I had the opportunity to review Essentials ~ Multi-Level Reading, Spelling, Grammar, and Vocabulary, 2nd Edition, by Logic of English with my child. This new, improved, and expanded curriculum covers three levels of instruction. This curriculum is designed for children 7 and up.
I will say that when I first began looking at all of the components to this curriculum I was COMPLETELY OVERWHELMED!! There was so much stuff to look through and figure out. As I began sifting through the material, I soon realized that even though there were many components to the curriculum it all fit together in an easy to use system. Each component is kind of like a helper.
I received the following:
- Essentials Teacher's Guide, Volume 1
- Essentials Consumable Student Workbook, Volume 1
- Consumable Student Spelling Journal
- Morpheme Cards, Set 1
- Basic Phonogram Flash Cards
- Spelling Rule Flash Cards
- Grammar Flash Cards
- Advanced Phonogram Flash Cards
- Phonogram Game Cards - Bookcase
- Phonogram Game Cards - Manuscript
- Phonogram Game Tiles
- Spelling Analysis Card
- Phonogram and Spelling Rule Quick Reference Guide
- Essential Reader Set (pdf download)
This PAGE provides an amazing overview of the curriculum!!
Logic of English Essentials guides the student and parent/educator step by step through each of the 15 lessons and three levels of difficulty (A, B, & C), with EASY to follow daily instructions.
Logic of English truly sets the student up for success! Placement Tests ensure that your child is placed exactly where they need to be to be successful in the program. Whether your child is beginning with phonics, and phonemic awareness or they are ready to master morphology, grammar, and composition, they will gain a great foundation. Since my daughter started with Level A, it was reassuring knowing that for three years my daughter would be able to build upon her knowledge using ONE style and method of learning. My daughter eagerly worked through Level A without any tears. This program utilizes a multi-sensory approach. Every day the student hears the lesson being taught, interacts through speaking, writes, reads, and uses hands-on learning tools.
For the Teacher
Logic of English makes the teacher's job easy and uncomplicated. From the Introduction which thoroughly explains EVERYTHING you need to know to successfully teach Essentials to the Placement Test and Pre-Lessons, I was confident in my ability to teach. Each scripted lesson is broken down into detailed, color coded instructional material for the teacher. Each lesson also includes side margin Optional Practice and Teach Tip boxes to further aid the teacher and student.
Morpheme Flash Cards
Morphemes are the smallest meaningful linguistic units of a language. In Level A there are 10 morpheme cards. The front of the card gives the morpheme and the reverse side gives the part of speech, language origin, and two examples of words containing the morpheme. While we only utilized Level A cards, in all, there are 109 total cards between the three levels.
Basic Phonogram Flash Cards
"The heart of Logic of English curriculum lies in teaching the phonograms." So what are phonograms? Phonograms are a one letter or group of letters that make a specific sound.
Phonogram
(phono, sound + gram, something written)
Phonograms are foundational elements of written language. There are 74 basic phonograms that make up 98% of the English language. Essentials comes with two sets of phonogram cards, Basic Phonogram Flash Cards and Advanced Phonogram Flash Cards. Since my daughter is working through Level A we only utilized the Basic Phonogram Flash Cards.
Spelling Rule Flash Cards
The English language can be really frustrating for the student. Basic phonetic rules teach the student one thing but then there is the exceptions that do not follow. This set of cards are wonderful reference tools to help the student remember as well as reference on their Essentials journey.
Spelling Journal
Phonogram & Spelling Rule Quick Reference Guide
One-Syllable and Multi-Syllable Words Spelling Analysis Quick Reference Guide
The Spelling Journal is an empty dictionary that the student creates using Logic of English phonograms. The two reference guides give students the ability to reference essential information without having to search through the lessons to find rules and phonograms. I had my daughter review these tools daily before starting her lessons.
Grammar Flash Cards
Beyond learning to read, write, and spell students will spend the rest of their elementary, middle, and high school years learning GRAMMAR!! Starting with the basics of nouns and verbs to how and when do I use a comma, your student will build a solid foundation in grammatical usage. I have always loved flash cards for helping my kiddos learn important information. We took grammar cards with us in the car and to appointments for her to read through to further reinforce grammatical rules. The cards made it easy on me because she was able to sit and work on these on her own.
Red Manuscript & Blue Bookcase Phonogram Game Cards
Phonogram Game Tiles
Does your child loves playing games!! Learning phonograms is a bit more fun with this game. Each deck of cards contains 74 phonograms. We played the game a couple of times but my daughter had more fun just sitting and making words out of all of the tiles.
The Essentials Reader, Essentials Reader Student Activity Book, and the Essentials Reader Teacher's Guide were accessed through pdf downloads. I printed two of these and put them in 3 ring binders. Due to the cost of printing the Essentials Reader due to needing color copies I decided to access it using the laptop and iPad. My daughter liked that the reader was on her iPad instead of being in book form. I really liked the corresponding activities that followed the reading selection in each lesson.
Using Essentials
My 2nd grader used Level A. Each lesson is broken down into 5 days lesson plan. Due to our family dynamics, I opted to take 2 weeks to complete each lesson. The slower pace was definitely for us. My child really enjoyed the variety of activities. She quickly became familiar with the layout and what was expected with each section. My daughter's least favorite section was Spelling Rules. According to her, "There are just too many rules. Why can't they just be spelled the way that they sound." My daughter's favorite sections were Dictation, Reading and Vocabulary. The 5 days for each lesson are broken down into similar daily activities:
Day 1
- Exploring Sounds
- Spelling Rules
- Review
- Spelling Journal
- Review
- Grammar
- Dictation
- Review
- Vocabulary
- Dictation
- Reading
- Composition
- Review
- Check Your Understanding
Final Thoughts
Overall, I was impressed with Logic of English. The curriculum is very user friendly for both student and educator. Having 3 levels in one curriculum was a huge draw for me. I would definitely recommend this curriculum to others. For those using the program for more than one child this would be a great program due to the multi-level set-up. It would be easy to teach multiple levels at the same time, therefore cutting down on time. The one drawback is that this curriculum is intensive. There is a lot going on in the curriculum and it does take a good chuck of time each day to complete. This may not be ideal for all students.
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I agree! I was really overwhelmed when everything first arrived. It made me nervous until I began reading through the tm. Everything is so neatly laid out that it is actually fairly easy to use.
ReplyDeletewell written review, very comprehensive.
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