If you use Bravewriter The Arrow

[ByGrace3]

I am very excited to be getting started with BW in a few weeks. I did purchase back issues of the Arrow to help get started. I picked some we already planned to read this year because one of the main reasons I decided to do BW was I wanted to tie writing into across the curriculum.

 

However, as I am printing and organizing..most of the arrow guides I have, I don't have those books scheduled for a month..more like a week or two...and I could spread it out, but many are right on top (before or after) of another scheduled book that I have an arrow guide for. For example i have arrow guides for Johnny Tremain, Ben and Me, and The Cabin faced West which we are reading for history...but back to back.

 

So, how do you plan the arrow? Keep it separate from other studies? Read it over the course of a month? Read it and then just discuss it via the arrow over the month? Would love ideas of how it is being implemented. Thanks!

[NittanyJen]

We may not be idea Bravewriter users, but I can't plan my reading to exactly match that guide-- we have too much reading to do!  Much of it is stuff we have read before; I may invite the kids to quickly reread it during the month we work on it in The Arrow, or have it available in case they are inspired to reread it on their own.  

 

 

[Farrar]

Some of them are really short (like Ben and Me and The Cabin Faced West, for example) but most of them are books that take us about two weeks plus to get through.  I don't schedule them really.  I just do the copywork/dictation until it's done.  It usually goes a little past the time that we do the book, but not crazy past.  At least a couple of times, we skipped one passage.

 

If you read books aloud quicker than us, then I would say just read it some days and not others and have an unrelated read going at the same time.  We do this occasionally for other reasons.  And let it stretch out longer.  I tend to think that history connected read alouds don't have to be exactly timed though.  I mean, when we were doing the middle ages, we were still reading things aloud about medieval Europe when we had moved on to medieval rest of the world.  It doesn't have to correlate exactly.

[ByGrace3]

Thanks ladies! I think I am not going to stress about it-- just be sure to do the Arrow at least after we have read it...to be sure they are familiar with it at least. Next year I may try to plan it so we have one book for BW a month and space it better...but since this years history is already planned I don't want to mess with it too much! ;)