Week 18: Practice, review and master what you've learned.

Hi, everyone. What a great group of moms and students we have at Westside! It was just a joy to be back among the living today. I missed you all last week!

After a cursory review of adjectives, we devoted most of our EEL time to a fun (at least I liked it...) review of our sentence structures, purposes and patterns. I didn't get to inspect each student's paper for correctness, but we did go over the answers in class. You might want to inquire at home as to how they did on their own. It may help you discover which sentence patterns come easily to them at this point and which they find more challenging.

We also celebrated the fact that we've covered all 18 weeks of memory work. From here on out, it's just review, review, review. Yahoo!

This is the point in the year when each mom needs to evaluate her student's progress in the curriculum. Nearly all of the kids will be at a different point. The next six weeks in class will carry us back to familiar material but take us to a deeper level with that material. To give an example, we'll review verbs next week but go deeper with our charts and forms than we have before. I want to spend some QeQ time in class as well. You'll have to decide how best to invest your time at home: do you need to stick with reviewing the basics (first- and some second-year students) or should you press forward for deeper understanding (some second-year and most rising Challenge A students)?

As far as the sentences you actually use for practice, you can select from your EEL guide or any other place. One of my favorite things to do at home is use whatever literature we're reading at the time. I choose sentences appropriate to Rachel's level and dictate them for spelling and mechanics practice. Then we label and diagram them and, as time allows, modify them. This week, I hope to begin QeQing them, too. Even one sentence a day can result in much progress.

What I'm saying is that it's perfectly fine if what we do in class either goes much deeper than what you practice at home or looks different than what you're working through at home. My desire is that each family finish the EEL year strong for each particular child.

Moving on to IEW, I handed out Lesson 19a, the first of three lessons in a three-week project. Level A assigns a three-paragraph critique on "Ghenghis Khan and His Hawk," whereas Level B assigns five paragraphs. This week's assignment is either two or three rough draft graphs, depending on the level. We completed the Level A outline in class, and Level B students only need a little more information in order to finish their outlines. We also looked at the example Level A critique included in Lesson 20. We'll look at the Level B example (also in Lesson 20) next week in class. In the meantime, let me know if you have questions regarding the assignment.

Enjoy a warm and wonderful week!

Erin