featherhead
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Posts posted by featherhead
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On 3/13/2024 at 12:42 PM, AsgardCA said:
I didn't see a thread for 5th grade, sorry if it's a repeat! This is the only grade I hadn't planned out yet, so here we go. I'd love to see what everyone else is up to!
Math: TGTB 4 & 5 (& maybe Math Mammoth)
Science & Nature:
- Blossom & Root Level 2 - Plants & Fungi - starting over summer with younger brother, ties in with the Botany her older siblings are doing
- Beginning Herbalism unit from Wild Learning
- Kids' Herb Book + Boreal Herbal - identifying local plants and their uses
- A bit of gardening, focus on our unique climate
- Wilderness first aid & survival skills/bushcraft
- Blossom & Root Level 5 - Astronomy (over winter, since we can't see the stars at other times of the year)
- maybe some Mystery Science
- For the Love of Homeschooling Nature Study units
History:
- Prehistory, evolution, paleontology/archaeology & mythology
- Blossom & Root Prehistoric Life from Level 3
- Build Your Library's Evolution unit, & Prehistory unit
- Layers of Learning Ancients
Canadian Studies:
- Geography - Great Canadian Adventure's Canadian Geography
- Geography - The Canadian Adventure (Canadian Homeschooler)
- History - My Canadian Time Capsule (Canadian Homeschooler)
- History - Great Canadian Adventure's Canadian History
- History - DIY Year 2
Language Arts:
- Grammar: Fix It?
- Reading: Lightning Literature
- Writing: Using Language Well 1
- Spelling: Spelling Wisdom 1, Sequential Spelling
- Handwriting: Canadian Handwriting
Being a Canadian, do you use the US or UK version of Spelling Wisdom?
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6 hours ago, HomeAgain said:
It's expensive, but I would really consider Math U See. Each lesson is set up as one taught lesson per week, 3 pages of practice with the new material, 3 pages of review of older material, 1 "honors" page that extends it out, and 1 test. My oldest used it and had success with a weekly routine of two pages each day, one new, one review, and the test at the end of the week.
Different kids have different needs at different ages, and you may find yourself sitting with lessons for longer than you anticipated. Middle school was definitely one of those periods here, but it's an ebb and flow.
Yeah, it is certainly on the pricy side! Maybe if I can save money somewhere else. We do have cuisenaire rods which I know are somewhat similar to the Math U See blocks, and I should probably pull them out more often.
5 hours ago, SilverMoon said:Horizons. It's from a religious company, though it doesn't preach. A picture you make by coloring all the shapes with a mixed fraction inside might be a cross, and loaves and fishes might be in a word problem.
It has small bites of several different concepts in each page, and they all grow in little, incremental steps as you progress through lessons. Usually only one or two things grow in each lesson and the rest is review. Since it changes gears after every problem set my high energy kids found it easier to stay focused.
I've never looked that closely at Horizons, so thanks for the rec! I will definitely check it out. Religious is totally fine with me.
3 hours ago, MiddleCourt said:My daughter is very similar. She is also going into 6th grade. Finding a math she is willing to do is a CHALLENGE. I feel like I have tried almost every math curriculum under the sun trying to find the right fit- this year we even took the whole fall off of curriculum to work on multiplication.
The best fit I’ve found for her has been Apologia’s elementary math- Exploring God’s Creation with Mathematics. Like most Christian math programs, you can use it if you’re not a Christian because the Christian content is pretty light. It hits your criteria of shorter lessons, some spiral review (but not as intense as some others, like Saxon), and can definitely be parent directed. It kind of reminds me of Math with Confidence. (Speaking of- if she needs a 4th grade math, you can check theirs out. They just released it.)Thanks for that! I've been out of the loop, and I just saw that they have a math program. I'll have to check this one out too!
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My dd will be going into 6th grade this fall. Currently she is working in Math Mammoth 3rd grade, and should finish in a couple weeks. Math Mammoth is great (and I own grade 1-7 on CD), however I don't think it's great for her. There is very little review, just a couple pages at the end of each chapter, and I feel like she could use review more frequently. She has been struggling with memorizing her times tables, so we got Times Tales which has helped a bit. She is also highly distractible and can't get much done unless I sit with her and keep her on track. This was her first year of homeschooling (other than 2 months in grade 1), so we've been working on finding the gaps left by public school. She was fairly adept at slipping through the cracks and not letting on that she was not understanding.
