MCT Question

[RainbowSprinkles]

How strong would you consider the writing component of the program? Is it enough or do you supplement? We would start with Island, but I would like to hear about Town level too.

 

Thanks for any help :)

[kokotg]

DS9 is doing Town right now. He does all the writing assignments from Paragraph Town, and at this point in the year I sometimes have him repeat them two weeks in a row (with different topics). I also aim for dictation (from his literature reading) 3x a week and a 2-3 paragraph history summary once a week.

 

ETA: when he did Island last year, we did WWE at the same time. I think what we're doing now is similar to that workload; I'm just subbing in different readings for the dictation and narration.

[RainbowSprinkles]

DS9 is doing Town right now. He does all the writing assignments from Paragraph Town, and at this point in the year I sometimes have him repeat them two weeks in a row (with different topics). I also aim for dictation (from his literature reading) 3x a week and a 2-3 paragraph history summary once a week.

 

ETA: when he did Island last year, we did WWE at the same time. I think what we're doing now is similar to that workload; I'm just subbing in different readings for the dictation and narration.

 

So you do supplement the program with the dictation from literature and the history summaries?

[abbeyej]

So you do supplement the program with the dictation from literature and the history summaries?

 

I would think you would need to. The program does some "how to"s, but your student really needs the opportunities to apply those in various school writing throughout the week.

[kokotg]

So you do supplement the program with the dictation from literature and the history summaries?

 

right. Although I'd probably do those no matter what writing program I was using (well, I guess I wouldn't do more dictation if we were still doing WWE).

[Just Robyn]

My son is doing Island level this year. He is also doing WWE and various writing assignments from K12 LA, MBtP, Novel Thinking, Writing Skills. He does not do all writing assignemts from K12, MBtP etc. He will do all MCT assignments and all of WWE. Why do I supplement? I am not personally convinced that there is no merit to learning about the types of paragraphs in the grammar stage. My son is perfectly capable of writing a descriptive paragraph, how-to paragraph, friendly letter etc. I see no reason to delay it.

[kokotg]

...another thought: once you get to Town, many of the writing assignments can be applied to other subjects. For example, this week DS is supposed to write a two paragraph essay with one descriptive paragraph and one expository paragraph. I'm having him do that on a topic from his history reading. And it would be easy to "supplement" by duplicating the assignment multiple times...he could do it once for history and once for science if I wanted to have him write two short essays during the week. So I guess what I'm getting at is that the writing component of MCT can be fairly light and need supplementation, but it's easy to adapt it so that there's more writing, because the assignments are so open ended.

[RainbowSprinkles]

Thanks for all the replies, I think I'm going to go with Classical Writing since I don't want to have to supplement with any other writing curriculum. We will be doing written narrations in History though...

 

I do like the looks of the Poetry part and Vocabulary in MCT's curriculum. Would you say they can be used separately on their own or would they need to be part of the whole package?

[Just Robyn]

Thanks for all the replies, I think I'm going to go with Classical Writing since I don't want to have to supplement with any other writing curriculum. We will be doing written narrations in History though...

 

I do like the looks of the Poetry part and Vocabulary in MCT's curriculum. Would you say they can be used separately on their own or would they need to be part of the whole package?

 

With regard to Island level, IMO you could use each book on its own. The grammar and writing books complement each other. The writing book reinforces and builds upon the grammar book. Also, I do want to say that the writing assignments in Sentence Island are FUN! If your child enjoys writing at all I would recommend it (and maybe even if he doesn't enjoy it, but I don't have experience with that yet so I don't know). The whole Island series has inspired my ds to do more creative writing on his own. At this point I don't see MCT as something that needs to be supplemented. I see it as the creative, fun (while still deeply academic) supplement to our more standard choices.

 

Back to your original question though, at least for the first level (I wouldn't yet know about anything after that) you could use just the poetry and vocabulary.