While your student is enrolled in the Elementary Language Arts--Foundations in Literature and Writing class at KEYS, he or she will need to continue in regular language arts study in your school program at home. If you have been utilizing a systematic language arts curriculum in the past, and you are pleased with it, I would encourage you to continue with that. However, you will want to modify or eliminate the literature components of the program, so as not to overtax your child while enrolled in this class.
Although the students will be doing a certain amount of required "reading for pleasure," we will not be engaged in a significant amount of literary analysis. Additionally, though we will be thoroughly reviewing grammatical elements as we study sentence structure and review the eight basic parts of speech in English, a systematic study of literature, spelling, and vocabulary is beyond the scope of this course. You will want to be sure that whatever program you are utilizing at home covers these.
Following are some suggestions for what might be a nice complement to what we're doing in class, if you are not sure how to modify your program or have not really been utilizing a systematic language arts curriculum.
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One good "cover it all" approach would be to choose the Learning Language Arts through Literature program. LLATL incorporates the study and review of grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and literature all in one workbook. I would suggest beginning with the orange book if your child needs a good review of basic grammar and language arts. If this is technically "below his grade level," explain that he needs the "easier" material since he is also taking the Elementary Language Arts class at KEYS, and then have him complete as many lessons' worth of material each day as he has time. Studying in this manner--if he completes just least two lessons per day, which should not be time consuming or difficult--he should be able to complete both the orange and purple books in one year.
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If you prefer the "component approach" to language arts study, be sure to choose materials to cover spelling, vocabulary, and literature.
For literature and vocabulary study, you might consider utilizing the Total Language Plus materials with novels appropriate to your child's age or interests. These are yellow study guides specifically created for use with particular novels. If you are utilizing Sonlight materials for history, there is likely sufficient literary analysis already incorporated with your child's reading program to suffice during this course. Whichever path you take to incorporate literature and vocabulary study, please be sure to allow your child to complete the reading requirements for my class by reading purely for pleasure. The books read for the reading log should be approved by me and should be something that the child is not studying in any way.
If you do not already have another program in use, for spelling study I might suggest that you begin to use Spelling Power. This program is quite easy and effective with a child who is not experiencing some sort of learning block in spelling. It allows students to study only the words they do not yet know how to spell, and diagnostic tests guarantee that they begin at the appropriate level for their current spelling abilities. It can be quite intimidating to begin, however, so feel free to see me for a quick "hands-on" lesson about getting started without reading the entire manual, as the author suggests. My family does Spelling Power three days a week, on the days we are not at KEYS. The student should not be studying more than five words at a time for spelling.
Any time your child misspells a word in his or her writing, it should be added to a running "spelling log" so that it can be incorporated into your spelling study at home. I will make note of the spelling errors on the students' compositions so that each student can keep such a spelling log for your use.
Similarly, anytime your child comes across an unfamiliar word while reading, it should be added to a running "vocabulary log" so that it can be incorporated into your vocabulary study. If your home vocabulary program is lacking, you might consider one of the many reference books designed to expand and enhance vocabulary. My family uses Write Well, Speak Well and The Words You Should Know, handled just like Spelling Power (but only once per week) so that my children only study the words they don't already know. Again, no more than five unfamiliar words should be studied in any given week.
Feel free to contact Mrs. Sitterding for clarification, or with any questions or concerns, at the following email address: ParksidePedagogy@gmail.com