Countdown to School: Middle School Language Arts, Part Three

Part One is here.
Part Two is here.  (Link Fixed!)

When I was fulminating in the last post against slightly pretentious textbook assignments, there was one other issue I meant to point out: that those are often not "English" assignments anyway, or at least not literature. I've noticed this ever since I sat down with the Apprentice to study eleventh-grade writing rubrics, and found that all the sample essays were all about Issues, like gun control.  So if the point of that textbook is to deepen understanding and appreciation of literature, the culminating question could become something like "How does literature connect the human family?"

That, I could happily live with.  Science of relations?

The problem is that Language Arts isn't necessarily Literature.  It's more of a dumping ground for everything from literary genres to newspaper studies to "graphic texts" (i.e. pictures?), and from skills in "conferencing" to knowledge of "language conventions" (putting periods after sentences) and short story structure.  Not to mention that, if we did talk about Literature, we might be forced to pin down one particular Literature (while excluding another), or one form of Literature (excluding graphic novels or some non-book format), or even have a good old university-style argument over whether Literature exists at all.  It's easier to make it Language Arts, call it Sam and be done, as the Hillbilly Housewife used to say.

But one book that Charlotte Mason did include, at the middle school level, was H.E. Marshall's History of Literature for Boys and Girls (sometimes called for Young People).   That is, English literature, with a bit of Scottish and Welsh and Irish thrown in, up to about the turn of the last century.  Obviously that's not a complete "history of literature" for those of us outside the UK in 2013.  However, it's there.  It's included in the curriculum, it's a subject, Literature.  Ironically, that outdated book throws out a few ideas that might connect with the question of the "human family."

“In the Listening Time”: “Has there ever been a time when no stories were told? Has there ever been a people who did not care to listen? I think not.  When we were little, before we could read for ourselves, did we not gather eagerly round father or mother, friend or nurse, at the promise of a story?”

“The Story of the Cattle Raid of Cooley”: “Our earliest literature was history and poetry. Indeed, we might say poetry only, for in those far-off times history was always poetry, it being only through the songs of the bards and minstrels that history was known. And when I say history I do not mean history as we know it. It was then merely the gallant tale of some hero's deeds listened to because it was a gallant tale.”

So Language Arts is not just Literature; but it should recognize Literature in both its historical and its imaginative/human senses, and our Grade 7 Language Arts will contain not only this history of literature, but as much actual literature as we can manage.  "Literature" to talk about, and literature to read.

Then reading skills, with an introduction to Mortimer J. Adler and his marking-up and "X-Raying" of books.  I happen to be very fond of How to Read a Book, and I think we will read even a bit more of it than Ambleside Online recommends for Year Seven. (One extra but unfortunate reason for that is that...like it or not...Dollygirl may be going off to public high school in Grade Nine, like her sisters; so if we want to get through Adler, middle school may be our only chance.)

And since both Northrop Frye and H.E. Marshall agree that poetry is foundational, we will work through The Grammar of Poetry, by Matt Whitling. I have nothing against Shel Silverstein and Jane Yolen (typical poets from the above-mentioned grade seven textbook), but I find the inclusion of more challenging poets such as George Herbert a delightful bonus.  This will be our first time actually working through this one, because we did not own a copy until recently.

And then there are the speaking and listening skills, and the written assignments.  An online search for "creative narration ideas" will provide many suggestions.  For more critical assignments, I've found ideas such as writing about the use of metaphor and symbolism in a book or play; comparing two characters; discussing themes; writing about the effects of a character's decision; going deeper into the historical time period of a book (a crossover assignment with history).

Do grade seven students need to be specifically taught to do these assignments?  Yes and no. The resources (such as the handbook Write Source 2000) are there to give general format, tips and examples for things like research papers; but the students' ability to work with the books or scripts,  put their thoughts together coherently, and say something worth listening to or reading--that has to be part of the bigger picture, what it's all about in the first place.  I can help Dollygirl revise a piece of writing, I can show her how writers use symbol and metaphor (meaning she can too!), but without a structure of living books and ideas underneath, the rest becomes just interior decorating.  (There's a metaphor.)

