Hey guys, We tried WWE1 in midsummer and DD6 was too poor in her reading comprehension to begin the program. The reading selections were too difficult. Well, we've been working for several months on reading comprehension and I tried the first narration exercise in WWE1 this morning. I think she might be ready to begin. She didn't get all the answers correct but she got enough right that I could tell she had some level of understanding. Do any WWE experts have any advice as to whether she's ready? I've posted her answers below: Reading selection was Little House in the Big Woods by L.I. Wilder Questions- 1. How many years ago does this story happen? WWE Answer: This story happens sixty years ago. Grace's answer: 90 years ago? No, 18. I don't know... 2. Where did the little girl live? WWE Answer: She lived in Wisconsin or in the big woods of Wisconsin. Grace's answer: In a little cottage in the big woods. I asked her if she remembered what state and she said they did not mention the state. 3. If a man went north for a whole month what would he find? WWE answer: He would find more woods. Grace's answer: North America? 4. There were no roads in the big woods. Can you remember two other things that the big woods did not have? WWE Answer: There were no houses. There were no people. Grace's Answer: No people. 5. Who did live among the trees? WWE Answer: Wild animals lived among the trees. Grace's Answer: The little girl and wild animals. I know she didn't answer in complete sentences, but do you think she got enough of the answers close enough that we could start the program?

My DD likes to have a folder in her school room where I put worksheets and workbooks for her to do for her "homework." This entails a line up of dolls and Grace having a good old time playing school- it's not really academic in nature. I download a lot of stuff from the internet, make different handwriting pages and things like that. Here are some links. If you want real workbooks have you tried any Miquon, Evan Moor or Delivering the Early Learner? I think once they get to six years old or so they start to work on different levels in different subjects and it will be hard to find one book that does it all... What about those Dover Historical Coloring books? Anyway, here is a link to a website where you can print out free language arts pages: http://www.sfreading.com/resources/ghb.html and here's another good general one: http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/1st-comprehension.html Good luck- and if you do find a good comprehensive book can you come back and list it?

:lurk5::lurk5: My daughter has auditory processing issues as well. We use Phonics Road and this year it's just spelling, but I wonder how things will go as time goes by... I look forward to hearing the responses.

I kept hearing people say their children didn't like the pages in Math Mammoth and I couldn't help but wonder if color could be a factor, so I printed ours out in color on our regular printer. It wasn't cheap but it wasn't what it could cost at Office Max either. I figured we'd use about a whole color cartridge, which is 30.00, but we didn't use anywhere near that much. I'm not sure how much it cost because the cartridge did last a lot longer so I can't say for sure, but I know my daughter doesn't complain about the pages or the layout. I have just put the pages in a file in the right order. I go get the next page when we need it, then when she's done with the page I hole punch it and put it in a very large binder that holds her MM and MUS pages.

I just reread and saw that your son is 8 (see, my reading comprehension isn't that great either, LOL).

How old is your son? My daughter is six and she still can't do WWE 1. She doesn't have the skills to hear and understand the selections yet. We're working on summarizing and narrating easier books that she selects, and working our way up to WWE 1 hopefully by the end of this year. I have a dream to do Ambleside with her once she gets better at comprehension. As for now, we use picture books that somewhat relate to the subject at hand. One person gave me good advice to preread the stories and review any unfamiliar words prior to reading it to them... that has helped. I haven't been doing this long at all (we're only into first grade), but one thing I have learned is that it's better to just start where your child is at rather than pushing them to be where they should be... Trying to make them do things they aren't ready for, even if that's where they should be according to grade level, will just make lose confidence in themselves. They'll get where you want them to go faster if you start where they can feel confident and build up rather than starting where they should be and trying to tug them along.

I second trying out the "does the vowel say its name" advice. That's what worked for us.

Definitely check the special needs board, but I remember when I was looking into it the consensus seemed to be that All About Spelling was better for dyslexia than Phonics Road. I got Phonics Road anyway after doing some Webster's Speller and Blend Phonics from ElizabethB's site, but I strongly considered AAS. We did fear my daughter might have issues with dyslexia because she has auditory processing delays and a family history, but she turned out just fine with the route we took... In fact, the phonograms we learned actually helped her speech because she knows what the word SHOULD sound like even if she didn't hear it properly. Knowing what a word should sound like helps her hear it better AND speak it better. But I'm no expert by any means so definitely see what other people say and check the special needs board.

Yeah, there's a booklist in the files section on the yahoo group, as well as a list of necessary supplies.

sorry... i didn't connect that she meant the anger was an issue for the kids, not the parent.

I third the Evan Moor daily science. It gets in those five dollar words you will need for the testing. I've gone over the ITBS samples and it seems almost like they are trying to find out if your kid knows the right words more than if they understand the material. So we use Evan Moore Daily Science for testing prep and BFSU for our real science.

