

So, an update one year later. I like the Oxford writing - probably more for an additional writing resource than a rhetoric course. Son finds it a bit heavy going, but I think he enjoys it. He ended up disliking Jensen Grammar and resented the differences between it and R&S which he has lived with most his life. We both disliked Jensen's Format Writing - I found it so very irritating. Writer's Inc. "Writing for College" seemed much more sensible and flexible in its approach - didn't leave us both like we wanted to run screaming from the assignmemts! I discovered that it was a mistake to try to do my own Great Books course with him. This takes a major investment of time and organizational skills to do it justice. It isn't that it can't be done, but it can only be done with great difficulty. Next year I will sign him up with a discussion group.

I have a dyslexic boy who will be entering 11th grade next year. I keep picking up remedial spelling courses for high school students, and we do make some progress, but I think his spelling range is still hovering around the 7th/8th grade level. I re-test on the words he gets wrong until he gets to 100%, but we still uncover problems when we go on to a new text. I'm wondering if we need a totally new approach next year, such as a vocabulary course, or just combing through is writing and focusing on the errors it unearths. What have been your best remedial spelling courses for high school age? Thanks in advance.

Hi, DS 1 did Great Books Academy years ago and I still have the study guides from that period. I am trying to use them with DS 2 by myself ( big mistake!) but struggling with which selections to use for the Herodotus Histories. The study guide seems to only suggest very few paragraphs from Books III- V (actually book IV is skipped entirely). Yet the study guide questions seem based on a wider reading. Does anyone have the current selections that Great Books uses for its readings of this text? Thank you!!!

Have to agree that this is a great program. I don't think most people will have the opportunity to study this much, so intensively for most of their lives (unless they homeschool their kids that is!) - not even at the college level unless they attend a 4 year Great Books College program. My eldest did the first two years of this for college credit and he considers it to be the highlight of his highschool experience. He later went to a residential public school for the gifted located on a college campus where the students have dual credits coming out of their ears. They also tried to do a sort of Great Books program but it was no where near the standard he had already experienced two years earlier.

Training 5, Thanks. I just spoke to my husband, and I think I'm really beginning to agree. LoriD., Would you still recommend the Jensen's Format program, given all the above? The following is the FAQ explanation of how to handle the writing requirements of their course: I haven't done a lot of writing, so how will I know what to do? There is only one way to learn to write, and that is simply to begin with the assignment and write. The syllabus provides assigned reading plus a very specific essay question. This gives you the topic and thesis of your essay, so that you can focus on organizing supporting points and presenting evidence from the text to support your thesis. The assigned handbook (Writers Inc. for E1 and E2; and Write for College for E3-5) provides a detailed introduction to the writing process, and an overview of how to approach each type of paper you will encounter. If you need detailed instruction in essay writing, my favorite resource is The Elegant Essay by Lesha Myers. It's a wonderful introduction to essays! In addition, you may consult your parent, writing coach, or teacher for clarification and additional help.

