Anyone heard of Word Within The Word or Magic Lens?

[chessrascal]

Hello! My friend just told me about a curriculum called "Word Within The Word" vocab. program and "Magic Lens" Grammar Program. There's also a Poetry program and they all inter-connect. These look great, but I'd love to hear from someone who's used them. Here's the link if anyone wants to check it out: http://www.rfwp.com/series4.htm. Check out what the author - Michael Clay Thompson says. I was considering Analytical Grammar and was a little lost at where to go with my 6th and 8th grader on Language Arts, but this looks very good and very Classical! What do you think?

[Kareni]

I've seen his works discussed several times on this board. I typed Clay Thompson into the search feature and got the following:

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/search.php?searchid=216084

 

Regards,

Kareni

[Colleen in SEVA]

I haven't used the WWW/TML level of MCT's stuff yet, but I recently attended a workshop he gave on HOW to implement it, and that is definitely my plan for when Blue is older.

 

These were the first books in the whole language arts series that he wrote. At the time, he was teaching middle school and read somewhere that if students knew the most common 100 Latin/Greek stems, they could decipher the meaning of 5,000 (sorry, forget exact number -- basically a LOT) academic words in literature, science, history. So he taught these to his kids in about a month and they begged for more. In the first book of WWW alone, the students learn 500 stems at a rate of 25 per week. That sounds like a lot, and overwhelming, but in the workshop he did a sample lesson and in the way he presented it he taught all 25 stems of one lesson in less than 5 minutes.

 

The Magic Lens is designed to be used alongside of WWW, there is some crossover between the two books. I don't know exactly what is covered in the grammar book as his grammar workshop focused on the lower level books.

 

Although you can use JUST the teacher's manuals at the lower levels, I think it would be beneficial to have the student books as well at the WWW/TML level. I haven't actually USED this level though, so I may be wrong.

 

I am super excited about this series, it will be a good fit for us. You may want to call RFWP and ask if they will be near you any time soon. When I called to ask if they were going to be at any exhibits they told me about MCT's workshop which ended up being very helpful.

 

Good luck in your decision, please let me know what you decide and how it goes!

[Carmen_and_Company]

I purchased level 1 & 2 for Taz last spring, but we really did not get into them, as he did quite well on the ACT English section that we thought it would be busy work. But, that's after having gone through Vocabulary for the . . .series since 10th grade.

 

I want to focus on the poetry series for a year or two, first. So, I may not begin WwW with Storm until 8th grade.

 

I know MelissaB and I mulled over using WwW with 5th graders this past fall. I decided not to, but I'm not sure what Melissa chose to do. You can pose a question to her regarding MCT's materials.