Review of Logic of English

Today's review has been such an eye opening experience for both my daughter and myself!  I have gained so much knowledge about the English language and how it works from using Essentials 2nd Edition from Logic of English.  

Essentials 2nd Edition is a complete curriculum teaching phonics, spelling, basic reading skills, grammar, basic composition, punctuation rules, and vocabulary. 

When the box came, it was huge and heavy!  When I opened it, I understood why. 

Essentials 2nd Edition currently sells for $198 and comes with many components including:

• Essentials Teacher's Guide, 2nd ed., Volume 1
• Essentials Student Workbook, 2nd ed., Volume 1
• Spelling Journal
• Basic Phonogram Flash Cards
• Spelling Rule Flash Cards
• Advanced Phonogram Flash Cards
• Grammar Flash Cards
• Morpheme Flash Cards, Set 1
• Phonogram Game Cards - Bookface
• Phonogram Game Cards - Cursive or Manuscript (I chose cursive)
• Phonogram Game Tiles
• Phonogram and Spelling Rule Quick Reference
• Spelling Analysis Card

The complete Essentials curriculum is broken down into two semesters - Volume 1 and Volume 2.  Volume 1 includes Lessons 1-15 and Volume 2 includes Lessons 16-30. Volume 2 is not currently available but scheduled for release in January 2017.

I spent some time familiarizing myself with the components of the curriculum and watching many videos available from Logic of English's YouTube Channel which is a great resource when you are getting started! 
Each volume includes 3 levels of instruction labeled A, B, and C.  The Teacher's Guide is a massive hard bound book full of details for each level. The Student Workbook and Spelling Journal also contain everything you need for all three levels but are consumable and intended for one student.  If you are working with more than one student, you will need an additional Student Workbook and Spelling Journal but only one Teacher's Guide is needed.  Also, a younger student who completes Level A could use the same curriculum to complete the other 2 higher levels. Each student also needs a set of Phonogram Game Tiles and two contrasting Phonogram Game Cards for every four students.
We began with the placement test which sent us to begin with Lesson 1, Level B.  There are some critical PreLessons that you may need to start with but the placement test will help you to know where to begin.
Each lesson is broken down into daily assignments:
Day 1: You will introduce the new phonograms, spelling rules, and explore sounds.
Day 2: You will introduce the new spelling list by level, students place any new words in their spelling journals.  Review games for the phonograms are often added on this day too.  The Spelling Analysis page which contains the new spelling list is phenomenal. It breaks each word up by syllable, gives sample sentences using the word, different parts of speech applicable to the word, how to spell the word breaking each part up using phonograms already learned, and gives the relative spelling rule.  Words are selected based on what is being taught in the lesson rather than just a random list of spelling words.
Day 3: You will use the words in context - review concepts, complete a spelling game, learn new grammar concepts and dictation.  Dictation includes new words as well as words taught from previous lessons.
Day 4: Learn new vocabulary, another dictation, composition, and the optional Essentials Reader.
Day 5: This day includes an assessment where you will check your student's understanding. 

You can certainly slow the program down if needed to fit your child's needs but we found the suggested schedule to be just right for us.  

The Teacher's Guide is very colorful and gives lots of tips and instructions for the teacher.  Each lesson contains an overview of what will be taught during the lesson and which Phonogram Flash Cards, Spelling Rule Flash Cards, Grammar Flash Cards, and vocabulary will be taught.  

Each day in the teacher manual is clearly marked to keep you on track and gives you directions on what to say to your child to teach the new concepts including what to write on the white board, sample words, etc. You are also given the supplies you will need to collect for the day and many teacher tips are found all throughout the lessons. Lessons labeled "All" are taught to all levels.  Fun games are completed throughout the lessons as well as the workbook style pages included. 

Finding a way to store everything so I could have it at arm's length was difficult but I finally came up with a solution that is working for now.  I placed all the components in a plastic box including the student spelling journal and workbook.  The Teachers guide is placed just to the right.  I placed the phonogram cards, spelling rules, and grammar rules cards learned so far in the front with the ones still to be learned in the back to pull from.  Each card is has it's own color ring that also matches the teacher's guide so I simply stacked them rotating each stack - one vertical, one horizontal per category.  It's hard to tell here but that's how they are!  I've also thought of adding labels to stick out for each category.

Here we are playing one of the games.  The loser ends up with the dragon card - guess who lost?

Here Sarah is practicing writing her spelling words with her eyes closed.  She loved this simple technique and we were both impressed with how well we did!

Here is Sarah completing one of the Student Workbook pages.  She is marking the parts of speech for each word.

