Another Dithor question

[jenntracy]

i am looking ahead and see that Drawn into the Heart of Reading is only scheduled 3x in the 4-day units Preparing. i thought that we could finsih the level 3 book pack during that year but according to my calcuations we would not unless we did it 4x a week.

Do most of you carry on into the next guide where you left off? It just seems weird to me to buy a whole book pack level for a year, but not finishing it all that year.

i realize that in Bigger ,say if you were in level 2, you would finish all that year because it is 5 day unit and it is scheduled everday.

It is just confusing to me and i guess i would rather have it broken up a little differently . or we could just do more reading than what the guide says? do any of you do that?

Thanks

JEnn D.

[Kathleen]

The plan for DITHOR is that your kids will be working on their reading skills. They'll get the needed practice becoming a great oral reader at the younger levels. They work on vocabulary and how to figure out what a new word means as they're reading a book. They're going to be studying great literature with the story elements. And, my personal favorite is that they're learning to read with discernment and use God's Word as the guide for analyzing character's words and actions. So, with DITHOR the goal isn't that you "finish" the whole guide of all the genres each year. It's that you're working on all these skills with your child and they're learning over MANY years. It's not a guide that you complete and are done with. You just keep using & reusing it for YEARS.

It would have seemed like too much for us this year to add DITHOR to Preparing on the day the creative writing lesson was scheduled in its place. We were very happy going with what the guide had planned though, and liked keeping the time to complete the day the same. We finished 5 genres of DITHOR this year, and we'll do the other 4 and repeat a favorite this coming school year.

I'd say with the book packs you have several options. You've probably noticed that the book packs are set up so that they span several grades of reading levels. So, level 2 isn't "2nd grade" books, it's 3rd-4th grade books. Level 3 includes 3rd-5th grade reading level books. Level 4/5 includes 4th-almost 6th grade reading level books. I like using the book packs and having the books all sceduled for me to use with the program. And I think they're excellent selections! But DITHOR truly works with any book, and Carrie has also given many good ideas in her sample book list you can purchase for $5. So, you could use a book pack and then let your child just read and enjoy the ones that you don't get to in the year (if you thought they'd be too easy in a couple months when you start up again). We haven't had this problem so far. We used the level 2 pack of books when we were doing Bigger. This year as we started Preparing my son was ready for the level 4/5 pack of books. We're going to finish those and then he REALLY wants to read King of the Wind as an adventure to finish our 5 genres for the year. He's devouring books this summer so far, and I've put several books from the level 3 pack on the list of ones he should check out at the library to enjoy. Does this make sense? I'm guessing that how to use DITHOR will be much more clear to you after you jump into it. I know that it was for me...although I don't think I even tried to before we dove in.

Have fun with DITHOR when you get started!
Kathleen

[jenntracy]

thank you Kathleen. that makes sooo much more sense to me. i was afraid that if we didn't get to a book that it might be too easy when we continued the next year. But you are right about the reading level spans. I didn't want to purchase too many books. Also, when i went to scholastic fair last week i picked up some titles for future that look interesting but weren't on HOD schedule. so again , i don't want to overbuy a reading level when we can just check out extra reading from the library.

thank you for taking the time to explain all that to me. I am sure that it will make even more sense when we start using it .

Jenn D.