So... suggestions on math for this coming year that has review more often, short lessons, maybe more parent directed?
I also have a ds who will be going into 3rd grade. He has done well with Math Mammoth this year, so I will likely keep using it for him for next year.
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1 hour ago, Plum said:
That was my plan for this year. I looked all over and started a thread just like this one. Middle school world history, well middle school curriculum in general seems to be lacking.
There's Human Odyssey and History Odyssey. There's the brand new World History Project, a spinoff of Big History Project. If only that had released a couple of months earlier for me.
You could work through all of the Story of the World books, written comprehension responses and tests to make it feel a little more middle schoolish.
It looks like History Odyssey is a 4 year history cycle. Do I have that right? With the Story of the World books, how important are all the extra materials? Can you do it with just the text?
11 minutes ago, kristin0713 said:My 8th grader is doing From Adam to Us by Notgrass. It is a pretty thorough world history course with geography. It is a Christian program, in case that makes a difference.
I'm good with a Christian program. Did you get the full program including the novels?
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My oldest will be in 8th next year. She did homeschool from Pre-K -2nd, and 4th-halfway through 5th. We are seriously considering homeschooling her next year because of character issues that need to be addressed. It would likely be for only one year, and so I would like to stick fairly close to what she would be learning in public school. 8th grade here is World History. Budget is definitely something we will have to figure out, but it won't be a lot. So any suggestions for a one year World History course would be appreciated 🙂
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I was going to suggest Strayer-Upton as well.
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There is a giveaway going on right now for light blue grades 1-3. This is not a special link, as I just won one of their giveaways, so I don’t need this. I just noticed this one, and there is currently only one entry. You will have to scroll down to find the giveaway widget thingy.
https://www.mathmammoth.com/packages.php#blue
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41 minutes ago, ElizabethB said:
You have done well preventing the guessing!! Only people taught phonics well read both the same speed.
I would work through my syllables program and do some nonsense words daily, a set for training daily where you go at a slower speed and correct errors, and a set for measuring weekly where you don't correct and track speed and accuracy. I would also work through something for phonemic awareness, Spelfabet might have some good PDF resources. I love her pom pom phonemes video.
You will eventually want Kilpatrick but there are some things from M A Rooney and Spelfabet that you can do while waiting.
Her workbooks and games might help.
https://www.spelfabet.com.au/product-category/workbooks/
https://www.spelfabet.com.au/product-category/games/
You have been very helpful! Thanks again!
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Just finished the MWIA, and the nonsense words tests. For the MWIA 3 short, both scores were the same, at 84 wpm, with one error each. The nonsense words test she did 29 wpm with 64% accuracy.
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On 12/27/2018 at 2:00 PM, ElizabethB said:
Here is a phonemic awareness test, if she fails any of it, get Kilpatrick's book "Equipped for Reading Success" to start working on it.
https://jukebox.esc13.net/vgcdeveloper/TargetedResources/LAA_G2-3_TaRe_PAST.pdf
Book Excerpts:
Book to buy, good instructions, hundreds of phonemic awareness drills:
https://www.thereadingleague.org/shop/equipped-for-reading-success-2016-book-by-david-kilpatrick/
I would work through my syllables course, if focuses on multi-syllable words. You'll probably need to work through it several times, it will click better after any phonemic awareness is done. If you give me the MWIA scores, take the MWIA 3 short, I'll have a better idea of how it might go. The tests are at the end of my syllables page.
Also, how did you teach her to read? Did you use any sight words taught as wholes?
http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/syllablesspellsu.html
Ok, I gave her the PAST today. She certainly did not score as well as she should have. She did get 100% correct, but the automaticity was not there. I gave the same test to my 2nd and 4th graders first, so I could practice giving the test, and without even looking at the scores, I could see the difference. My 6th grader stumbled a lot more and I had to repeat questions a fair amount. I looked at that book, but it is only sold in the US. It would also work out to be around $80 Canadian. I’m going to see if I can save up the money and have it shipped till the border. Hopefully I can get someone to pick it up for me. I read through some of the excerpt you shared and it looks like it would be an excellent resource. I’m planning to give her the MWIA next, as long as she is agreeable 😏.
