CLE LA enough?

[UnlikelyHomeschoolingMama]

Does anybody use CLE LA for all language arts?  Mainly....does anybody make it the only writing instruction starting in 4th grade and moving up?  I've been supplementing, but am wondering if it is necessary.   I think my DD is too busy and I'm trying to thin it out.  

 

Thanks!

 

[Insertcreativenamehere]

We add writing to it, but it is otherwise very thorough. 

[Storygirl]

We used it from grades four to eight and found we needed to supplement the writing. It also does not cover literature or reading (CLE has a separate reading program, which I recommend).

[Another Lynn]

I thought I read a post here recently that said the revised editions are including more writing instruction - does anyone have information about that?  

[SamanthaCarter]

We have an outside IEW class in addition to CLE - LA. For with grade there is an entire unit on writing (508 off the top of my head). I'm going to skip that, but if it weren't for the writing class, we'd be doing it. DS also is going though a one semester sentence diagramming book, but this is only because it's his first year of CLE and he knew no diagramming going in, which he needed to know to jump into CLE. 

[SamanthaCarter]

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Edited December 7, 2016 by SamanthaCarter

[Storygirl]

We used the Sunrise editions grades 5 through 7, plus part of English 1 (9th). As Samantha mentioned, one of the ten light units is a writing project. Because we were doing other writing, we didn't use those. I set them aside to do at some point, but we didn't get around to it, so I can't comment on the instruction provided.

 

But that light unit is only to be used for a couple of weeks of the school year. Once it is finished, there is no review of the material in the other light units. There is a creative writing supplementary book, which we did not use. We only used the light units themselves, and there was very little writing in them. Every once in awhile there would be a lesson that required the student to write something, but the instructions did not lead the student through the kind of pre-writing, writing, revising process that my daughter needed. I didn't find their approach effective or thorough enough.

 

If you do writing in one of your other subjects, such as history, and if your student is a natural writer who doesn't need a lot of direct instruction, you might find it sufficient, but it wasn't enough for our needs.

[mamamoose]

We have an outside IEW class in addition to CLE - LA. For with grade there is an entire unit on writing (508 off the top of my head). I'm going to skip that, but if it weren't for the writing class, we'd be doing it. DS also is going though a one semester sentence diagramming book, but this is only because it's his first year of CLE and he knew no diagramming going in, which he needed to know to jump into CLE.

What are you using for sentence diagramming?

[jer2911mom]

I feel like the grammar is very thorough, but we add other writing.  We do not do the creative writing book. It was too vague for us.  I really like BJU for writing in 3rd and 4th, and then CLE for grammar after that.  It is hard to find a program that is strong in both.  We have supplemented with Sonlight's Diamond Notes, Sonlight writing assignments, and Paragraph Writing Made Easy, which focused on key word outlines.  I am researching what writing we will add for next year.  For awhile this year, we were doing the entire CLE lesson, including the spelling/vocabulary, but we were already doing a separate spelling program and just using the CLE for extra vocabulary work.  We cut out the spelling/vocabulary work because we were having time issues as well, and that really helped.  We do the writing assignments in the CLE LUs if they seem worthwhile.  There are a few that seem a bit too trivial/picky, and we skip those.  If we use a complete writing program next year, we will likely skip all of the CLE writing assignments.

 

Hope this helps,

Kathy