We also received the optional Optional Essentials Reader Set that can be purchased separately to accompany this curriculum. We received the PDF download of this set which includes The Student Reader, The Teacher Guide, and The Student Activity Book. The wonderful part about the reader is it reviews words and concepts taught in the Essentials lessons. The Optional Essentials Reader can be purchased alone or you can add on the teacher's guide and student activity book designed to enhance the student further by adding in more comprehension, copywork, dictation, note taking skills, key word outlines, tips and strategies for vocabulary, and even extra curricular activities such as research papers on the subjects read about. The goal is to expose the student with the concepts and words learned as much as possible for better comprehension and fluency.
Sarah, age 12 has asked to continue with this program and I can see light bulbs going off for her as a this new approach to letters having sounds and meanings helps her understand the why behind some of the words we use in the English language.  It's not only her though, I have found myself having my own aha moments too!
This is a massive program with loads of detailed information at your fingertips for yourself and your student.  There is so much to learn and to teach with this program that it's hard to put it all in writing for this review! You will definitely want to visit their website, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest to find out more about this wonderful program!  You can also find more sample pages here.  If you have any questions, just let me know and I'll try to answer them or find the answers for you.

Review of IEW's Phonetic Zoo - Level A

Spelling, spelling, spelling. If you've been a reader here for a while you will already know that Spelling is our struggle subject. Not one, not two, but all three of my children struggle with spelling. We have tried just about every curriculum there is for spelling so why not one more, right? So keep reading for which one we tried this time.

 
Institute for Excellence in Writing also known as IEW offers a unique approach to spelling in their Phonetic Zoo courses. They come in three levels, A, B, or C and is recommended for grades 3 and up. After taking the placement test, I decided it would be best for Sarah to begin with the Phonetic Zoo Spelling Level A [Starter Set].

IEW approaches spelling in a sequential and phonics based manner. It also includes CD's for an auditory approach to learning as well as the visual approaches of flashcards.

Each level includes:

• five audio CDs, labeled Disc One through Disc Five (Level C has six CDs.)
• set of large flash cards
• set of small Zoo Cards
• link for a PDF teacher's ebook  (sample)
• link to a streaming seminar of Spelling and the Brain

The printed materials sell for $99 or you can purchase downloadable materials for $79.  Once you purchase a level, you will be sent a link to download the teacher's ebook.  You will only need to add in a CD player, headphones, notebook paper (or the printable sheet included in the teacher ebook), and pen to begin.  If you are not familiar with IEW's philosophy on using pen, you can read more about that here. We are still rebels and use pencil most of the time.  
The flash cards include word lists for all three levels making them very versatile in using with multiple grades. Implementing this curriculum into your current schedule is extremely easy and we had it up and going quickly.  It takes Sarah no more than 15 minutes each day to complete and on average we complete a lesson per week.  There are 47 lessons and no time frame is given to complete them because the program is set up to completely master a lesson before moving on.
How We Used This In Our Homeschool

• First step was to watch the Spelling and the Brain Seminar which explained a lot of the struggles I see often in my children.  It was such an informational seminar and eye opening.
• I printed out the lesson pages from the teacher ebook and placed them in their own binder.  This step is not necessary because you can read it off of your computer but we are doing a lot of car schooling lately so I wanted to do it this way.  
• I placed the little flashcards in baseball card protectors (from my couponing days!) and stuck them in a folder for Sarah.  That folder was for her to look back on and study the rules and animals that went with the rules. There is also an option in the appendix to make a Phonetic Zoo board or a lapbook which looked fun too!
• I placed the large flashcards in a small notebook with half sheet page protectors.  You could also place them on a ring because they already have a hole punched in them for that purpose.

Day 1 - We would sit together and go over the words on the large flashcard along with the rule for the lesson.  There is an animal on the flashcards that correspond to the rule as well.  The teacher's ebook gives you information to help explain the rule further to your child.  We would go over spelling each word together on the white board the first day.  
Day 2 - She grabs the CD which tells her the spelling words in a sentence to write for the lesson.  She writes them on notebook paper and then checks them along with the CD too.  I always check her corrections to make sure she marks them correctly.  You can listen to a sample of the audio lesson here.
Day 3, 4... - She continues the same process as Day 2 until she gets all 15 words 100% correct two times in a row.  Once she accomplishes that, she moves on to the next lesson so you can see that a lesson might take 2 days or all week depending on the words and if she is familiar with them or not.
Every 5th lesson, there is an opportunity for review.  For this lesson, you will collect any words that were spelled with errors in the previous lessons and you can also include words from writing lessons in other subject areas as well. 
Sarah really enjoys the independence that this program gives her.  I like that aspect too because it frees me up to work with my high schoolers.  She likes checking and correcting her own work too.  The rules are repeated often on the CD during the practice so she's really picked those up pretty quickly and it gives us a hint we can use with one another if I notice a word misspelled on one of her papers.  For instance, I might say "what's the rule for i-e words?" and she can work through what she remembers about that rule.  
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Review of Spelling You See