I've been working on this with my daughter by having her narrate one paragraph at a time of her favorite books. I tried WWE but the passages are just too much for her to handle- her comprehension is just not at that level yet. Sooo... whatever fun book (Little Golden Book or some other such thing) she wants to pick we stop on each page or paragraph and she summarizes what happened. At the end of the book I ask her to summarize the whole book. We do this daily and try to make it fun. If she stumbles I ask silly questions that are obviously not right so she can say "no, it was like this..." When she gets to the point where she can regularly summarize a Little Golden Book with success we will probably move into Aesop's Fables and then WWE 1. We did Aesop's Fables for a while but she got so much more excited about the whole idea when I started letting her pick her own books, so that's what we're doing until she gets better footing. Also, sometimes she has me do a narration for fun and it gives her an example of what she needs to be doing too... I think if they can do a successful narration it meets the criteria for improved reading comprehension.

The words seem inadequate but I wanted to say I'm sorry for your loss. The world is a hard place when we've lost someone we love, and it doesn't take any time at all to love a child with our whole hearts.

Since I've reached a decision on what we are doing this year I thought I'd post what we came up with: We ended up switching from RS B to MUS Alpha. My daughter really enjoys MUS and it's not terribly time consuming so she is able to do one MUS page a day and a page of Math Mammoth. I think we will continue to do it this way for the year so that we don't experience any of the gaps people have been speaking of... That was one thing that worried me about MUS- all this talk of gaps. So far Alpha is largely review of what Grace learned in RS A and the beginning of B. I think by the end of the year it moves into some new material but for right now she's speeding through it. We purchased the board game called Money Bags to avoid any issues with lack of money practice in MUS, and we play that a few times a week. One thing Grace really enjoys about MUS is that is has manipulatives- but only the ONE set rather than the multitude of items I usually pulled out for RS. She's named all the rods and has them talk to each other like friends, and even with all that extra playtime we can still get math done without her climbing the walls. I think Math Mammoth is a permanent curriculum at our house, and we'll probably stick with MUS too- it's still a little early to make that decision but it's working very well for right now and I really DON'T want to curriculum jump too much in math. I hope that using the two curriculums in combination will continue to work out, because it alleviates my fears about the drawbacks of each. In combination they cancel out the different concerns people have had for one or the other, and it's still taking less than half the time to do BOTH programs than it did to do RS alone.

That's so neat- we're doing the same thing with the card sections! Also, that is a huge relief to know they don't have to master those cards before starting back up. Thanks for sharing that info because I've been trying to decide whether to just start back up without her knowing them completely or to stay where we are at now.

It says to do five words a day, but we were not successful going over only five words in a day in our family. Maybe I didn't get the directions quite right as far as how to review the words for the week, but my DD needs more time and review than five words per day. I can't give her five new words on Thursday and have her remember them on Friday for a test- or any of the other days for that matter, LOL. My DD needs a bit more review than that. She can comfortably do 10 words per day, which allows for more review, by doing 2 words between each subject on the whiteboard throughout the school day. I keep a card file of the words and if she gets a word without help 3 days in a row I take that card out of the "To Learn" section and put it in the "Review" section. Every other week I'll pull a couple of Review section cards out and if she gets them right I put them in the "Completed Section." My blog gives more detail for how we do it. I know it's not the "right" way, but this way works well for wiggly daughter's needs. ***But to the OP- please don't think I was saying you needed to do ten words per day- I was just telling you how we did it at our house to make it easier for us. http://givingourbest.blogspot.com/search/label/Phonics%20Road

You don't have to introduce those until week 13 and 14. You have plenty of time. Don't do it now because it could push you over the edge, LOL. I was just saying that when we got to week 13 I saw that was what we were supposed to do and it took a month rather than 2 weeks. In your Foreman's manual there is a section with spelling lists, behind the DVD section. The rule tunes are there and then the spelling lists. If you flip to Week 13 and 14 you will see where the last set of phonograms are introduced. Also, I got my set used so I don't know if this is supposed to be in there and just wasn't in mine, but you can print out a scope and sequence from her website and it will give you a good idea of the curriculum timeline.

