CW Homer users: I'm floundering!!

[Gini]

I just can't seem to "get" CW Homer. It's too vague for me..., yet. Would any of you ladies help me out here and give me an example of one of your week assignments so I can get an idea of what I'm supposed to do?

[Zelda]

There's an excellent message board set up by the authors. Have you tried looking for guidance there too? I found it very helpful for Aesop. We aren't to Homer yet so I can't give specific help. Good luck.

[Kate in Arabia]

Are you using the Student Workbook and/or Instructor Guide? We use both, honestly I think I would have trouble if I didn't have these holding my hand.

[Kfamily]

:grouphug:

 

I have just recently purchased Homer myself and I am glad we are still finishing up Writing Tales 2 so that I have time to really dig into this.

 

I recently asked a lot of questions about CW and really felt like it was hard finding others who used CW. I kept wondering where all the CW users were.:001_smile: This is definitely one program that I think support is sooo helpful to have. The CW message board is great but not that active.

 

I would love some tips and advice from those who have been there before too. I used the search function and did find some good information from this but as to the particulars for using Homer I can't help you very much yet. I am not confident that I will understand this better than many of the very smart ladies on this board but if I figure some of this out I will happily share.

 

Sorry this is not very helpful!

[siloam]

We too have not started yet. I wish I could be of more help.

 

Heather

[Kate in Arabia]

Oh, I wanted to add that we are in only in week 3 of Homer; I have gone through the entirety of the teacher guide/Student workbook A so I have some idea where we are going. Truly, it is laid out very clearly there (day 1 do this, day 2 do this, etc.) and for the most part we follow that. I have not read through the main book in its entirety. The guides give reference pages in the main book and I have read through those as I worked my way through them.

 

Don't know if my massive three weeks' experience is helpful, lol...

[HollyDay]

The ONLY thing that helped me was to go through the Core Book and lay out what I was supposed to do each day at what level. I had a notebook page for each day and each level. That was literally the only thing that helped me understand what I was supposed to do. Again, the authors are global thinkers (much like SWR) and I am such a linear thinker.

[siloam]

The ONLY thing that helped me was to go through the Core Book and lay out what I was supposed to do each day at what level. I had a notebook page for each day and each level. That was literally the only thing that helped me understand what I was supposed to do. Again, the authors are global thinkers (much like SWR) and I am such a linear thinker.

 

I wonder if someone else wrote Homer. Aesop was really clear to me, but I have already gotten totally lost in reading Homer. That might also be because I haven't had the time to really focus on it, LOL! But I have other things I read with noise around and I do just fine. SWR also gives me headaches. :001_huh:

 

Heather

 

[Alana in Canada]

Oh dear. I plan on doing Homer next year...but Aesop was such a struggle to implement (and of course not that hard to actually do!) that I question my wisdom in wanting to pursue it.

 

I've been looking at TWSS and wondering if we ought not to take that route.

[Jenny in Atl]

Homer is much like Aesops only broader, richer. This is how we did it...

 

Day one we would read the passage, dd is already great at narration, so we skipped that and instead did dictation.

 

Day two we would go over the lesson in the Core manual (example week one is diagraming & phrases and clauses). The do the sentence exercises from the passage.

 

Day three was copy work.

 

Day four was to rewrite the passage in your (student's) own words.

 

And finally, day five was to edit and write the final draft.

 

As you go, Homer builds slowly adding dividing the narrative into scenes, parsing, diagraming, and vocabulary analysis. Taking time to read the core manual really helps to see the big picture. It can seem vague and overwhelming at times, but it's well worth it. We are already on week five of Homer B and really enjoying it. Patricia in WA can attest to my pure terror when I restarted Homer last year w/o the teacher's manual. Thankfully I bought a copy. After a while I did not need it, but it really helped me navigate the core manual and see the road ahead. I also highly recommend the Classical Writing message boards.

 

hths!

[Janice in NJ]

The workbooks really do help. It really does make it easier to see how the program's trees fit together to make a beautiful forest. :001_smile:

 

I'm no expert! By any means! But this is how I've made sense of the book....

 

Do you have your core book?