Does it matter if the assignments are done on paper or as a podcast? I'm still on the fence about that.  One thing the textbook said did make sense, although I think it could be abused:  that the students should choose a variety of formats for assignments throughout the year (not always a poster, an essay, or a stop-motion video), and that they should choose formats that fit their learning styles or abilities.  For some learners, a project done only as a long essay might be so difficult that they quit and don't learn anything; obviously, length and difficulty of the topics have to be considered.  But even for reluctant writers, shorter written assignments might be appropriate.  I also like the idea I saw mentioned somewhere (I've seen it in more than one place) about putting together a "portfolio" of work about one longer novel or play.  For Ivanhoe, you might have an essay, some written narrations, a character sketch, an illustration, a "wanted" poster for runaway serfs, or whatever.  The student might be required to have a certain number of pieces of work in the porfolio, but be given a choice about which ones.

And here's a bonus:  a Grade Seven assignment I came up with all on my own.

NOVEL:  Ivanhoe
Beverly Cleary, the author of the Ramona series, once recalled: "When I was a child, a relative gave me Ivanhoe to grow into. I was so disappointed that I still have not grown into it."  As a response to this quote, do one of the following:  1.  Write a letter to Beverly Cleary, attempting to get her to change her mind.  2.  Write this event as a scene from a story.  Does your character change her mind about the book, or not?

I'm finally satisfied with our plan for Language Arts.  It may not be as thematically exciting as the grade seven textbook, and it doesn't have as many "graphic texts," but I think it's going to work.

Countdown to School: Middle School Language Arts, Part Two

So what are "we" talking about, when we talk about Language Arts at this level?  What am I talking about, meaning what Dollygirl should learn this year?  Is it literature?  Is it grammar?  Is it that thing called Communication, which can either be one of the most important concepts ever, or just a weasel word for dumbed-down English?  If Charlotte Mason didn't label anything as "Language Arts," is that because almost everything in her curriculum involved language, reading, oral and written skills?  How do we stay true to CM, but also stay current, without turning everything into a podcast?

"To try to teach literature by starting with the applied use of words, or 'effective communication', as it's often called, then gradually work into literature through the more documentary forms of prose fiction and finally into poetry, seems to me a futile procedure. If literature is to be properly taught, we have to start at its centre, which is poetry, then work outwards to literary prose, then outwards from there to the applied languages of business and professions and ordinary life."--Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination

So no, I'm not talking especially about grammar.  That's over to one side, almost a separate subject.  Like arithmetic practice when you also have bigger math ideas to focus on.  (Mathematics, as one math history book we used to have showed us, is like a great big tree with a lot of branches, and arithmetic is just one branch.  But that's another post.)

And it's not about spelling, at least not now, not for us.  Dollygirl did some work with All About Spelling a few years ago, and that helped her out a lot.  Now when I dictate paragraphs to her, prepared or unprepared, she usually does so well that it's hard to stump her.  Her handwriting is another story; so I've been having her do dictation on the computer.

But handwriting isn't the biggest part of Language Arts either.  Yes, it's a question, especially these days when I've read that many schools don't even teach cursive writing (can you imagine?), and especially when Dollygirl still does have some issues with cursive, but it's not the core.

So what are we back to?  Reading.  Writing.  Reading what?  Writing what, and how?  Even the Ambleside Online "Language Arts Scope and Sequence" isn't extensive at this level:  it's basically grammar, narration, dictation, and copywork, with a note that if you have to set something aside at this stage, you should keep the dictation going instead of the copywork.  One key is that "narration" covers a great deal of ground.  Another is that, looking at either Ambleside Online's booklist for the year, or any of the original PUS programmes, there's a high level of reading competence assumed, and not a lot of hand-holding.  Again, maybe that's what it all comes down to:  Charlotte Mason didn't talk much about Language Arts per se, because they were just doing it.  As Mortimer J. Adler says in the first chapter of How to Read a Book, the assumption used to be that you read because you wanted to learn.  Reading and learning were almost synonymous...and sometimes reading to learn meant freedom or even outright rebellion.

Maybe that's still the truth.

The textbook I looked at has a great deal of emphasis on "critical thinking," but from a "self-expression" kind of viewpoint.  What do you think about this or that issue?  The culminating project--which can be done in several ways, from a formal essay to a photo-essay--is about one's own view of the "global family" or  "human family."  Not that I have anything against the big questions, the big ideas--the normative questions, themes of heroism and so on are, what's the word I want, imperative, indispensable, vital.  But there's more than one issue there that I trip over.  Not only that that theme risks becoming a bit one-worldish and political...some people would just think that "the human family" is a nice, peaceful, inclusive thing to think about.  Could even be part of a Christian textbook.  No, it's, first of all, that overemphasis again on the centrality, almost the infallibility, of the seventh-graders' viewpoint on how the world works; not that I don't think seventh-graders can think, but, for Pete's sake, they're twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, with both bigger and smaller concerns...and while allowing them to pontificate on the global family may turn their attention somewhat away from their own issues...and this is the thing I'm stretching for, so stick with me...I don't think the material that's being given to them (in school, in this book, in the contemporary, public-school approach to Language Arts and education as a whole) is going to speak much to the bigger ones.

