Of course, it doesn't take much to overwhelm me right now; I've been treading water for days with many more days to come! Just like years ago when Classical Writing first came out, I opened up the books to flip through at a cursory glance, and came away with that initial thought again........I CAN'T DO THIS!!!! But I know I can with some time, focus, energy, and lots of hand-holding from you all! Actually, I'm confident in my ability to teach this stuff, it's just following the thinking pattern of those who wrote the program. Whenever I first glance at something, if it is not clean and clear, I tend to back away from it EVEN IF I know how to do it. So, I will be devoted about a week soon after school is out to get down and dirty with this and see if it will be a viable alternative to teaching writing this year. With the comments from those of you WTMers who I've know from the beginning of the boards, I'm trusting in those comments about seeing great improvement in writing after beginning CW. I may go ahead and order a copy of Classical Composition Aesop for definitive comparison purposes. If anyone has a copy of either teacher's or student's books and want to sell them, contact ASAP! This is a giant step for our school. Having become acquainted with the progym approach years ago, it just seems so logical to to. To begin to get our teachers thinking along this line, I handed out an info sheet this week in a meeting with lower school teachers about what progym was and a brief scope and sequence. Next year, I will implement some form of progym in my middle school classes and hopefully success from this will allow an eager and easy transition to beginning progym in lower school. My head of school was in this meeting and told me later that he was blown away by the fact that I simply floated that idea. He said that the unfamiliar, big-word (!) terminology was enough to elicit a negative reaction, but he said all the teachers seemed to take it in stride and no one said anything. He said he thought he was the only one blown away. But he went on the say that after reading this brief fact sheet that progym made so much sense and sounded exactly like what we need to increase the writing skills of our students. What a great thing to hear from your head of school! I love the fact that he supports these moves toward classical education, but also supports all this in more than words only. That said, please watch out some time in June when I post a frantic "I need help" post regarding CW. I anticipate the need for great hand-holding and guidance! I plan to begin reading the CW board to help acquaint myself with the whole concept and process. Feel free to PM me (I'll get it through my e-mail) since I check these boards erratically. Thanks to all of you for such pearls of wisdom!

Agreed. I teach The Hobbit in my sixth grade class and most students LOVE it. However, when I get a student who "doesn't get it" or just doesn't like it, the reason is usually because they don't have the sufficient background knowledge to understand it. (My rule of thumb is when you don't like something, it's usually because you don't know how to do it well.) The vocabulary is rich and the sentence structure is advanced. Students not cultured into that higher thinking really don't like the book or "get it." Interestingly, my "I don't get / like it" students are new students who have not started with us from the beginning. That said, I would put it up for a few years and then get it out later maybe use as the book before reading The Lord of the Rings.

I'm thinking I might need to clean up the lists and Lulu it! :)

Thanks! Please keep comments coming!

Three years ago, I compiled rule-based spelling lists for all my middle school classes based on How to Teach Spelling. For four years, the students would cycle through the same spelling rules with a more difficult list each year. (Each week the students in all four grades were on the same rule with different words.) So far, it has been successful, but we are ready to drop the lists back a year or two now that the students have been "cultured" into our expectations and have succeeded well. The students already know the words on the lists; they are too easy. Throughout these past three years, I have provided the weekly list of 28 rule-based words (all the same rule each week) plus 8 challenge words (from the list of the 100 most commonly misspelled words). The students have excelled. Each week they must learn how to spell these words on their own. On Mondays when I introduce the new list, we talk about each word, noting the rule, making particular comments about why this word might be difficult to learn, etc. Their homework instructions have been to practice the first half of the list the first night. I have instructed them to spell the word aloud as they write it three times. That's all. No workbook. Just notebook paper. The only day we take much time in class is on Mondays with the new list and on Wednesdays for a practice test. For the practice test, I call out the word, they write it, then I slowly spell it aloud for them to check it. I've always felt that it hinder the student's focus on the spelling if they had to check the word themselves against the list. By checking orally, I can tell immediately who is having difficultly with what word. Often another student will offer some little trick to remembering how to spell that word that has been amazingly helpful. My point: I feel like this method is working well. The students are learning the words at the cost of only notebook paper and time at night for homework practice. In a meeting today, we (teachers) discussed spelling curriculum for next year. As our school's scope and sequence coordinator, curriculum decisions must come through me. (We are overhauling our entire academic scope and sequence and adopting curriculum in line with our developed S&S.) Today, the lower school teachers were rather vocal about changing the spelling approach for next year. They want a workbook. They do not want to use any spelling lists we have designed. My problem is this: I think the workbook approach tends to culture a lazy student and hinders his mind from focusing on the actual spelling word, plus the workbook approach works against developing writers. These teachers rationale was that the workbook gave the student practice. (I find this questionable just how much practice a student gets when he fills in the blank for two missing vowels in a word.) They also said that the student will still practice words at home. All this might be true and if the students learn the words, then it was successful. BUT, we have to also be cognizant of the monetary cost of these workbooks. The ones they want are $20 each and, of course, they are consumable. With a little effort on a one-time basis, we can provide the student a list on one sheet of copy paper. Plus, the workbook teacher edition is over $100. I would like to balance today's meeting conversation with your thoughts and suggestions. It's been many years since I've taught my own kids grammar stage spelling, so maybe I'm forgetting something. Also, I'd like some opinions regarding the book these teachers are suggesting: ACSI Purposeful Design Spelling 2, 3, 4, and 5. Your thoughts and comments are appreciated! Thanks!