Have you marked with post-it-type flags the overview pages? (It might even make sense to copy them and spread them out on the table as you flip through the book. That way you can see things as you flip along.)

 

I'm not sure if the page numbers have changed at all, but in my core book, the program is roughly laid out on pages 21 & 22. Now please keep in mind that this chart is designed to assist the parent who ISN'T going to use the workbooks OR the models suggested but wants to use the program along with material that they are studying in history or the sciences. That chart in the core book shows you how to select appropriate narrative models to use, but it also roughly lays out CW Homer's plan for teaching a child how to retell, summarize, or expand a fiction or nonfiction narrative. This is the planned progression from short single-scene stories to longer multi-scene stories that require the child to wisely choose what info and details he can/needs to include.

 

Homer is modeled on a two-writing-sessions-per-day for four-days-a-week model. The program is set up for one "Analysis and Imitation" session per day and one "Writing" session per day.

 

Four days of work in Analysis and Imitation (A&I).

And four days of work on a Writing Project (WP).

Analysis & Imitation First:

 

Pages 23 - 273 of your core manual cover that first "Analysis" section.

 

Day One involves the reading of the narrative that you are going to imitate in that week's writing project. For those of us who THOUGHT that we knew how to read, there is a handy chart on page 25 that outlines the 10 skills, levels of READING-and-thinking-about-narrative-story skills, that Day One Analysis and Imitation cover.

The next page (pg 26) gives more info on the goals - the targets that you are going to shoot for - target that help your kids become better readers - moving them in the direction of learning to think like authors. It's a bit like dissecting a story. :001_smile: Make sense? The rest of the "Day One" pages through page 75 break those ten skill level steps down into lessons that can be taught and then practiced with subsequent lessons until they are mastered. Lesson by lesson; skill upon skill.

 

Skills are folded in and then built upon with this program. You never drop anything; you use your foundation to build the next step.

 

After you complete the A&I section for Day one, you move into the writing project. Skill levels should coincide (If you are working on Day One Skill level 4 then you should be working on a level 4 writing project.) Day One A&I goes with Day 1 WP work.

 

Day Two is about words for Analysis and Imitation.

Overview chart for A&I for this "day" is on page 78. If you use the Harvey's Program I would suggest that you pick up the CW workbooks; they lay everything out. If you want to use your own program that second column is going to be useful to you. You need to TEACH these grammar skills during those skill levels listed because....... if you look on page 80, you can see when the the CW program is going to put those grammar skills to work. More about that in the pages for the rest of day two: Pages 76 - 169 help you help your kids explore the world of words. Skill level by skill level. Layering as you go. Analysis & Imitation.

 

Day Three is about Sentences. Page 171 gives you a chart that shows you the ten skill levels that your child will progress through as they learn how to manipulate sentence parts to create the desired effect.

 

And Day Four - All about building paragraphs. The plan is on age 251 and the chart on page 252. Once again you will see an overview of the skills levels.

 

The final part of the book is about that writing project that you started on day one after day one's analysis and imitation work. Putting the analysis and imitation knowledge to work in the child's weekly writing project is the goal. The chart outlining the first four writing projects is found on pg 280.

 

So you just work through the five parts - ONE skill level at a time.

 

Analysis & Imitation:

Day One: Reading & Understanding Narratives

Day Two: Working with Words

Day Three: Working with Sentences

Day Four: Working with Paragraphs

 

Writing Project:

Four days of work folding in the work in reading, grammar, sentence formation, and paragraph development.

 

Better? Have I made it worse? Boy I hope I haven't told any LIES! I could very well be misunderstanding LOTS of aspects of this program. But this is how I've understood it and used it. :001_smile:

 

Copying those charts really helped me... and that was before the workbooks. The workbooks really do make each week's goal clearer, and they make it easier to see the skill levels in overview format. :001_smile:

 

Have fun!

 

Peace,

Janice

 

Enjoy your little people

Enjoy your journey

 

P.S. OH - and please forgive allllll of the typing/writing errors. I've written and then re-written and don't have time to re-read. BIG mistake when posting about writing, but I'm out of board-time. Sorry for alllll of the errors! :-)