If you're going to ask the big questions, you had better provide a means to at least look for the big answers. And I don't think a seventh-grade language textbook is going to be the place to find them, at least not on its own.

Important Postscript:

I was going to say, "stay tuned for Part Three" and leave it at that, but something funny (and suggestive, as CM would say) happened. We are having some tree work done this morning in the Treehouse yard. (Aftermath of the quite violent storms last month.) One of the tree guys said that he had planned to put a bolt into one of the trees, but he couldn't do it this morning, because his drill was broken. Mr. Fixit told him to hold on. He disappeared into the workshop and came back with his late grandpa's 1950's brace and bit. The tree guy was very impressed.  "Do you know how hard it is to find good equipment like this?" Grandpa left us many of the tools we need. We just have to know how to use them. And provide sufficient amounts of material (mind-food) to make it worthwhile.

Image from OldToolHeaven.com.

Countdown to School: Middle School Language Arts, Part One

Part Two is here.
Part Three is here.

It's five weeks till school, and this week I'm working on Language Arts, that school subject that didn't exist for Charlotte Mason.

I have a seventh grader this year.  We're up to "middle school."  It's time to graduate our methods from the elementary level, to do more, ask more, think in new ways.  But still, what's core is reading and writing--right?

I look at the provincial standards for grade seven Language curriculum--the headings are Reading, Writing, Listening/Speaking, and Media; but the actual requirements are pretty nebulous.  Do we even mean the same things by Reading and Writing?

Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I look at the publisher's website for a popular public school Grade 7 language textbook.  The units are cool, there's lots of media awareness, some neat poems and stories; somebody has obviously put lots of thought and work into this book.  Maybe that's the problem--the teachers are having more fun than the students. When I try to apply that outline to the amount of reading we have planned, I run into trouble:  are we overloading, or are they underloading?  There's something else that troubles me about it. When the "preview" to the first poem in the book is longer than the poem itself, there's something wrong.  Didn't Charlotte say, somewhere, that we package things up so neatly that nothing can possibly get lost...but that nothing else can get in?

Well, there's one thing I do like about the textbook, kind of.  Dividing up the year into half-term units makes sense, and having a few smaller writing assignments plus one larger project planned for each unit would also work.  I find a teacher's grade 7 webpage divided into similar groupings, but using "real books," and his approach is to assign one "critical" and one "creative" assignment for each.  Yes, we could do that too; not for every book on the list, but for the major ones.

Browsing the grade 7 lists, I come across one of the last places I would have looked for help:  the World Book Typical Course of Study, that's been reprinted all over the Internet for years.  Can someone explain why a short list like this is closer to our CM plans than any current government outline?  It certainly wasn't designed with Charlotte Mason or homeschooling in mind...but maybe it's just older.

• Improving reading skills--yep, Mr. Adler is covering that.
• Literary terms--yep, we're doing The Grammar of Poetry.
• Novels, short stories, plays--yep.
• Myths, legends, ballads--Age of Fable.  Sigurd of the Volsungs.
• Types of poetry--see number 2.
• Biography and autobiography--got it covered.
• Planning and producing dramatizations
• Speech activities--like narrating?
• Listening skills--you have to listen before you can narrate.
• Refining dictionary skills
• Spelling
• Parts of speech--that would be Easy Grammar Plus.
• Person, number, gender of nouns and pronouns
• Punctuation of conversation
• Clauses and phrases
• Compound sentences
• Writing descriptions, reports, journals, and letters--yes, all good things to write.
• Note taking and outlining--Mr. Adler talks about that too.
• Extending reference skills: atlases, directories, encyclopedias, periodicals, on-line information services, CD-ROMs, and other electronic reference material
• Library organization

Thank you, World Book.  That makes me feel a whole lot better.

Stay tuned for Part Two, or, when Language Arts starts to make more sense.

Linked from the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival: Citizenship at The Common Room.

