Jump to content

Menu

Yet another TOG/MFW question!!


LAmom
 Share

Recommended Posts

Hi, In looking at TOG 3-week samples online, I noticed that they DO have a M-F schedule written out for you. For example, Monday, read from this book ____ pages 20-25. This is the nice format that MFW has and I love. I was under the impression that TOG involved a lot of planning. With things written out like that, I don't have to sit in front of all the books for TOG and figure out how many pages a week I have to read.

 

What am I missing? Many say it involves lots of planning. I am talking LG and UG ages here. But now I find it done for me??? :confused: (It's a good thing!)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi, In looking at TOG 3-week samples online, I noticed that they DO have a M-F schedule written out for you. For example, Monday, read from this book ____ pages 20-25. This is the nice format that MFW has and I love. I was under the impression that TOG involved a lot of planning. With things written out like that, I don't have to sit in front of all the books for TOG and figure out how many pages a week I have to read.

 

What am I missing? Many say it involves lots of planning. I am talking LG and UG ages here. But now I find it done for me??? :confused: (It's a good thing!)

 

I think that is just a sample schedule. TOG only schedules weekly not daily. For me, that's not a big deal, though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh bummer. Is it hard to figure out reading books through and staying on schedule? Do you actually sit down then and plan out the week, day by day what pages you will read? Or do you set the goal of reading a certain book by a certain day?

 

You said they have weekly? So I would have some kind of time frame to work with? I haven't seen those on the 3-week samples yet. So, read SOTW chp 1-2 this week, kind of thing?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that is just a sample schedule. TOG only schedules weekly not daily. For me, that's not a big deal, though.

 

Like the OP I thought that ToG had a weekly schedule and was excited about it. Having to go through everything and figure out how to schedule for each child every week in addition to planning our other subjects made ToG overwhelming for me. There is so much there it is undoubtably very rich but it was alot of work. The other issue I had was that so many of the titles were pretty heavy reading/topics and that there is little to no support for any of the literature titles, for instance no readers/teachers guides for the literature. We tried ToG for one unit but it didn't work for us. YMMV.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh bummer. Is it hard to figure out reading books through and staying on schedule? Do you actually sit down then and plan out the week, day by day what pages you will read? Or do you set the goal of reading a certain book by a certain day?

 

You said they have weekly? So I would have some kind of time frame to work with? I haven't seen those on the 3-week samples yet. So, read SOTW chp 1-2 this week, kind of thing?

 

Yes it is set up weekly, so for us this week we will read SOTW Ch 35, the book Fine Print, and my DD will read Morning Star of the Reformation for history. We will be finishing up all their literature books this week for the end of our unit.

 

I haven't found the need to write things out into a daily schedule once I got into a rhythm, unless I want to be sure to do something on a particular day to coordinate an activity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with PP; you definitely get in a rhythm. It is broken down weekly and with little kids I find it soooo easy to schedule. We usually do the core reading and a narration on one day, and some in depth reading, mapwork, or project on the other. This is actually one of my (several;)) favorite things about TOG. I LIKE to pick and choose, make my own schedule, tweak, etc. - I know not everyone feels that way.

 

Right now is the easiest time to get started IMO. I can imagine that trying to schedule/learn TOG with a dialect, an upper grammar, and a lower grammar student would be a whole different animal. Doesn't mean that is the best choice for you, just that this is the easiest time to get your feet wet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Like the OP I thought that ToG had a weekly schedule and was excited about it. Having to go through everything and figure out how to schedule for each child every week in addition to planning our other subjects made ToG overwhelming for me. There is so much there it is undoubtably very rich but it was alot of work. The other issue I had was that so many of the titles were pretty heavy reading/topics and that there is little to no support for any of the literature titles, for instance no readers/teachers guides for the literature. We tried ToG for one unit but it didn't work for us. YMMV.

 

Yes, that's why I wrote for me. What makes it easy for me at this point is that I only have LG kids right now. It's really simple for LG. I don't even need to plan it out. We have set readint times then what we read is up to us.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes it is set up weekly, so for us this week we will read SOTW Ch 35, the book Fine Print, and my DD will read Morning Star of the Reformation for history. We will be finishing up all their literature books this week for the end of our unit.

 

I haven't found the need to write things out into a daily schedule once I got into a rhythm, unless I want to be sure to do something on a particular day to coordinate an activity.

 

:iagree: Yep. but I'm still new to TOG so take that with a grain of salt.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have LG and UG students. I do not plan out a daily reading schedule. Instead, for my UG student (who is doing 4th grade work), he knows that he has three days to do the reading and it is up to him what he reads and when as long as he completes it in time for discussion. He enjoys the reading and so it is not a problem.

 

Here is our typical weekly layout:

Mon.- Read

Tuesday- Read

Wed- Hands on activity/ Geography

Thurs.- Read

Fri- Literature worksheet and Oral discussion with mom (I use the UG evaluations as a springboard) or written narration

 

My UG student also does Quizlet.com for the vocabulary words from TOG a couple of times each week. He loves quizlet because he can race to beat his previous times.

 

For my LG 1st grade student, I will introduce on Mon (or whenever I squeeze in reading time with him) read the general info page for ALL levels and then read when I can throughout the week with him. He also participates in the geog and hands on time.

 

I do look through the units before we get there and have an idea of what I want to have the kids do for hands on and writing time, so there is "planning" with that. I did do MFW Adv. a couple of years ago and found that I ended up tweaking the schedule anyway so for me TOG works and it helps my son learn how to figure out what he needs to read each day.

 

I will say that I have thought about switching to HOD briefly because it plans out everything for you, but it wasn't TOG alone making me feel that way. I have enjoyed TOG very much (of course no curriculum is perfect). The thought of planning every subject for four children began to scare me, but I have worked through that and am sticking with TOG and will be adjusting other things instead.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For my LG student, we have history reading on one day, literature reading on another day, mapping on a third day, and a fourth day for activities. It is always the same day each week, so there is little to plan/prepare, except for choosing the activity (which we sometimes skip, especially in multi-week topics). I don't think it would be much different for UG.

 

I can certainly see where people would have a problem with planning for D & R students, though. It seems to me that TOG assumes a certain amount of independent scheduling and work is being done by this age, but that is not always going to be true for every student.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For my LG student, we have history reading on one day, literature reading on another day, mapping on a third day, and a fourth day for activities. It is always the same day each week, so there is little to plan/prepare, except for choosing the activity (which we sometimes skip, especially in multi-week topics). I don't think it would be much different for UG.

 

I can certainly see where people would have a problem with planning for D & R students, though. It seems to me that TOG assumes a certain amount of independent scheduling and work is being done by this age, but that is not always going to be true for every student.

 

I think my issue of having children with some exceptionalities worked into my struggles, plus having a 2nd and highly intelligent 5th grader (so trying to schedule both LG/UG and some D). I loved the content of everything, it was just overwhelming for me because each week I type up a daily assignment sheet for each child, and neither works well independently. I'm not bashing ToG, just stating why it didn't work for me last year. I may revisit it in the high school years because I did love the quality of the teaching notes and so forth.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...