Thank you for this review! Would you have considered Writing Strands Beginner instead of IEW? My son will be in year 8 next year (Australia, calendar year) but I think the summary thing will be a lot for him too. Was considering Writing Strands instead of LLfaLE but I love all the other content of this!
I have used a lot of levels of Writing Strands, and personally, I am not a fan! It's very open-ended. My kids needed a formula, per say, to follow. They needed some structure to get started with. IEW offers that for them. However, IEW did not work in younger years for my kids.This is our first sucessful year. My 9th grader is doing 1B, and my 11th grader is doing level 1C. I've definitely seen it's a maturity thing!
I know Masterbooks is loosely based in Charlotte Mason style of learning. What about orally narrating the summary? Kids can verbally summarize easier than a written summary. And then do something else for writing that doesn't include summary. I think its trying to cover comprehension and writing proper sentences ar the same time. Its ok to break those two up and do them separately. I'm glad IEW is working for you guys. Some people find it too structual but I guess it works for others. As for bible, we just read straight from the bible and orally narrate. We follow Ambleside Online bible reading schedule.
On the worldview days, when you need to read the Bible passage, it works MUCH better if the students use the God's Story book. The God's Story book summarizes the chapters of the Bible and makes it easier to comprehend the story and summarize it. Also, I don't worry about grading this summary. I just want to see that my student read the story and knows the basics. I save the "grading" for the essay projects, not the worldview days.
Love this review
Thank you for sharing! I've been curious about this curriculum.
You're welcome :)
Thank you for this review! Would you have considered Writing Strands Beginner instead of IEW? My son will be in year 8 next year (Australia, calendar year) but I think the summary thing will be a lot for him too. Was considering Writing Strands instead of LLfaLE but I love all the other content of this!
I have used a lot of levels of Writing Strands, and personally, I am not a fan! It's very open-ended. My kids needed a formula, per say, to follow. They needed some structure to get started with. IEW offers that for them. However, IEW did not work in younger years for my kids.This is our first sucessful year. My 9th grader is doing 1B, and my 11th grader is doing level 1C. I've definitely seen it's a maturity thing!
I know Masterbooks is loosely based in Charlotte Mason style of learning. What about orally narrating the summary? Kids can verbally summarize easier than a written summary. And then do something else for writing that doesn't include summary. I think its trying to cover comprehension and writing proper sentences ar the same time. Its ok to break those two up and do them separately.
I'm glad IEW is working for you guys. Some people find it too structual but I guess it works for others.
As for bible, we just read straight from the bible and orally narrate. We follow Ambleside Online bible reading schedule.
On the worldview days, when you need to read the Bible passage, it works MUCH better if the students use the God's Story book. The God's Story book summarizes the chapters of the Bible and makes it easier to comprehend the story and summarize it. Also, I don't worry about grading this summary. I just want to see that my student read the story and knows the basics. I save the "grading" for the essay projects, not the worldview days.
I don't grade it either, but it wasn't even readable. So, we had to stop. I get what you are saying about God's Story.