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13 minutes ago, ElizabethB said:
Here is a phonemic awareness test, if she fails any of it, get Kilpatrick's book "Equipped for Reading Success" to start working on it.
https://jukebox.esc13.net/vgcdeveloper/TargetedResources/LAA_G2-3_TaRe_PAST.pdf
Book Excerpts:
Book to buy, good instructions, hundreds of phonemic awareness drills:
https://www.thereadingleague.org/shop/equipped-for-reading-success-2016-book-by-david-kilpatrick/
I would work through my syllables course, if focuses on multi-syllable words. You'll probably need to work through it several times, it will click better after any phonemic awareness is done. If you give me the MWIA scores, take the MWIA 3 short, I'll have a better idea of how it might go. The tests are at the end of my syllables page.
Also, how did you teach her to read? Did you use any sight words taught as wholes?
http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/syllablesspellsu.html
Thanks for your help! I will check out those resources. I gave her the Barton screening, which she passed just fine. We started with Explode the Code ABC, and 1 and 2, and then CLE Learning to Read, LA, and Reading through grade 2.
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4 hours ago, Jess4879 said:
We're in Canada also. We ended up doing testing through a local university and it was $500. Not sure if that's an option for you or not. In our case, the testing itself didn't actually tell us anything we didn't already know, but I'm glad we had it done so that we have accommodations, if needed. Creating a paper trail in elementary school AND in high school is important. I've heard that the school system really starts to buck accommodations if they haven't been tested in elementary. I imagine this varies from school to school, but we decided to make sure we had things in place now. As our tester pointed out, even if she doesn't need many accommodations in school, having them in place ensures she gets them in university too - and seriously - being allowed extra time (for example) on a uni exam is a huge game changer!
3 hours ago, PeterPan said:Here's another article to show you the kinds of things you might be looking for and why. As Jess is saying, a psych eval tends to be superficial on language and more big picture (ADHD, other SLDs, etc.) and not get into the nitty gritties of what needs to happen. If you can find an SLP who specializes in literacy, they could run these more language-specific evals and actually give you an actionable plan of what needs to happen. Dyslexia is considered a language disability, so you may need to address more than decoding. https://www.smartspeechtherapy.com/what-makes-an-independent-speech-language-literacy-evaluation-a-good-evaluation/
You have all been so helpful in giving me some direction! Thanks! I will definitely look into those options and see what I can find around here.
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5 minutes ago, PeterPan said:
It's not a dyslexia test or a placement test but a screening tool for basic skills she'd need to succeed in ANY program. If you do it report back and people will help you decide how to proceed.
The RISE is only $5. https://rise.serpmedia.org/
3 minutes ago, PeterPan said:Also go to https://mindwingconcepts.com/ and read. They have videos and tons you can learn for free. It was developed by an SLP working in a dyslexia school.
The TILLS is a newer literacy test hitting multiple areas.,SLP testing is usually half the price of psych and might be more informative to you. Your insurance might cover the SLP eval. And if not look at the TILLS subtests and realize the areas you need to be looking at.
Thank you so much! This has been brewing in my mind for a LONG time, and I’m ready to just do something about it.
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7 hours ago, PeterPan said:
https://bartonreading.com/students/#ss The Barton screening is free and will give you some useful info no matter what program you consider doing.
Can you pay a private SLP to run language testing? She may have narrative language deficits, vocabulary deficits, syntax issues, etc that would show up.
Thank you! I was going to use the free tests at Lexercise and Dynaread. I thought maybe showing the results to the teacher would make a difference.
I’ve heard that private testing can costs thousands of dollars, which is just not possible right now.
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13 minutes ago, PeterPan said:
Oh, see in the US the parent has the legal right to make the request. Sorry. 😞
If you can't get them to help, then what can you make happen? You might move on to what needs to happen and what you can do about it.
My husband is pushing, so I’m hoping it will happen, but I’m looking into what I can do to help her in the meantime.
