ELTL vs LLATL?

[aeolianharp]

Hi, is anyone familiar with English Lessons Through Literature and Learning Lang Arts Through Literature? Can anyone share how they’re different? I’m very drawn to how integrated they are. My 4th grader is currently doing CAP Writing & Rhetoric - Fable along with Well-Ordered Language, and doing novel studies separately. Definitely nothing to complain about, but I love the idea of making everything more organic. 

[Lori D.]

LLATL is light. There are 36 lessons per level, so 1 lesson per week of 1 school year. Each week's lesson is broken down into 5 days, and each day has 2 workbook pages. There are 2-4 questions per workbook page; most are grammar-based. The elementary grade levels cover 4-5 books for the year, and quite a few of the books in these early levels are below typical grade reading level. There are very few questions about the literature, and generally they are comprehension questions, rather than thinking or discussion questions. (Although, JMO, most students are better off waiting until late middle school grades to start doing literature studies and literary analysis, so not digging into literature studies in grades 1-6 is not a problem -- again, JMO.)

Grade 4 (orange) <--- table of contents and sample pages; this level covers 5 books that are mostly at a grade 3-4 reading level:
The Boxcar Children (Warner)
Wilbur & Orville Wright: Young Fliers (Stevenson)
The Tale of Annabelle Hedgehog
Lawhead); Ben and Me (Lawson)
Sign of the Beaver (George)

Grade 5 (purple)  <--- table of contents and sample pages; this level covers 4 books that are mostly at a grade 4 reading level:
Farmer Boy (Ingalls)
The Trumpet of the Swan (White)
Number the Stars (Lowry)
Caddie Woodlawn (Brink)

When I tried to use the grade 3 and 4 level of LLATL MANY years back, I found that it was too light, even for my LA struggler, but even more, there was just NOT enough instruction for Spelling or Writing (his struggle areas). Also, the integrated LA approach did not work as the primary method of teaching all of the LA areas because it was not in-depth enough, AND because DSs' working levels did not match up nicely to the level of work in each LA topic. In several LA areas DSs were *ahead* of the LLATL instruction, in one area they were *at* grade level with LLATL, and for my struggler, he had remedial needs in Spelling and Writing that LLATL did not address.


No familiarity with ELTL (it came out years after DSs graduated 😉 ), but you can see samples of all levels from this FREE download through the Lulu website.

Just looking at the booklist, they use older books, that tend toward a higher reading level. For example:

Level C (Cultivating) yellow cover = intended for grade 3 or 4; many of these books are advanced for the *average* reader at that age:
Story of Dr. Doolittle (Lofting) -- gr. 3 reading level
Marvelous Land of Oz (Baum) -- gr. 4-5 reading level
Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare (Nesbit) -- gr. 6+ reading level
The Secret Garden (Burnett) -- gr. 5 reading level
The Princess and the Goblins (MacDonald) -- gr. 6+ reading level

Level D (Discerning) yellow cover = intended for grade 4 or 5; some of these books are advanced for the *average* reader at that age:
Black Beauty (Sewell) -- gr. 4 reading level
The Book of Dragons (Nesbitt) -- gr. 6 reading level
Heidi (Spryi) -- gr. 4 reading level
Ozma of Oz (Baum) -- gr. 4-5 reading level
Tanglewood Tales (Hawthorne) -- gr. 6+ reading level
The Reluctant Dragon (Grahame) -- gr. 5 reading level


While I love the idea of integrated LA studies, I find them to be problematic, probably because I did not have children who were working exactly at that level in all of the LA topics. Also, I find the haphazard coverage of spelling in integrated studies to be problematic -- I think it makes MUCH more sense to have a logical progression of coverage of Spelling patterns, syllabication, word roots, etc., so nothing "falls through the cracks".

Similarly, while I did make our own integrated LA sheets from dictation passages I selected from our reading (because It IS very valuable to see how Writing and Grammar are interconnected), we ALSO used a stand-alone Grammar program. Again, that was so no Grammar concepts would "fall through the cracks".

So instead of relying on an integrated study to be our "spine" study of LA, it was a great supplement. Just our experience! BEST of luck in finding what works best for your family! Warmest regards, Lori. D.

Edited November 1, 2020 by Lori D.

[barnwife]

I've used levels A and B of ELTL. They have been a gentle introduction to language arts, which is exactly what I want for these levels/ages.  I like that it's scheduled for only 3 days a week, with copywork only for the other 2 days if you want to do it. My kids have enjoyed the poems and fables. On copywork only days, they ask me to read a poem and fable anyway. The lessons are short and too the point, without busywork. That's important to me. We don't always read the suggested literature. Sometimes its because we've read it before; other times we choose something we enjoy more. 

That being said, when I previewed level C, I felt there was a big jump in difficulty/what's expected of the student. I wasn't sure DS was ready for that. So we are currently using Writing Strands. We will go back to ELTL when I am ready to jump into more formal schoolwork again (we have a newborn.)