A grammar quiz for smart homeschoolers

Grandpa Squirrel is a generous donor of large Sunday newspapers and other interesting reading material for the Treehouse.  This week he sent over a magazine for Mr. Fixit with an article about vintage radios.

Mama Squirrel read the article and was grammatically appalled.  There were enough sentence fragments, run-ons, and strange turns of phrase in there to illustrate a whole lesson on sentence structure (which we did).  Out of curiosity, Mama Squirrel perused the rest of the magazine, and uncovered a few other zingers that the editorial staff had missed.  (We hope we are not getting ourselves into trouble by copying these lines, but really, we think that certain magazine editors should take a closer look at what gets printed.)

So here's the challenge:  what's wrong with these sentences, and how would you fix them? (If you can.)

Note:  I don't pretend that my understanding of grammar is perfect either.  If you think some of these examples are correct, feel free to say so.

1.  She, and other craftspeople, has a very nice display space for their wares.

2.  By the mid 1930's over 50% of North American homes had at least one radio.  Over 1 1/2 million in automobiles.

3.  A table model which resembles a church Cathedral usually with four dials on the front.  A small window screen which contains the channels panel and at the top red fabric of the speaker.

4.  The new AC model radios began to sell in large numbers as owners threw out their battery operated radio.

5.  By the 1930's the design of the radio and its case began to change.  It went from a square body box design and outside speakers which sat on top of the radio or close by.

6.  The designs became more compact and speakers in the body of the radio and their appearance became more desirable.

7.  Repaired items should be priced considerably lower than a, similar, perfect head vase.

8.  Ordering from private distributors is possible but not cost affective.

9.  Orson Welles played The Shadow on radio.  Then moved onto Hollywood after his famous Halloween production of War of the Worlds.

10.  Ideas for the designs came from many sources such as: popular fashion magazines or Hollywood movie magazines.

Linked from the Carnival of Homeschooling.

How homeschoolers do things: a letter-writing unit

In this case the point of interest is not so much how we're doing a language unit on letter writing, as the timing of it.

Actually that was accidental.

I had planned to have Crayons do some work on letter writing, starting this week.  Last week we finished reading Jean Webster's novel Daddy-Long-Legs, which is mostly written in letter form.

So there you go.  Crayons' interest in letters is still high; and Judy's letters in D-L-L cover everything from descriptions of her college life, to crotchety whinefests, to apologies afterward; from purely businesslike memos to one loveydovey epistle at the end.  (Sorry for the spoiler if you haven't read it.)  A very good example of how writing style needs to vary depending on the situation.

The book we're using is a hand-me-down from the Apprentice.  It's the Reader's Digest Kids Letter Writer Book, by Nancy Cobb, published in 1994.  The bonus for us is that it's Canadian.  All the address examples, cities, provinces, postal codes are Canadian ones.  I don't know if the book was also published in an American version--maybe someone will let me know.*  (The Apprentice originally got it as part of a kit with stationery, pens etc.)

We read the list of reasons you might want to write a letter ("Help you make a new friend," "Send hard-to-say-thoughts," "Be Serious (write to the prime minister)"), and then compared the first two sample letters in the book: one "friendly," one business-style.  As a mini-assignment, I had Crayons write a short business letter to her dad or someone else that she would normally send a more personal letter.  She wrote a very economically-worded request for a particular birthday present.  (Those double-digits are coming around soon.)

There are lots of other sample letters and tips in the book.  I'm not sure how many of them we'll use, but I know there's enough to keep a fourth-grader going for awhile.

*I did find this reference to a later version--maybe this one is American?  "LETTER WRITER STARTER SET : Have Fun, Keep in Touch, Be Heard, and Get Things Done --- By Letter!"

Quote for the day: the centre is poetry

"To try to teach literature by starting with the applied use of words, or 'effective communication', as it's often called, then gradually work into literature through the more documentary forms of prose fiction and finally into poetry, seems to me a futile procedure.  If literature is to be properly taught, we have to start at its centre, which is poetry, then work outwards to literary prose, then outwards from there to the applied languages of business and professions and ordinary life."--Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination

How homeschoolers do things: spelling cards

Last month Crayons worked at penmanship. During October her language focus has switched to spelling. What I am using, because it's handy, is Alpha to Omega: The A-Z of Teaching Reading, Writing and Spelling, by Bevé Hornsby and Frula Shear, which came from a thrift shop a month ago. I like two things about it: the gradual building up of skills, and the wealth of dictation sentences (except for the ones about getting drunk at the pub). There are also some interesting activities. But having homeschooled for so long, you do start to have your own ways of doing things, and there are always ways to improve on "just a book." Especially if you have students who like doing almost anything better than holding a pencil.