We were first introduced to Spelling You See last year when we began using Level E American Spirit.  Here is the review we did for that level. All of my children have struggled with spelling at some time during their school years.  Spelling You See offers a spelling curriculum like no other than we have ever seen or experienced.  We were given the opportunity to review the next level in the series Level F Ancient Achievements.  I decided for Stephen to work with this Level since he had just completed Level E.
What is Spelling You See
Spelling You see is a very unique spelling curriculum that does not use the typical word list to teach spelling.  It is not set up by grade level but rather takes a student through 5 developmental stages in sequential order.  You can read about each of the stages in more detail here.  Placement guidelines are available so that you can correctly place your child at the appropriate level since one does build upon another. There are currently 7 levels available.   When you purchase Levels B-G for your child it includes a Instructor's Handbook, Student Workbook in 2 parts, and a set of erasable color pencils.  Level A includes items a little different from the other levels since it is designed for your very young students.  
Current Levels available are:

• Level A Listen and Write
• Level B Jack and Jill
• Level C Wild Tales
• Level D Americana
• Level E American Spirit
• Level F Ancient Achievements
• Level G Modern Milestones

Introduction To Level F Ancient Achievements
In the Instructor's Handbook that sales for $14 you will find several sections including an Introduction Section that includes the philosophy, the stages of spelling, and the curriculum sequence.  It includes how to get started using the curriculum, many tips for success, a color coded answer key, lesson by lesson instructions, dictation passages, and weekly activity guide.  It tells you very clearly how to use the program.  We had no problems getting started right away.  It is a simple but very effective program to use only taking about 30 minutes to complete each day.  

There are 36 lessons that are broken down by day using the letters A-E.  
As with several of the previous levels you continue the concepts of chunking, copywork, and dictation.

• chunking - Students find and mark the concepts they are working on for the week.  Concepts include vowel chunks, consonant chunks, bossy r chunks, tricky y guys, silent letters, and endings.  Each concept is also color coded using color pencils or a highlighter if you prefer.   These concepts are gradually introduced to students through out the lessons.
• copywork - Students spend 10 minutes copying the passage for the day.  The repetition helps students see words in context and trains the brain to pay attention to the details.
• dictation - Parent sets timer for 10 minutes and dictates passage to student making sure to correct any spelling errors as they come up.  This is not handwriting practice so to keep the student moving, they are allowed to strike through any errors and correct immediately.

In Level F Ancient Achievements, there is a new section called the Spotlight area that calls to attention one or more of the words in the passage for the week. This helps introduce students to the new skill level stage of Word Extension (stage 4).  The reading passages also gradually increase in reading level.  Passages are about ancient civilization which I love that it reinforces history as well.    
The student books are broken down into 2 workbooks.  They have perforated sheets which make them easy to tear out and use each week or you can keep the sheets right in the workbook.  Each passage contains colorful artwork relating to the story. The workbooks are consumable and you will need a set for each of your students.  They sale for $30 for the set and come with erasable color pencils.  You can download a sample lesson here.

What Spelling You See Looked Like In Our Homeschool

Monday - I had my son read the passage out loud.  He then completed the chunking exercises for worksheet A by my side.  That part usually can be completed in less than 10 minutes especially in the early lessons.  He then completed the copywork for worksheet A and then mark the chunks on that sheet.  This took approximately another 10 minutes to complete.  Each student sheet is labeled clearly with the lesson number and letter.  It was easier for my son to write on a flat surface so we always tore the sheets out for the week. Here is what Day 1 looked like when complete.  You can see the instructions are simple and clearly stated.

Tuesday - Repeated the same process as above using Worksheet B.

Wednesday - Repeated the same process as above using Worksheet C.  We would also discuss the spotlight section together.

Thursday - This is dictation day so we would set a timer for 10 minutes and he would complete the dictation exercise. 

  Friday - This is the 2nd dictation day.  However, if the student does well on the 1st day you can skip this and we often did.  
This curriculum is one that myself and my children would highly recommend. They love using it and we can really see significant progress in their spelling.  
Be sure to click the banner below to see what my fellow crewmates thought of Spelling You See.

