MCT, Kilgallon, Bravewriter, WWE users, scheduling question???

[babygemma]

Those of you who are using WWE, Bravewriter Aarow, Kilgallon's Sentence Composing, and MCT Grammar Town/Paragraph Town, could you please share how you schedule them daily, what must be done simultaneously, what must be done/completed first before the other, and also average time spent on each item since they all work on different skills? Do you do Grammar Town first before starting Paragraph Town? This is for a rising 5th grader boy. I'm also going to attempt to use Cesar's English for vocabulary.

 

Thank you as always for your wonderful wisdom.

[Crimson Wife]

I would definitely do Grammar Town before attempting Paragraph Town or Killgallon's Sentence Composing. PT assumes that the student has completed GT and IMHO the student will get more out of Killgallon after becoming familiar with the grammar in GT.

 

WWE and BW work on separate skills, so those can be started any time.

 

I have a "loop" schedule for the various LA components that my DD is doing to make sure that we get to everything on a regular basis.

[abbeyej]

Well, for MCT (and this applies pretty much at any level):

Begin with the grammar book, and work through it relatively quickly (2-4 weeks, roughly).

Then add in Practice, which will give you roughly 3 sentences to analyze per week for the rest of the year.

At this point you also add in the vocabulary, writing, and poetics books, working a little on each each week.

 

For WWE, do one lesson per day, 4 days per week. You'll alternate between copywork or dictation exercises and narration exercises.

 

Killgallon works just on sentence-writing, with a little discussion of grammar as you go. You could fit it in at any time. It could be used as a short, intensive course between other materials (say, as a break from WWE), or in small bits each week over a longer period of time.

 

I haven't used Bravewriter.

 

I probably wouldn't use MCT writing, Killgallon, WWE, and Bravewriter all at once. That's a *lot* of writing, and while the approaches are different, there's still an awful lot of overlap. I'd probably stick to 2 at once (maybe three if two of them are MCT and Killgallon). On the other hand, I'd be willing to include a more traditional grammar resource, at least occasionally.

[Capt_Uhura]

We did WWE 4 days/ week. You start w/ MCT Grammar Town and complete it in the first 4-6 weeks. After that, you add in Practice Town, 1 sentence/dayx4days. I think we did it 4days/week. You can then add in the Poetry, vocabulary. Poetry we did 2x/week. MCT CE1 we did 3days/week. I think we still have a few lessons to finish up this year from MCT CE1. When you're finished MCT GT, you then can start Sentence COmposing. My son did that daily, about 4x/week. You'd also be doing MCT paragraph Town. We started PT after GT in October and didn't get to any writing for a month or more. If I recall, the writing kicks in once you're through reading the book. Then you start the teacher resource section. I think the writing started about lesson 10??? At that time, I felt like my son (or more so I) needed to learn more about good paragraphs and I needed to learn more about teaching writing....so we stopped PT and did Paragraph Writing Made Easy and we were also doing WWS beta test. I think if you're doing MCT PT to it's fullest, you'll have to juggle that w/ WWE unless you have an enthusiastic writer. We'll be finishing up PT this year and doing WWS.

 

Bravewriter - it depends on what elements you're incorporating. We did Tuesday Tea Time. We would do MCT POetry and then each kid would pick a poem to read aloud while we had snacks. If you're doing Friday Freewrites, you can certainly keep up w/ that as you won't have MCT Practice TOwn or SC or WWE on Friday. When you pick a freewrite to polish, you'll have to adjust that day for WWE/MCT PT. If you're doing a Bravewriter Arrow, on the days you have dictation, you wouldn't do WWE dictation.

 

I just realized that I modified WWE4. Instead of writing just his first one or two sentences, I had him write his entire narration b/c he was capable. He started doing that on his own and I just never stopped him. We weren't doing a lot of other writing in the content areas so I let him keep doing that. :tongue_smilie: SO if you're doing WWE4 as written, WWE would be less writing than we were doing.

[Create Your Ritual]

Capt_Uhura, are you using anything else for grammar after GT? Or did you just fill in with Sentence Composing during that time frame? I am doing all of MCT Town this year. I don't plan on doing many of the writing assignments in it, but we will go through all of the books and some of the exercises in the back. After I was done with GT I was thinking of moving into ALL for both kids. My ds8 is right there with dd10 with regards to grammar, so it seemed like I might as well just teach it to both and keep them at the same level if I could.

Edited August 14, 2011 by SaDonna

[Capt_Uhura]

No we didn't use anything else for grammar after GT except Practice Town. We did diagram those sentences. Yes, we just filled in w/ SC. This year we'll be do ALL. I think there will be enough knew stuff in it to justify the purchase (verb conjugation, trouble words, dictionary skills, thesaurus skills, etc). I toyed w/ the idea of doing the next level up MCT grammar as DS11 is solid on it and there is only a page of new material at the Voyage level that I've seen but I decided to use ALL instead.