Today's activity was called "word sums." It was a list of some compound words and words built out of common parts of words. Like putting building blocks together. I think you were supposed to have the student either read the list or spell the words. This is what I did with them: I cut a small stack of index cards in half and wrote the words across the halves: mar/ket, gar/den, part/ly, sharp/er and so on. Then, since I had so much space left, I turned each piece halfway round and wrote more half-words (and a few repeats) going in the other direction. So I had half-words going north-south and some going east-west.

I gave the stack of mini-cards to Crayons and asked her to make as many (real) words as she could from the pieces, and write them on a piece of paper. Like doing jigsaw puzzles.

That was the whole language lesson today, aside from an Alpha-Better drill. Cheap, simple, and hands-on--and it worked for us.

What's a sparable?

Crayons and I have been having fun this week with a dictionary activity from Raising Ravenous Readers: Activities to Create a Lifelong Appetite for Reading, by Linda Schwartz. The book gets you started with questions like these:

Would you row, cook, plant or ride in a landau?

Would you play, wear, chain, or recite an epaulet?

The idea is to guess the answer and then look them up in the dictionary. These are words that mostly aren't found in our children's dictionary, so Crayons has been using my Random House College Dictionary. It's good practice not so much for vocabulary as for using dictionary guide words, and practicing alphabetizing concepts.

Today we ran out of questions, so I made up some of my own. How would you do on these?

1. Would you find the Pentateuch in your body, in a computer, or in the Bible?
2. Can you drink sparteine? (Should you?)
3. Would you buy a spavined horse?
4. Would you find a sparable in a shoe, in a nest, or in the Bible?

Crayons' Grade Two: Language Arts

True to Squirreling form, Crayons learned to read to herself quite young. She's a strong enough reader now to handle stories from Lang's Coloured Fairy Books. One of her favourites is "The Princess on the Glass Hill," in The Blue Fairy Book. (Available online at The Baldwin Project.)

He stole away to the door, which was ajar, to see what was there, and a horse was standing eating. It was so big, and fat, and fine a horse that Cinderlad had never seen one like it before, and a saddle and bridle lay upon it, and a complete suit of armour for a knight, and everything was of copper, and so bright that it shone again. "Ha, ha! it is thou who eatest up our hay then," thought the boy; "but I will stop that." So he made haste, and took out his steel for striking fire, and threw it over the horse, and then it had no power to stir from the spot, and became so tame that the boy could do what he
liked with it. So he mounted it and rode away to a place which no one knew of but himself, and there he tied it up.

So she doesn't exactly need readers; sometimes it's hard to get her to stop reading.

But--again, not surprisingly--she's not a natural speller; she can read and understand great big words but still hesitates putting even simple words down on paper herself without asking how something's spelled. She's also just average for her age (or slightly behind) in printing skills.

This is nothing new around here--in fact, that's one of the reasons we got started homeschooling. The Apprentice was much the same (although she never had many spelling issues). Reading, yes! Writing, no.

Language Arts, or English, or whatever you want to call it, is bigger than grammar and mechanics anyway, though that's often what you think of first, especially if you're old enough (like me) to have had very dreadful Language Arts textbooks throughout elementary school. (This was one of ours.) As has been said many times--you want them to be able to read, write, speak, listen, and otherwise use the English language successfully; and if they're reading and you're reading to them and having them narrate orally, you've already covered three of those areas. Mechanics, while important, is just one small piece of language.

But it still needs to be learned; and even young Squirrelings sometimes need to go back over some of the phonics areas they've skipped madly over. (It does help with spelling.)

There are a couple of different approaches we've taken with this over the years. When The Apprentice was small, I often used old children's magazines and had her circle or cross out things: all the words on a page that started with "th"; all the question marks; all the names of animals, and so on. You can do this with even older children, having them look for adverbs or other grammar items.

One thing we've done is to use copywork lessons in Ruth Beechick-style, usually over a short period of time and with one book, story, or group of poems. One year I took several paragraphs from Bambi and made up language lessons, following Dr. Beechick's models in You CAN Teach Your Child Successfully. Last year I used sentences from Snowshoe Thompson to do the same thing. You can do the same thing informally, too, rather than putting lessons together ahead of time: point out spelling or grammar points in a child's regular copywork.