Review: Spelling You See American Spirit Level E

You may be familiar with the popular homeschool math curriculum called Math-U-See. Well, Demme Learning has now added a sibling to their family for spelling called, Spelling You See. 
It's no secret that all 3 of my children struggle in spelling!  This year has been our best yet but I still felt that we were not where we needed to be so I jumped at the chance to review Spelling You See: American Spirit (Level E)!  We have tried many different approaches to spelling including learning phonics rules and word lists with little success.
Spelling You See takes a totally different approach where there are no word lists or phonic rules to memorize. It is meant for elementary ages, or for remedial work for older students.The program takes you through 5 Developmental Stages of Spelling.  These stages are sequential meaning they build upon one another so placement guidelines are very important with this curriculum. Spelling You See describes the stages as this, "The developmental process of spelling is similar to what children go through when learning to walk. They need to develop the prerequisite skill of crawling before they can move on to walking and then running. In the same way, this program guides your homeschool student through the stages in the process of learning to spell."
The 5 stages are Preliterate, Phonetic, Skill Development, Word Extension, and Derivational Constancy.  You can watch a short video of Dr. Holinga describing each of the stages here. 

There are 5 levels available to take you through each of those developmental stages.  You can learn more about the stages and levels on the website. 

How we use Spelling You See In Our Homeschool
After using the placement guidelines, I decided that both Stephen (7th - age 13) and Sarah (5th - age 10) needed to begin in Spelling You See: American Spirit (Level E) and I think that level fits both of them very well. Spelling You See: American Spirit (Level E) provides continued practice in the Skill Development stage.  The Spelling You See: American Spirit (Level E) student pack includes 2 student workbooks, and a pack of erasable colored pencils for the price of $30 for the set. At first we shared the pencils but I quickly found out that my children loved having their own pencils.  There is also an instructor's handbook available $14 that you can purchase separately.  

There are 36 lessons with each lesson broken down into a daily worksheet labeled with the lesson number and daily sheet.  For example - Lesson 1A for Monday, Lesson 2B for Tuesday, Lesson 3C for Wednesday, Lesson 4D for Thursday, and Lesson 5E for Friday.  In the American Spirit level, each lesson contains a nonfiction passage about people and events from American history.

In this level, you will use the three core activities of chunking, copywork, and dictation.    Chunking In each lesson, you are given certain chunks to look for and mark in a special color such as vowel (yellow), consonant (blue), bossy r (purple), tricky y guy (green), endings (pink or red), and silent letters (orange).  The student uses the appropriate colored pencil to mark the chunks given in each lesson.  This helps the student become familiar with many of English's irregular letter patterns.

Copywork The student has 3 days of copywork per lesson.  We adapted this for a 4 day school week and dropped one of the copywork days.  The process of copywork allows the student to take the words in visually and then copy them kinesthetically (actually writing the word - doing).  This is not a time to stress penmanship and copywork is not done in cursive.  This is simply a time for the child to see the word and then copy it allowing the student to become more familiar with the word

Dictation They are 2 days designed for dictation days.  We set a timer for 10 minutes and I would read a sentence from the passage, helping where needed with punctuation, proper nouns, and capitalization.  At the end of the 10 minutes, we count the number of correct words spelled by the student and mark them on the appropriate spot on the page.  If a timer intimidates you child, then drop the timer and just try to stick with the 10 minute time frame without it.  I know, Sarah, would have frozen at the mention of a timer a few years ago but now she is more comfortable with it.  Sometimes we skipped the 2nd dictation day with my 7th grader (Stephen) who often got the entire passage correct the first time.  However, Sarah who is in 5th needed all 4-5 days to really see improvement with her spelling.

Here is a video we put together of us in action during week 2.  


You can download a sample of American Spirit.  There are also samples available for each level.  
We love this curriculum!  It is so different than any that we have ever used before. The concept is so simple and easy.  Ther are no tests.  There is no preparation needed from the parent ahead of time and the instructor's guide makes it easy for you to check your student's work because it provides a colorful answer key for all the chunks.  I asked Stephen and Sarah if they wanted to continue using this after our review period and they both said, "YES!"  
You can visit the getting started page to find out where you need to start with your child. You can also download their Spelling Readiness Guidelines to help you decide.   Spelling You See: American Spirit (Level E) is available for purchase here and the other levels can be found here.  
You can also find Spelling You See on Facebook and Twitter.
Click the banner below to see Spelling You See (all levels) in action in homeschools.