AAR & WWE

[bnwhitaker]

Would doing these two together be redundant?  

I'm not seeing in the samples that AAR has comprehension?  I also haven't seen that it has any narration or copywork in AAR?  I do know one is for reading and one is for writing, but I see some overlap also.

Just trying to make a decision. I want to just go with AAR and AAS... but I don't want to miss something by not doing a program like WWE.   

One more question I have is would AAR and/or AAS teach anything on grammar mechanics.  Just the basics like capitalization. punctuation marks...  I plan on doing IEW Fix It Grammar but not for a couple years.  I want him to understand how to write a sentence before then and Im not sure it looks like AAS or AAR teach any of that?   

Edited April 11, 2020 by bnwhitaker

[blendergal]

I can’t think of ANY overlaps between AAR and WWE. AAR does include some basic teaching on things like point of view, onomatopoeia, and synonyms/antonyms. There are also a few questions per story that focus on predicting outcomes or evaluating cause and effect. No narration, copywork, dictation, or grammar. AAR is just a truly great reading program.

AAS includes dictation and starting in level 3 (I think!) a section in each chapter called Writing Station where the student spells a few words and then uses them in an original sentence (or two). There is discussion of homophones, for sure. No narration or grammar teaching that I’ve encountered. Just a solid spelling program.

WWE focuses in on writing, using oral and then written narration, plus copywork and dictation. (For what it’s worth, the dictation has been WAY too hard for us at every level, so we just do AAS dictation. Actually, we’ve had a better experience with MP Intro to Comp than WWE. It’s similar but simpler.)

But even WWE doesn’t include grammar! You’d use FLL or something like Fix-It Grammar for that.

Hope those details help!

Edited April 12, 2020 by blendergal

[PeachyDoodle]

AAR is phonics only. AAS is spelling only. There is some overlap between the two, but they teach different skills (decoding vs. encoding). There is very little overlap with the skills taught in WWE.

AAS does include some dictation practice but it doesn't explicitly teach capitalization, punctuation, etc. The dictation is designed to practice spelling concepts.

We use all three (AAR, AAS, and WWE), as well as R&S for grammar. Or we did -- we have since finished AAR and now just read and discuss for literature. IME, none of these takes more than 20-30 minutes/day MAX, so it's not a real burden to do them all. WWE is designed for a four-day week, and we typically only do AAS 3x/week.