This year I'm committing the heresy of covering the same mechanics via workbooks. I have both the grade 1 and grade 2 levels of Gifted and Talented: Reading, Writing and Math. They're very similar and can actually be used together--if you can do the grade 1 pages on synonyms, you can probably do the grade 2 pages. And that's what I'm planning for Crayons. Reasons for doing this instead of making up my own? 1. I already have the books. 2. She's already reading so much that doing a workbook page is something different for her. 3. Like instant potato flakes, they're convenient, and, perversely, some children seem to like them better than the real thing.

Crayons will still be doing some regular copywork, along with printing practice in the Canadian Handwriting workbooks. Probably one or the other each day.

And for spelling...I think we're going to fish out a few Magnetic Poetry words each week, stick them on the fridge, and use them as a spelling list. (I read through the simplest lists in Kathryn Stout's Natural Speller, and many of them are the same as the magnetic words we have.) Of course you could just write a list on paper, but it's a novelty, and it's harder to lose or avoid seeing the list when it's right there while you pour your juice.

Related Posts:
Crayons' Grade Two: Social Studies

Crayons' Language Worksheets

Sometimes I make up worksheets like this for Crayons so that she can work independently while I'm reading with Ponytails. This is what I wrote for this morning; it's based on Snowshoe Thompson, by Nancy Smiler Levinson. (I leave spaces between things so she can write answers.)

------------------------------------------------
Read pages 14 to 21.

Copy this on your lined paper:

“I am making skis to deliver the mail,” he said.

Here are the chopping words from page 18: Whack! Thwack! Can you think of any other good words that sound like chopping?

How about hammering?

How about a grilled cheese sandwich sizzling in a non-stick frying pan?

You make up one of your own….

Where is Norway? (Look on the kitchen map. Ask for help if you need it.) Is it close to the north or the south? What do you think the weather must be like there?

Do you know what snowshoes are? Ask for help looking for a picture of them. Draw a picture of somebody wearing snowshoes.

The planning process

Melissa Wiley at the Bonny Glen (actually this is on her other blog), and others (linked from Melissa's post), have been posting in answer to some non-homeschoolers' questions about why we’d want to homeschool, or how we have the nerve to do this without courses in pedagogy etc., etc.

An analogy I used last year was that of a professional chef vs. cooking for your own family. I made supper tonight (in the middle of a heat wave) and we ate it (in the middle of a thunderstorm). Aside from the freaky weather, how did I know how to do that? How did I manage to get it all on the table, in the right amount, at the right time? We had chicken breasts baked in canned pasta sauce (in the toaster oven), whole wheat fusilli, spaghetti squash (cooked on top of the stove), raw broccoli and carrots (cut up yesterday), and a frozen ricotta dessert topped with leftover canned pineapple. And it wasn't a complicated meal to make; it was just experience, knowing how much chicken to thaw, how to thicken the sauce at the end, remembering that we had leftover veggies, figuring that the pineapple would go nicely on top of the dessert. At home, you learn to cook (see #s 18 and 19 there) based on experience, reading, watching, asking other people how they do things. Family meals aren't like restaurant cooking, and they're not meant to be (unless you're Anne Tyler). Homeschooling compares better to home cooking than it does to the surgery-on-the-kitchen-table analogy. If the math lesson doesn’t connect, you can try it another way tomorrow, or wait awhile and then try it again. Surgeons don’t have that option; homeschoolers do.

But back to the pedagogy, qualifications question that keeps coming up: somebody out there has an idea that I (or any homeschool parent) must have a little schoolroom in my house with a blackboard and a pointer, or at least a kitchen table with chains to keep the students there; plus a piece of paper from the government that says I took a course in how to teach and what to teach; and that if I don't, then I don't know what I'm doing and shouldn't be teaching.

So this post is meant to show anybody who's interested how the process of planning a school year works, after ten years at this. These are some of my real-life thoughts and experiences as I plan for Ponytails' grade 4.

1. Mathematics: I order Making Math Meaningful Level 4, since we'll be done Miquon Math and I need to find something that has a good dose of word problems in it--something Ponytails is still weak on. When I get the books, I realize there’s some repetition of what she's already done, so I figure we can complete it in 3 days a week next year, and that leaves 2 days for activities in geometry, and other topics that MMM doesn't cover. How did I get the general idea of grade 4 math topics? I compared a couple of scope and sequences and made a list of goals for next year. I checked those that aren't included in our main book against a list of good library math books (not textbooks--there are a lot of other books on the 500's shelf) and a couple of our other resources like Family Math--for instance, I want to work on using a calculator, and Family Math includes several calculator games.

