MCT Island Lesson Plan?

[Mynyel]

Does anyone have one or know where to get one or :) can tell me how to go about it? I need clear and precise instruction as I am severely left brained :glare: and need things spelled out for me :) Thanks all!

 

Oh I looked in the Yahoo MCT group and there wasn't one for Island...only town and upper levels!

[Mom-ninja.]

:lurk5:

 

I'm like you. I need hand holding.

[Irishmommy]

I posted this same question on the yahoo group a few days ago and only got one response. It was helpful, as the lady said that she did different componets on different days, which I didn't think about; but I didn't get a full set schedule like I wanted. I was hoping to get one already set out like the ones for town. I guess I'll just wing it for a while until I have a chance to plan my own schedule. :confused:

[Matryoshka]

The thing about the Island level especially is that it's so free-flowing, and people are using it at different times...

 

There are people who start it in 3rd or 4th and get through it in about a year (that's about as intended). Then you do the grammar book first, and add in MotH, Building Language and Sentence and Practice Island when done. It's good to do at least a chunk of MotH before BL because the latter asks you to write poems. But when you're doing all three books, you'd alternate days - they're not meant to be done every book every day. One book a day is fine and will still get you done in a year easily. And about 4 sentences a week in Practice Island.

 

There are people who can't wait to start and start in on Grammar Island 1st or 2nd - many of them then use Island level over 2-3 years and just go with the flow. It's a big jump up to Town, especially for writing.

 

I wasn't even planning on using Island level with my younger dd - meant to only do Town with my older two. But then somehow we started with BL, had to stop and do MotH to figure out how to write a poem, then we did Grammar Island and now Practice Island, we've started on Sentence Island but not gotten very far, and Building Language still hasn't been finished. :tongue_smilie:

 

You know what? It's all good. :D

[Mom-ninja.]

My head is spinning.

[GoVanGogh]

The thing about the Island level especially is that it's so free-flowing, and people are using it at different times...

:iagree:

We are currently using Island level.

Some days we do quite a few pages. Other days we only do a page or two, as DS catches onto something and wants to discuss it for hours. I personally can't imagine using a lesson plan with this program, it is so free-flowing. Just go with it. :D

[annabanana1992]

Ok I will take a stab... this is what we do at the Island level...

 

We started with Grammar Island 4 days per week. It is like reading a chapter book, sort of. So I kind of looked at how much I thought I could cover in a week. I decided 1 week on each of the 4 parts because my kids had already had a good deal of grammar elsewhere. I then divided the page amounts for each part by 4 to get an idea of how much to read a day. I used this as a GUIDE only. Most days they wanted to read more because it is so much fun. There are some activities at the back of the TM that I used when we had covered that particular material. So we finished GI in about a month. Please recognize that my kids did not have mastery after a month. They merely had enough intro/review to continue with the other programs in Island. Concurrent with GI, we also started MOH. There is no real reason to schedule this. Just read until they look bored and pick up the next time. At the end of each chapter, there is a poetry writing exercise. Do that when you get to it. We also started BL at the same time as GI and MOH. We do one stem a week over two days. We just read it together and discuss. (We love the stem stories - sometimes we write on of our own on day 1) On the second day, we write a stem poem of our own and the simile.

 

After GI was complete, we began PI and SI. For PI, we do one sentence per day, 4 days per week. They try it first by themselves and then we go over it together. I even let them come up with their own "comment" which they love!

 

For SI, we read 4 days per week. We cover one chapter per week (so far). Again, I just broke the reading of the chapter over 4 days and used that as a guide each day. We begin each day with review and then start reading. There are writing activities at the back of the TM. We do one each of the 4 days.

 

Our schedule looks like this:

 

M - SI, PI, BL

T - SI, PI, MOH

W - SI, PI, BL

TH - SI, PI, MOH

 

We spend about 45 minutes-1 hour on MCT each day.

 

FWIW, there it is!

[annabanana1992]

hmmm....thread killer I am :001_smile:

[Irishmommy]

I have just begun writing my own schedule. I'll share when I get finished with it, I just have to have a starting/ending place or I'll flip around here and there and never finish anything. So, I started yesterday, just writing what we have already done in GI and then went to PI, SI and am currently on MOH and BL. Let you know when I finish it...:tongue_smilie:

[EKS]

I ordered two complete levels of the MCT materials and then promptly left them on the shelf for a year because I couldn't figure out how to implement them. I finally became so desperate that I just decided to wing it. For the Island level we spent about 4-6 weeks on Grammar Island. We read however much made sense each day with the idea being that it would be finished within about 6 weeks. Then we moved on to Sentence Island, where we spent another 4-6 weeks. Then we did Practice Island (one sentence each day, sometimes only three times per week). At the same time we did the poetry and vocabulary books. We recently finished the vocabulary book and will be finishing Practice Island in the next few weeks.

 

I am a total planner and doing it this way was completely counter to my nature. But it ended up working. It actually ended up working better than anything I've ever done in seven years of homeschooling.

[Irishmommy]

You know EKS, I seem to do well when I wing it too; but I am a planner as well. I find the thing that works BEST for me is if I have a plan to start with, then deviate anytime I want. I was a classroom teacher for 8 years and it seemed to work best for me then, too. So, I'm just taking the time to write down my plans and then that will just be my jumping off place. I guess what it all boils down to, is that there are days that I am too tired to think on my feet, so I need to have a schedule on those days to just tell me what to do. (I have a preK dd, and a 2yo ds, as well as my 3rd grader.)

[Jen in PA]

Like most of the other posters, we worked through Grammar Island for several weeks before beginning the other components. Now we do 2 sentences from Practice Island each day, and cycle through the rest. I looked ahead and decided how many lessons I thought each chapter should take us, and I just read that far each time. We do one chapter in Building Language per week, but the number of lessons I spend on chapters in SI and MoTH depends on how much is review and how in-depth we feel like going. It ends up being roughly:

 

Monday: PI, 1 chapter BL

Tuesday: PI, 1/2 chapter MoTH and lots of extra poems

Wednesday: co-op day

Thursday:PI, 1/3 - 1/2 chapter SI, one writing exercise from the back

Friday: PI, additional writing exercise on the concept from Thursday (and usually linked to dd's reading)