I thought that same thing when we first started. We got through week 12 last year in Kindergarten. We spent the earlier portion of the year doing Webster's and Blend Phonics and took PR 1 VERY slowly. I remember thinking often in those first weeks that PR was overwhelming, but once we got through the initial flurry of learning ALL those phonograms and getting through those first building codes things were much easier. I think that initially PR takes up a lot of brain power, but as you get used to it things (the markings, the phonograms, the rule tunes) get easier. I'm not positive though because we're not much further ahead of you and I've modified how we use it so it may seem easier to me than it really is, LOL. We're starting our first "real" week next week, after taking these last few weeks to retest all her words and make sure she still knows them. I have also taken a month to teach the last section of phonograms. I do not think there is any way my child could have learned them all in two weeks as instructed in the manual. I wondered if maybe she meant they were to be reviewed but not memorized? I don't know, but we've been learning them for a month and she STILL has trouble with two particular groups of phonograms (the ci,ti,si, sh group and the kn,gn thing). I was thinking that once my DD had the phonograms memorized well we would start reviewing the cards only 3 times per week, then down to two and then down to once a week unless she starts to have trouble. That will save a bit of time and as long as we don't lose ground it doesn't hurt anything. I also do not do 20 words per week. Maybe we will as she gets older and can do it faster but right now we do ten words a day and I use a modified system to keep track. Here's a link to how I use it: http://givingourbest.blogspot.com/2011/05/phonics-road-to-reading-writing-and.html As far as the stories... If you are using the pathway readers as it says in your siggy, I would just wait until the readers are brought up in the program rather than trying to do them early. It's dragging out your day and you don't need them right now. Hey, if it makes you feel any better- don't write "Week Whatever" at the top of the test paper. Write "List 5" so you don't feel behind. It's better to go slowly and really learn it than rush to get through and realize it's not being retained. I hope that helped!

Hey, you do what you gotta do right, LOL. She did like the "doll" and drug it all over town. She even strapped it into carseats for rides in the car. She just continued to hate the abacus part.

I had the same issue as you... I bought Righstart B and ended up switching to MUS and MM this year after two weeks of B lessons. I drug myself through last year trying to cheerlead myself the whole way and I just couldn't take it again this year. I dreaded starting it again and my DD fussed and argued about it. I really watched to see what the problem was, and I realized that my DD doesn't like all the transitions in the lessons. It's too many different activities in one session and transitioning her through them all just caused frustration and arguments. She also hates the abacus. At one point I glued a doll head and arms to it and named it Ashley Abacus and she still hated it. I'm not sure if my frustration with it was in response to her inability to transition or if it was something else, but I do know that by the time we got through the "review" section every day I often felt like that was enough math for one day but there was always about 20-30 minutes more before we were done. I never felt like it was OK to just stop after 20 minutes like everyone said. At the rate we went that would be 15 minutes of review and only 5 minutes of lesson. I know it's not SUPPOSED to take that long but, like I said, my DD drags her feet. Now she can do a MUS lesson and 1.5 pages of MM every day in under 20 minutes with good comprehension of the topics, which I think is an appropriate amount of time for first grade. I know RS is supposed to be the best foundation, but my relationship with her is better because I'm not hounding her to finish a lesson. It's not that RS is not a good program- I know it's great and my DD was what I consider to be pretty advanced in her mathematical ability as a result of level A, but I just couldn't push through it anymore. So don't feel bad. I'm in the same boat- I really WANTED to like it, I understood it's benefits and WISH I could deal with it, but I can't. Make sure you aren't in that position before you go and purchase level B, LOL, or you might have an expensive program gathering dust on your shelves like I do...

:iagree: That's very informative!!!! Thanks!

This is great! My DD and I were at the library the other day and I couldn't find one book to explain the concept. Thanks so much for sharing it!

Do you feel like you can still be an involved teacher in their learning with the videos? I was thinking of trying this out but I don't want to let go of my involvement in the learning process. We finally let go of the dream that Rightstart was for us so I'm floundering a bit on what to do now. I'm either going to try MUS or just stick with Math Mammoth for the first grade year. I REALLY want my DD to understand place value backwards, forwards and inside out, KWIM? Do you feel MUS is good at accomplishing that? She LOVED the sample lesson about Decimal Street and it seemed to be very good at helping her understand. I also need something very incremental and without huge leaps because she is a perfectionist who shuts down and screams she is a failure if she can't understand something. For example, yesterday she threw her Math Mammoth on the floor crying- with tears- that she was a failure because she tried to "play school" by herself with some random page halfway through the book and didn't understand the directions. She likes Math Mammoth (although I think I will have to hide it when it's not school time, LOL) so we may just stick with that, but I was also leaning toward trying MUS. My issue is that right now she says she wants to be an engineer like her dad, so I feel an enormous pressure to make sure I give her the best mathematical foundation that I can with my nonmathy brain. I'm not saying I don't understand first grade math, just that I don't really know how to pick the right curriculum, LOL. I don't know what I'm looking at when I try to evaluate these things.

:lol::lol: Thanks for sharing that!

:lurk5: Sad to popcorn my own post, but I'm hoping more people will answer, LOL...