Hidden Jewel, Thanks so much for your caution. I went back and looked at E in Writing again and I still think it would be doable, perhaps with a bit of supplemental help in structuring literary analysis essays as they move through the high school years. It is absolutely perfect for my rising 9th grade DD - although I wish there was much more Shakespeare. I'm still wavering over whether to let 10th grader take the Great Books Academy course, mainly because his elder brother, 3rd year engineering student, is trying to convince me that his younger brother should do it. He still sees that as the most valuable thing he did in high school, and believes that his brother would enjoy and profit from it also. But that course has even less guidance for literary analysis writing. 10th grade DS has the mind to wrestle with Plato et al. but needs to hone writing skills more than his siblings due to the impact dyslexia has had on basic skills - particularly spelling. Regardless of what we end up using, our goal is for him to be able to write a timed piece that he has carefully edited for spelling in particular in order for him not to flunk the SAT and so that he can begin to conform to college writing standards. This is the first year that we could even contemplate that being a possibility. He has a fine mind, reads more than anyone else in the family for pleasure even though he struggled to learn to read for years, and has a great writing ability currently trapped in a lack of automaticity in spelling and simple grammar (he catches it himself eventually, but it is much harder work for him at the moment than for the average student). If we have to do that by ourselves, that's fine, but it was one of the reasons I thought Put it in Writing might be a good option for him. BTW, this is the reading list that he covered last year (with younger sister doing some of this during her 8th grade year, but getting waylaid by an incredibly intensive ballet training program last year). So you can see that he can handle the reading parts of things (this was my test to see whether or not he could and he passed with flying colors both in terms of comprehension, ability to discuss his reading and produce an intelligent written response or essay on each text - replete with spelling and punctuation typos!): Title Gilgamesh Illiad Odyssey Beowulf Chaucer (selections) Sir Gawain Dante (complete Divine Comedy) Malory - Arthuriad complete (original Middle English version ) Spenser - Fairie Queene Selected Elizabethan Poets(read aloud and discussion with me) Shakespeare Sonnets (read aloud and discussion with me) Donne (read aloud and discussion with me) Marvell (read aloud and discussion with me) Vaughn (read aloud and discussion with me) Pilgrims Progess Paradise Lost Gullivers Travels Pride & Prej. Frankenstein Blake (read aloud and discussion with me) Wordsworth (read aloud and discussion with me) Coleridge (read aloud and discussion with me) Shelley (read aloud and discussion with me) Keats (read aloud and discussion with me) Tennyson (read aloud and discussion with me) Browning (read aloud and discussion with me) Hopkins (read aloud and discussion with me) Owen (read aloud and discussion with me) T.S. Eliot (read aloud and discussion with me) Dylan Thomas (read aloud and discussion with me) Mill on the Floss It was also an experimental year for me. Even though I have a degree in English from Oxford and have read, discussed and written on all the above myself, I discovered that I'm a horrible high school English teacher. Also, I was meant to be doing part time work at the time the kids were reading all this, which morphed into full time, and *I* struggled mightily to keep up with the reading and discussing aspects. That's why I'm looking to put a little distance between myself and literature studies this year at least, or at least make it more fun and less heavy handed than a full blown "Great Books" course. http://www.greatbooksacademy.org/great-books-program/great-books-readings/ (for which my eldest received 12 college credits at the time) ...compared to http://everyday-education.com/literature/eng5.shtmlwhich I know both kids would enjoy. Sorry - hugely rambling, and more than anyone wanted to know, but I'm processing stuff while I type! Thanks to all for your patience and your advice!

Lori D., you have to be one of the nicest and most helpful persons I have 'met' in a long time. Thank you so much! I already had my eye on The Excellence program already after reading one of your other posts.

Thank you so much, Lori D.! That was really helpful. I will probably take a look at all 3 programs. I do have two very logical/engineer types who want to know the rules. And both might gain some sense of security to know that they're "doing things right". However, I might be able to customize things a little. I'm now off to read through your excellent posts on Literature/Great Book options. Trying to decide if I should pay the big $$$ or bite the bullet and attempt to pull something together myself. So thanks for your recorded wisdom in that arena, also! :001_smile:

Sorry, I know this is the 3rd thread about PTIW that has appeared today, but I am looking for a light touch for grammar and writing this year for 10th and possibly 9th grader. I wondered if PTIW would be solid, but not too demanding time wise? Right now I have Rod & Staff 9. Both kids completed R&S 8 last year and WRiting Strands 7. However, after pulling my hair out regarding what literature course to do, I find myself going back to the Great Books Academy, which my son did a few years ago. I know from experience how demanding this course is, and so would like to lighten the load in other areas such as grammar and writing. Would PTIW be such a course, and could I use this by itself without needing an additional grammar text? If not, then are there other recommendations out there? Thanks!

Thanks Kim and MommyThrice! Feels like I have lots of catching up to do here!

Hello, I have not visited this forum for many years. I own the first two editions of the WTM. They were all I needed for the last few years. However, I'm now revisiting things as my youngest prepares to begin high school next year. I would love to know if there have been any updated recommendations since the 2nd edition of WTM was produced, especially in language arts and Rhetoric? My two remaining hs kids have been using Rod and Staff and have completed Logic studies. I already have the Oxford Guide to Writing, but never purchased A Rulebook for Arguments, and nor do I see it for sale on Rainbow Resource. I was wondering if there is a new approach WTM devotees have been using for Rhetoric in the last few years? I'm also trying to decide what to do for LArts. Perhaps we'll continue with R&S 9, but wondering if I should go in for something a little less heavy handed. I believe the last suggestion for those not electing to do R&S or Abeka was Analytical Grammar + possible Writing Strands Exposition? I don't really want to get a 3rd edition of WTM if I can avoid it. But if there has been any dramatic change of approach or 'can't-live-without' curriculum recommendation changes you think I should read about there, then I guess I'd splurge. However, I am also keen to get my modest book orders in very soon to avoid Rainbow Resource price changes and to help in their efforts to apply all June profits to homeschool families in need. Thanks for your help!