 

My DS8 has done MCT Island, MCT TOwn level. He didn't do any of the writing in PT. He'll do that in a year. He is mostly solid on grammar but has a bit of trouble w/ participles and gerunds and diagramming those. He is doing Grammar Voyage with us but I will not have him do Practice Voyage. DS8 is a perfectionist. Towards the end of Practice Town when he would miss one thing (usually a verbal) he'd melt down. I'm going to write sentences on the level of Practice Town for him this year and save Practice Voyage for later. DS8 will also be doing FLL4. He won't need a year for it b/c he's solid on it until lesson 60s+ but due to his perfectionism, I think it's enough of a mix of some new things (verb conjugation, tenses) and review to build his confidence yet not feed his perfectionism.

[Create Your Ritual]

Yes, I think I have almost the same thing going on here. I am worried that ds8 might get overwhelmed with some of the grammar, but we can slow down then. He really enjoyed GI last year and the PI sentences. He loved being the first to get the sentences done. ;-) Lots of competition going on in this house. ha

 

So you thought that PI and GI prepared your dc enough to move into sentence composing and all its terminology? All right .. I will leave you alone for now. ha You are busy!

[Capt_Uhura]

No my boys had completed Grammar Town BEFORE moving into SC. Island would not be enough. We also did a bit in Image Grammar as well which helped w/ appositives, absolutes, and participles.

[LisaKinVA]

I scheduled mine a little differently. We are doing GTown all the way through first, then doing:

 

Practice Town (3 sentences, one from each section) 2x/week

Killgallon (small bites) 2x/week with Practice Town

CE 2x/week

Paragraph Town 2/week (with CE). We aren't doing a lot of the writing assignments, and will instead use Killgallon if I want to add something more here.

Poetry on Fridays... nothing else.

 

I will be doing reinforcement/diagramming with Abeka after we finish Practice Town, and filling in more as we finish other parts of MCT. We are not doing any of Abeka's writing assignments.

[babygemma]

what's image grammar, weren't those things you mentioned in image covered in the mct book? and this is all prep work for kilgallon's sentence composing?

[Capt_Uhura]

I think it was all in MCT Town level except for absolutes. You don't need Image Grammar. It's a nice little book, a bit pricy, that's MCTish. It gives you the love, the why, uses real literature to give examples. There are even workbooks to go w/ it but you wouldn't use that and SC. It would be too much. I just enjoyed reading Image Grammar for my own knowledge.

[babygemma]

crimson wife, can you share with us your "loop" schedule? thx.

[babygemma]

is it because MCT and Kilgallon are similar to each other?

[Crimson Wife]

is it because MCT and Kilgallon are similar to each other?

 

They have a similar "vibe" in that both draw heavily on examples from literature. They work on different skills, however. MCT is more focused on identifying the various parts of speech, phrases, and clauses. Killgallon is more applied grammar/sentence writing. To me, the two programs are complementary.

 

I alternate MCT and Killgallon because there are fairly big jumps in challenge level between "island", "town", and "voyage". Not so much the grammar but definitely in the writing portion.

[Crimson Wife]

crimson wife, can you share with us your "loop" schedule? thx.

 

Right now, the loop includes Killgallon's Grammar for Middle School (listed twice), copywork & dictation using ideas from WWE and Bravewriter (again listed twice), MCT's Caesar's English 2 for vocab, and Figuratively Speaking for learning literary terms. She's almost done with CE2, and at that point, I'm planning on picking back up Spelling Power for a bit (it got shelved last spring when I decided to really focus on getting her to learn cursive).

 

On Fridays regardless of where we are in the loop, I always have her diagram a sentence to keep her refreshed on diagramming. Right now, I'm getting those sentences from MCT's Practice Town, but she's almost finished with all the challenging ones from that book, so soon I'll switch over to ones selected from Killgallon's Story Grammar.

 

The plan was to use Noden's Image Grammar after DD finishes Killgallon Grammar for Middle School, but it's looking like I won't be able to order it through our virtual charter until 2nd semester. I did find a cheap copy of The Art of Styling Sentences by Longknife & Sullivan and I'm hoping that will fit the bill.

 

At some point (maybe the 2012-2013 school year), I want to do a quick refresher of MCT's Paragraph Town, and then use the rest of the "voyage" level books.

[babygemma]

crimson, i sent you a pm.

[babygemma]

crimson, how often do you rotate the materials in the loop? weekly, monthly?

[babygemma]

can't we start vocabulary (cesar's english) at anytime before starting or finishing grammar town and/or practice book? i read that ce could be used as a stand alone program.

[Capt_Uhura]

Yes you can start CE1 anytime. I like starting it in the beginning so that you have studied the words before you come to them in the practice books.

[Crimson Wife]

crimson, how often do you rotate the materials in the loop? weekly, monthly?

 

I start with whatever's at the top of the list and have my DD work through for roughly an hour. Some days it's slightly more, some days slightly less. Usually she gets to one short thing (like dictation/copywork) and one longer thing per day.