Pretty much doing all the english (R&S level 2) orally is...

[yayadaisy]

Okay so we are doing Rod & Staff level 2 for english this year. Love it. Seems so easy to understand and teach. But here is the thing. We are doing it pretty much all oral. I am not having the kids write everything down as they suggest in the book. Mostly because I have combined my two oldest 9 and 7 year olds together with school and both kids are still doing TRL and not quite up to writing on their own yet (at least without getting most of the words right). Which makes it very fustrating for them because they don't know how to spell that well yet. But it is getting better and we are making progress in reading and spelling. It is just taking longer. My 9 year old does have a LD in reading and writing and my 7 year old just got a bit of a late start but has already passed my 9 year old up in reading. So instead of making them write and read everything I read it to them and have them answer orally to me. Don't get me wrong sometimes they do write things out, but for the most part they don't. Some day I plan to have them reading on their own and doing the writing but for now this is how it works. When they tell me orally they get it right almost all of the time! When they write it down not only does it take forever, they also get most of the words wrong and I can not even read them. I know some of it is my 9 year olds LD but at some point I wonder if I am holding my 7 year old back by not making her do more writing. It is hard to tell one they don't have to write it out and make the other one do it. What are you thoughts on this. I am also taking this approach to most of the subjects when there are things that need to be written down. I don't really think they need to write it all down they know it when I ask the questions and we are working on handwriting, reading and spelling daily. Is doing it orally an okay thing to do right now?


Sheila mom to six blessing from above!!!

[lmercon]

Sure, it's fine to do it orally. I'm doing the first sections aloud with my ds. Then he writes the last practice section in a grammar notebook. It's a nice medium.

[faroutback]

Hi, we have a reluctant writer and I really liked doing things orally, too. One person mentioned to me about the spelling portion of our daily plans that the writing of them is important as well for different reasons. I thought this would be important for us in regards to doing the English as well. We are using R&S 2 and ds asked why he had to copy/write all the sentences when he already knew the answer. At the time I didn't have an answer . After searching through posts about scheduling (for other reasons) I found one that mentioned that she had her dc only do one of the sections. I thought to try to adapt this and have ds only do a portion of each section where there is a lot of repetition in something he already understands. I am hoping this will help in several areas: he still gets practice writing correct sentences, there is less copying and complaining, we can stay in a reasonable time for the subject and still keep a love of learning while learning the essentials. I don't know if this helps but it's just a thought.

[my3sons]

I do a good portion of R & S orally as well and love it. I think it is good to work toward having dc write at least one sentence from each section each time. This is especially important when you get to R & S 3 which has diagramming. I think I'd have dc write one sentence from a a section/answer of your choice on either paper or markerboard to begin with, and continue doing the rest orally. You can pick a short sentence or writing part, and you can even write it on a markerboard yourself for them to copy either on paper or on their own markerboards, but I think this is important to begin to do. Eventually, I'd try to work up to dc writing a sentence or two for each section of the plans this year, and next year, have a goal of them doing either about a third of each section in writing, or doing 1 section in its entirety. This will ease them into it while teaching them the writing aspect of English. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

[kissesmomof4]

I did the first lesson orally with my kids because it was review for them and they are not great with spelling. I plan on getting a marker board to use later on. I am glad that others are doing this as well.