Reading, Writing and Language Arts
- elizabethamiller0
- Jan 15, 2021
- 3 min read
Not only is this subject area extensive it’s also one of the toughest areas to choose curriculum for because of the importance of being able to comprehend and communicate well.
After wading through the waters of available curriculum, I’m going to share my thoughts and picks for language arts.
First stop, reading and writing. For reading, I wanted to be sure to use a program that was phonics based rather than sight word based. There’s tons of great research out there that compares these two approaches. There are also many programs that use a combination of these approaches but for my family, I wanted as pure a phonics approach as I could find.
The Noah Plan curriculum from the Foundation for American Christian Education (FACE) that I plan to use for my overall curriculum recommended The Writing Road to Reading. After just a little research, I found that there was a more homeschool friendly version of this program, Spell to Write and Read (SWR).
Spell to Write and Read is a pure phonics based approach to spelling and reading. The name of the program may strike people as odd but it represents the way this program works. After introducing the phonograms (the way letters and letter combinations can be pronounced), students are dictated words to write in their journals rather than being shown the word and copying it down. This is radically different from how I learned to read and write but it is the program we are going to use. I’ll post some helpful YouTube videos on the subject below.
Another program for reading and spelling I feel is worth mentioning is All About Reading and All About Spelling from All About Learning Press. This is also a heavily phonics based curriculum that I considered. It is different in that it utilizes more tactile items and worksheets rather than SWRs student journals.
Now to writing; the Noah Plan curriculum from FACE has a program called Classic Grammar that goes along with their literature program. It is fairly inexpensive and I plan to try to use it but there’s not much information out there about what it is like. (I will share the one video I’ve found about it below).
The other two curriculum companies I’ve looked at for composition/grammar are IEW (the Institute for Excellence in Writing) and Memoria Press.
If you’ve never heard of or looked into IEW I highly recommend it! Just listening to Andrew Pudewa is an educational experience. The materials from IEW are definitely on my list if I find I need more for language arts than what is provided by the Classic Grammar program offered by FACE.
The Memoria Press program for composition is Classical Composition. Refer to the links below for more information on this program.
It is worth mentioning that the Noah Plan curriculum and Memoria Press both rely on Latin instruction to aid in teaching English grammar. FACE actually sells and utilizes Memoria Press materials for teaching Latin and French.
Language Arts education can be overwhelming but the important thing to remember is that with love, support and consistency your child will learn to read, spell and write. The ability and desire to communicate is part of who we are as people and many, many curriculum programs can share testimonies of producing fluent readers and writers.
Comments