English/Literature/Etc.

So, shall we move on?

English/Language/Grammar...whatever you want to call it.

Last year we used the PS textbook. It was okay. Informative but B-O-R-I-N-G.

This year, as you know from an earlier post, J.T.'s first English assignment was an essay for a library contest "What My Library Card Means To Me". I'm happy to announce that we received word just today that the essays had been judged and J.T. won an honorable mention :) J.T. is invited to a pizza party/award ceremony Nov. 5th for some free chow and to be awarded his honorable mention. We are going, of course, and I will do the mom thing and take pictures! I just need someone to remind me to take my camera because I always forget it.

I have a library book ready to continue with English. It is Extraordinary Emails, Letters, and Resumes by Marc Tyler Nobleman. It's time for J.T. to learn about different types of correspondence and I like that this book includes emails in that. We will probably skip doing resumes for a few years. While learning about and writing different types of correspondence, spelling and grammar happens naturally.

I haven't decided yet what we'll do after we finish with correspondence. I think English is learned best with practical applications...figuring out things that you might want to do "in real life" and why it's important to learn how to do that correctly.

For Literature, J.T. always picks out what he wants to read. He is a reluctant reader, so it's important that I don't force him to read something he might not be interested in when it's reading that is independent of other subjects. At the start of this year, he read some Stephen King short stories and has now moved onto Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. To insure comprehension and to help prepare J.T. for tests he may take in the future, for each short story I either have him answer a few questions about the story or have him come up with questions to ask me. For Harry Potter, we'll probably do that every few chapters. And for all that he reads, J.T. always orally summarizes what he read each day.

What now? Oh, spelling. I am very nonchalant about J.T.'s spelling. Spelling came easily and naturally to me when I was in school, but it never has for J.T. We struggled every single week he was in public school. I would drill him on his spelling words, he would spell them correctly, and 20 minutes later would have forgotten how to spell every single word. I do give spelling "tests" to keep J.T. practicing spelling correctly. Each week I pick out ten words from whatever he is reading for literature. He has a pretest to see if he knows any of the words already (almost always the answer is "no" lol) and any words he misses he copies three times. The next day he practices them orally or does a word search. After that, he writes each word in a sentence and copies missed words a few times in cursive (to get some cursive practice in too). On test day, we review orally right before the test. The test is *not* me saying the word and him writing it...we would never be able to progress that way. Instead each word is in a sentence and I have two types of questions...he either picks the correct spelling with multiple choice or he has to decide if the spelling word in the sentence is spelled correctly or incorrectly. If he misses any test questions, those words get moved to the next week's list and that continues until he gets them right. But, like I said, I don't put much emphasis on spelling. There are plenty of bad spellers out there and it doesn't negatively affect them. There's always spell check (though not the best choice) and looking up correct spellings and, as an adult, how often do we have to spell words correctly on the spot without a chance to look them up?

Last year, we started a typing program that is really fun and easy: Dance Mat Typing and we need to get back into that this year. I'd also like J.T. to start a second language, it just seems there's so much "English" stuff to do that I don't want to overwhelm him with subjects.

If you got this far, thanks for reading! Tomorrow will be History.