MCT LA questions/ Lit Lessons through Tolkien

[4ofus]

If we've used Grammar Island, Town, Voyage...do we go to WWW1?

 

I'm trying to avoid an entire year of review...ready to move on to higher grammar than covered in Voyage.

 

Thanks.

 

 

Next, when I see mention of the Lit Lessons through Tolkien, is this referring to the class at G3? Or are there stand-alone materials?

 

Thanks again!

 

 

[Space station]

WWW1 is a huge leap up from CE 1 & 2, but it does review all the stems from CE 1 & 2 in the first few weeks.  Magic Lens also goes into more grammar depth than the previous levels, so while there is some review, there is definitely new material there.  The sentences in the practice book are harder.  Same with Poetry - it is a step up.  The upper level writing didn't work for us - not enough in the way of specific assignments.

HTH!

[prov31dc]

Agree w/Space station. We went through WWW1 in two years. If I remember correctly,stems are covered up to lesson 20,then the last 10 lessons are words. My boys liked rotating back and forth. Stems one week and some words another week. (took quite a bit of tweaking) We tried to structure WW1 more like Ceasar 2 which was highly effective. We enjoyed doing the practice sentences a lot! The writing portion didn't work for us as well. We added IEW Fix it to our routine as well.

 

This year we've completed half of WWW2 and are currently reviewing and re-testing. Since we learned most of the stems from WWW1 already, the format of the WWW2 is slightly different. There's one or two stems to learn per lesson with more new words. Learning these at a slower pace, has helped my boys to retain more. We learn the new stem on Monday along w/ half of the the new words, then Tuesday we review Monday's words and add on the second half of the words. On Tuesday we'll also do one or two of the additional exercises and keep moving along this way til Friday's test.

 

HTH2:)

[prov31dc]

Agree...we took two years to do WWW1 and tweaked it to follow the way Ceasar 2 was set up. My boys liked doing half of the stems w/3-4 words added to each lesson.

They also enjoyed doing the practice sentences. Since we took two years to finish,we would do one practice sentence a week and IEW's Fix it the other four days.

 

HTH2

[prov31dc]

Agree...we took two years to do WWW1 and tweaked it to follow the way Ceasar 2 was set up. My boys liked doing half of the stems w/3-4 words added to each lesson.

They also enjoyed doing the practice sentences. Since we took two years to finish,we would do one practice sentence a week and IEW's Fix it the other four days.

 

HTH2

[prov31dc]

Agree...we took two years to do WWW1 and tweaked it to follow the way Ceasar 2 was set up. My boys liked doing half of the stems w/3-4 words added to each lesson.

They also enjoyed doing the practice sentences. Since we took two years to finish,we would do one practice sentence a week and IEW's Fix it the other four days.

 

HTH2

[prov31dc]

Sorry for double post...some error appeared and it looked like my first reply didn't go through,thus the second shorter reply;)

[Lori D.]

Next, when I see mention of the Lit Lessons through Tolkien, is this referring to the class at G3? Or are there stand-alone materials?

 

I can only help with this question. I think when people on this board refer to Literary Lessons from the Lord of the Rings (LLftLotR), they are referring to the one-year study of Tolkien's trilogy by Amelia Harper and published through Home Scholar. The program is designed for homeschool or classroom use. So, yes LLftLotR is a stand-alone program that really is best-designed to be purchased and used by an individual student at home, with as much or as little parent oversight as works for each individual family.

 

LLftLotR is a one-year Literature study for grades 7-12 (best used in grades 7-9, or for older high school students who have never done formal Literature studies before), and is a very gentle first Literature course and intro to beginning literary analysis. There is no grammar or writing instruction in the program. There are a few suggested writing assignment ideas every so often, but no grading rubric. There are some vocabulary worksheets, and every so often there is a vocabulary quiz, but no learning about word roots or learning more about the vocabulary words.

 

The program covers every chapter of all 3 books of the Lord of the Rings (LotR) trilogy with chapter notes and a handful of discussion questions. It also has fill-in-the blank comprehension questions and vocabulary worksheets. It also has 12 units of tangential material (on topics such as: author background; linguistics; fantasy genre; epic conventions; poetry; and analysis of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight -- works that inspired Tolkien in writing LotR). The "meat" of the program is the chapter notes and the 12 units of material; the other fill-in-the-blank portions are useful for some students, and for others are just busywork.

 

program home page

program overview

table of contents

sample lesson

 

 

Not sure what G3 is -- is it this online class provider? If so, it looks like they use already-published homeschool Literature programs for many of their Literature offerings -- mostly Lightning Lit. programs from Hewitt Homeschooling, and LLftLotR from Home Scholar.

 

I would *guess* that an online class using LLftLotR would be a teacher scheduling the work and encouraging students to complete the work, maybe some live class discussion, and the teacher grading any writing assignments. I would guess the teacher would also bring the info from the 12 units into the class setting, and hopefully would add some of their own knowledge and expertise to that material.

 

Again, that is all something that can easily be done at home, with oversight by the parent, and some fun digging into additional resources -- check out this past thread for adding to LLftLotR: "Any serious Tolkien fans? A question about the history of LotR…" (esp. in posts #6, 18, 35, 38, 44, 47, 49). :)

 

Enjoy! Warmest regards, Lori D.