2. Language arts: again, I have a list of typical grade 4 skills, which I’ve gone over with Ponytails in mind, eliminating what she already knows and adding in a couple of other things I would like her to work on. I have two main goals for the year—-increased independent reading skills (especially in non-fiction) and improved ability in writing—-not her ability to express herself so much (see Theseus here) as her level of comfort with written work—-mechanics, handwriting, spelling, all the boring but important stuff. Also she'll be working on skills in finding things out—-choosing resources (a dictionary? A thesaurus?) and using them.

And how will we be working towards those goals? By checking off pages in a language textbook? Am I ordering a creative writing program, a speller, and basal readers? No, we've never done things that way. At our house it's more like this:

Reading skills: This will be the year I ask her to read more school books on her own—-not setting her adrift, but giving her 15 minutes to read a section and then following up. We will start with short sections and see if she can work up to reading a whole chapter and then telling back what she's read. It means working on habits like attentiveness, not getting distracted. (Do we need readers with chapter-end questions? No, we have books, magazines, newspapers, emails...)
Writing: again, beginning short written narrations—-or writing some and then dictating the rest. Knowing Ponytails, she will probably initiate some of her own writing projects as well.

Mechanics: we will use copywork and dictation, from books across the curriculum, as a place to work on mechanics and very basic grammar (just parts of speech, not diagramming); on noticing story details and picking out homonyms; on experimenting with synonyms or changing tense. Will I have all those lessons prepared ahead of time? No, it’s not practical. If something needs extra work, we spend extra time on it. It’s a waste of time for me to write out 36 weeks of language lessons for Ponytails, just like I don’t buy her new shoes until she needs them. (We do have a couple of yard-sale grammar workbooks to fall back on too.)

Handwriting: besides copywork, we will use Ruth Beechick’s 3-week cursive improvement course (from You CAN Teach Your Child Successfully Grades 4 to 8). (That's less involved than it sounds; it just means having her write sentences and then looking at specific things that need improvement.)

Spelling: I don’t know yet how much extra time Ponytails will need on this next year, so we'll just keep working on it along with her other language activities.

3. Latin (the thinking continues here): I look at the Latin program a friend loaned us, and decide this is not the year to be adding another language. We’ll include some Latin roots when we talk about prefixes and suffixes.

4. Nature studies: I look at the fat handbook we’ve had forever but hardly use,and realize we can use it next year for some book lessons about ladybugs, spiders, ants, worms, and other wiggly crawly things we have close at hand. I was going to add to our collection of magnifiers and bug-lookers anyway, and this will give us some things to examine and maybe draw.

5. Music: At a rummage sale, I find a book & record set of Leonard Bernstein’s 1960’s young peoples’ concerts. There’s a whole kid-size music appreciation course in there, and I know our library has some of the videos too. At our support group's annual conference I buy 2 new Music Maker packs for our lap harp, including a basic music theory pack.

6. I list books we own and can use for history, Bible, science, poetry and more. I write down a couple of others to ask for on a swap board or to look for at the library. Something with legs crawls out of Five Little Peppers, so I toss the book in case the little thing is thinking about multiplying (it was an old tattered copy anyway) and make a note to replace it (the book, not the bug). (No, I do not want to do nature study on a silverfish.) I plan to use one book of Greek myths, but then pick up something I like even better at a library sale and cross out the first one. I decide to order an audio book of Robinson Crusoe, because it's probably the hardest book we’ll be doing this year. An online friend has written her own geography e-text, so I decide to use that for both of our elementary-aged students. I also plan for each of them to make a scrapbook about Canada.

Interlude: I re-read some of my favourite Charlotte Mason chapters and Parents' Review articles and underline key points about why we do what we do. Call it inspiration.

7. I write down the plans in a binder, print out ideas for memory work, favourite songs, and a few other Internet printouts. I divide them up into terms, then roughly by weeks. I collect the books, find CDs, save cardboard and pop bottles for science experiments. We’re ready to begin again.

And did you remember the point of all this? Does this sound like homeschoolers are competent to make curriculum choices, to find resources, to teach lessons, to modify and supplement when needed, to set goals and evaluate progress?

I hope so.