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3 hours ago, Pen said:
The diagnosis is important if you want her to have accommodations. It is also potentially important if there is something else other than dyslexia that might be discovered.
You can probably make a formal demand for an evaluation via school even if her teacher doesn’t agree. Or maybe next year a teacher would agree. The school may still legally be able to say no if they don’t see a problem. Even if they test it might not tell you specifically if she has “dyslexia”.
If you have Scottish Rite in your area I gather they can sometimes do free dyslexia evaluation.
However, if it were me, I’d probably just work with her at home.
Personally, I would prioritize reading over spelling. I pretty much gave up on spelling with my son. Reading well still seems very important to me—both decoding aspects and comprehension. Even if a text to speech program can be used comprehension will remain important. IMO.
Thanks for your advice! I’m in Canada and fairly certain we do not have a Scottish Rite anywhere around here. Do you have any recommendations on programs for working on reading?
2 hours ago, Mainer said:Are you in a public school? If so, you don't need a teacher's permission to request an evaluation. I would definitely do that as soon as you can. While you wait for the results, you can start working with her at home.
I'm really intrigued by the High Noon reading program. Your daughter might be a better fit for level 2, or maybe part way through level 1. Some people on this board recommended it to me, and I'm going to order it this week 🙂 https://www.highnoonbooks.com/detailHNB.tpl?action=search&cart=15388331365529339&eqskudatarq=S8271-8&eqTitledatarq=High Noon Reading-Level 1&eqvendordatarq=ATP&bobby=[bobby]&bob=[bob]&TBL=[tbl]
I use the Wilson program. It's fairly cheap, and it teaches eeeevvvverrrything. Every little thing gets thoroughly explained and practiced.
You can probably start doing something, using any program you choose - and then you'll find out how severe her deficits are, and change your plan if you need to.
Teaching reading is fun 🙂 You can do it!
She is in public school currently. And we are in Canada, so I’m not sure if that is different. We requested the evaluation through her teacher. Her teacher went through some of her work with the resource teacher and neither of them saw the need for an evaluation. From what I can tell, someone in the school has to make the recommendation for an evaluation. So if they do not see the need for it, it doesn’t happen. My husband is not too happy with the teacher, so he is pushing back. We will see what happens. Thank you for the recommendations for programs! I will check those out.
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My 6th grader is in public school currently. I homeschooled her for K-2, 4, and the first half of grade 5. For many reasons I suspect she may have dyslexia, but her school teacher disagrees with me and won’t request to have her evaluated. There is no way we could afford to have her tested privately, nor do we have insurance. Is the diagnosis really important, or should I just start working with her at home? Her main issue is with spelling, but as she gets older I’m starting to see a bit of a deficit in reading as well.
Some of the things I have noticed through the years of homeschooling: letter reversals till grade 5 at least, and I think even this year she really has to concentrate to get them correct. Poor spelling, even simple words. Today’s example was the word “idea”. She spelled it idia. Lately I’ve noticed a bit of a stutter when she reads out loud, kind of like she is tripping over words. She has difficulty reading larger unfamiliar words. There is also possibly dyslexia in the family, though never tested. My father-in-law quite possibly has it, as well as my sister-in-law. Neither of them finished school, and reading and spelling have always been difficult for them.
TIA for any advice 😊
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I have two June babies. One started K at 5, and the other will as well. My November and October babies will at 4. My April baby started at 4 as well, I just didn't actually call her K that year. We have a December 31st cut off here.
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I tried Rays and didn't care for it. I also tried Strayer-Upton. I really liked SU, but my daughter did not. She prefers a workbook she can write in.
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I'm in Manitoba, Canada, and we have a Dec. 31st cut-off
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Another vote for Miquon!
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Thinking Tree math journals might be right up his alley.
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I think you can see samples on Christian book website.
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Let's see if I can remember everything.
Math - Life of Fred and Khan Academy
LA - Either Sonlight or Language Lessons for Today.
Spelling - Thinking Tree spelling journals
She will taking a few classes at the school down the road. Everything else will be interest-led using Thinking Tree Journals.
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Math for 6th grade
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
Thanks for all the recommendations! Some of them I hadn't heard of before, so I will definitely look them all up.