Thanks!

Anita: I did buy the premium for Vol 1 and 2 for one year. Even though I have the books, I'll donate these new books to a needy student. Since I had so much trouble on Friday with a customer service rep, I didn't want to even go down that path of requesting the premium subscription without the books. THey were finally online after maintenance yesterday. And from what I understand, you can call them and ask for just the subscription without the books with a later child. And, I just got my online access. Haven't even been there yet. Excitied!

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Thanks, Janice. With the board glitches, I'm having an awful time posting this. For the third time, . . . and maybe this one's the charm! . . . I've had Mythology on my shelf for years and found a study guide after my own kiddos had gone through it. Since I'll be teaching this to a classroom, I've had to be careful about the price of the books. Just yesterday, I compared Hamilton's Mythology to her Tales of Gods and Heroes. Very little difference. I had found the Tales book for under $6 as compared to $10 for the Mythology. And I found another useful study guide. Now for the hard part of getting it all together! Thanks! And for those interested in the study guides, they are linked below. LitPlan: Tales of Gods and Heroes Mythology for Today: Edith Hamilton's Mythology

Since I can't get to my User Control Panel, I can't locate the thread I started earlier with questions regarding ALBH, so I'm having to start a new thread. I finally got the roadmap ordered online after they finished site maintenance, BUT when do you receive your username/password? Do they mail it to you? Thanks!

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Thanks, Lori! I'm a classroom teacher now, so I'm trying to get book purchase prices as low as I can for my students. The upside of using Butler's version is that Memoria Press has a student guide available now for both Iliad and Odyssey that uses Butler. This is my first time teaching these books to a classroom (who have had no intro to any classical lit) and I need all the help via guides as I can! Didn't have a problem with my own kids but a classroom full poses a whole new set of unique adventures! I love the sound and flow of the poetry and would love to use Fagles, Lattimore or Fitzgerald. Might just have to settle on Butler for now though. Any other thoughts appreciated! Thanks!

For those who are using this, were you able to order online or did you have to call in your order? I called the homeschool number yesterday with some questions and to order but was quickly disillusioned by the ineptness of the customer service representative. She didn't know anything. Period. I plan to order the teacher's premium for both volume 1 and 2 but I already have a copy of the books. I think those are included so I'll just donate to a needy student, I guess. Any help is appreciated! Thanks!

I'm stuck in a hard place. While I personally prefer Lattimore's or Fagle's translation of The Iliad, I'm up against the wall with having to use Samuel Butler's translation. Essentially, from what I gather, Butler has reshaped the poetry into prose. That's probably good for poetry-phobic teens, but I love the flow of the poetry. The reason that I'm in a hard place is price. I can find the Butler books for an extremely reasonable price (new $2.99) compared to Lattimore or Fagle's ($9+). Anyone with more knowledge of the Butler translation, please weigh in!! Thanks!

Quick question, Lisa. CW is available from Lulu for 20% off through May 16, so now is the time to get my stuff. What ages did you use this with? I will have 7th and 8th graders only of English next year so I can try all this out on them. The 8th grade group have good English skills, the 7th grade group doesn't. Lotsa questions: Which level would you suggest I begin with? Aesop, Homer, or Aesop and Homer combined? Do students just need the student workbook? Or do they also need the core book? Probably more questions to come. :) Thanks!

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Oh, my, Colleen! You have sure made me feel special! :) I can't believe anyone would be reading old posts of mine! I didn't even know they were still accessible. You'll have to share the link to the old site with me. If we make it to NS, I will do my best to meet you! How neat that would be!:) We will be driving and had planned to take the Cat from Bar Harbor, Maine but now understand that has been discontinued. :glare: Thanks for all that info. I'll have to digest it with a map. I just received my NovaScotia.com travel book in the mail today. I've got about three weeks of school left and then I'll dig in and do some planning. I'll probably be asking you some more lots of questions. Thanks so much for responding! Let's keep in touch. I'll pm you my e-mail address.

Such positive responses for Classical Writing that I will have to give it another look. I am concerned, though, at its price for a classroom but will have to look into that more. I have, in fact, a copy of CW on my shelf. It is actually from the first batch that came out years ago. But at the time, it was rather difficult to figure out even though I was familiar with a bit of progym. Maybe I just didn't try hard enough. I eventually used Composition in the Classical Tradition simply because it was easier to understand. I wonder what, if any, changes have been made between that initial book and the subsequent ones. Usually there are changes. I'm also concerned with actually beginning to implement. It's so much easier in a homeschool situation because the loss is less if the material (or teachers:)) is a flop. Further comments are welcome!

Any good ideas for logic stage? Thanks!

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Our summer trip to England is off for various reasons, but we're now thinking Nova Scotia (the place in all the world I want to visit before I die!). Since my classroom job prohibits the late September visit I would most like, what is the best time to visit NS between June and early August? Or does it matter? I'm also entertaining the possibility of taking a ferry (if possible) from NS to Newfoundland to visit L'Anse aux Meadows. Has anyone been there, even possibly arriving from Nova Scotia? Particular things I want to do: whale watch watch tide changes at Bay of Fundy visit Fort Louisbourgh lingering drive around the Cabot Trail Prince Edward Island drive-around PEI: Anne of Green Gables Thanks!