Today let’s talk about Language Arts, sometimes known as English. If your child is a preschooler, and not yet reading or forming letters on paper, check out our preschool article on teaching writing.
Learning One’s Own Language
It is rather odd to tell someone you take classes to learn your native language. After all, you are already fluent in it! But when we teach English, or Language Arts, to our children, we are actually doing several language related subjects.
First there is the basic skills: learning to read, and to write the alphabet. After this comes grade school studies of English. This begins with learning other skills like spelling and grammar, and building reading fluency. Finally, we teach how to write well, and how to read the great literature of the world. And this article primarily deals with these five grades school skills.
Spelling in English
There are many programs out there to help with learning spelling. However, I am biased against spelling… because I am so bad at it! People often say the more you read the better you spell. This is not true with me! Even in grade eight I often wrote said as siad. Even so, spelling can be a helpful subject.
Kimberly Hahn in Catholic Education: Homeward Bound: A Useful Guide to Catholic Homeschooling describes a free option for a spelling program. It goes something like this. When a child misspells a word, he copies it out in the correct spelling five times. Then it is added to his daily list. He copies out the correct spelling of each word on his daily list once a day. After a week, these words make it to the weekly list, and after four weeks, to the monthly list. Once the child correctly spells the monthly list words (not copying, but on their own) the spelling word is removed.
If you want a more organized program, I’ve heard great things regarding the All About Spelling program. It has seven levels, scripted lessons, and uses a multi-sensory approach.
Writing
For beginning writing (Grades 1 – 4) I have to recommend The Complete Writer: Writing With Ease, Four-Year Guide. This book separates the writing process into manageable steps for young writers, and offers a guide for assessing student skills. This instructor text also allows for complete customization of a writing program. You can use your own books and words for the narration and copy work lessons.I appreciate this, as it means I can focus on Catholic writers as well as use sentences from our Catholic science and history textbooks
The Complete Writer: Writing With Ease, Four-Year Guide is a guide for what to do and how to do it, with examples and year end testing materials. If you don’t want to customize the program with your own books, you can also buy the scripted yearly workbooks (level one for grade one, lever four for grade four, etc. The yearly workbooks are meant to be used in addition to The Complete Writer: Writing With Ease, Four-Year Guide, not in place of.
But like I said, the workbooks aren’t required to use the four-year guide, as the writing program was designed to be able to be customized by individual families.
Writing from Grade 5 and Up
In the later years of elementary, a child should begin to work on basic essay writing skills. At this time you’ll want to teach note-taking, summarizing, outlining, and how to write a five paragraph essay. While these are specifically English, or Language Arts skills, writing needn’t be confined to this subject area. Rather, you can practice skills like taking notes and outlining with science and history, or even other elective subjects like music appreciation. (Take notes about a famous composer, for example).
In High School, you will want to move from 5 paragraph essays into longer assignments. Make sure your child learns how to research, outline, write, and edit an essay.
Fluency in Reading English
There are three levels of reading. In order to grow in reading abilities, child must work on reading books in each level every week. Let’s go through each level and why it is important.
The first level of reading is Instructional Level reading. Instructional level books are ones that are beyond the child’s current reading level. Ask your child to read these aloud to you, and then when he comes across a difficult word, or if he mispronounces a word, you are right there to help him learn the correct pronunciation. It is by struggling through instructional level reading that the child in reading ability.
The second level of reading is At Level Reading. You know a child is engaged in at-level reading when the child already recognizes all words and letter combinations he will encounter. However, this reading is slow and requires a large amount of concentration. Sometimes help may be needed with pronouncing a word. Even so, he will be comfortable enough to focus on meaning while reading at level books.
The third and final category of reading is Below Level Reading. This type of reading not only is enjoyable for the child, but actually helps him build fluency. It is important to do below level reading because it helps increase reading speed. I recommend 30 minutes of silent reading time a day for this category.
English Grammar
My peers and I missed out on learning grammar in school. And it showed when we got to university. While I cannot spell, thankfully my years of reading did have one helpful effect; I have an ear for grammar. And I was appalled when my fellow students brought their essays to me (the writing diploma English major) for proof reading. It was hard to find complete sentences and coherent thoughts. So although in my school days I would have said “I am glad I didn’t have to do grammar. How boring?” But now I realize that I also missed out on a chance to learn the basics of the English language early. And I intend to catch up now as I homeschool my own children.
What I am looking for in a grammar program is this: parent-friendly, very clear, and not too time intensive. And I have found such a program. Short, scripted lessons. First Language Lessons, and then Grammar for the Well Trained Mind.
First Language Lessons Levels 1 through 4 are for grades one to four. Levels one and two are entirely oral lessons – so no workbook for those early years. For grades three and four there are workbooks. In these years grammar lessons will probably only take ten minutes a day, two or three times a week. Grammar for the Well Trained Mind is a series that can be used any time between grade five and twelve. There is one core instructor text, and four student workbooks that may be used in any order. One thing to note is that it may take more than one year to get through each workbook, but that is alright. It is meant to be a complete program – so that grammar needn’t be studied again after the program is completed.
Literature in English
Literature is the final area of English Language Arts. It is the iconic area of the subject. And one that is so often done so poorly that children learn to hate every book they study.
One of the main problems with literature study in schools is that the bulk of the work is meant to check if the child actually read the book. So you have to worry about remembering how many people where in a chapter, what a character said after a particular event, and perhaps come up with a theme before even having any discussion about the book. So while literature study might not be the same as reading for fun, we don’t want to turn it into a police interview!
Instead, try to make literature study into a more book club type of atmosphere. Unlike with a room full of thirty kids, you don’t need to ask comprehension questions to check if your child read the book. Instead, aim to invite a thoughtful discussion about what was read. When did a particular character show courage. What makes such and such a character likeable? Blogger Sarah Mackenzie has written two books relevant to parenting and homeschooling. These are, The Read Aloud Family, and Teaching From Rest. I really recommend reading The Read Aloud Family, if only for the excellent recommendations on how to talk about books with your kids to engage academically without ruining children’s love for books.
Also, just read Teaching From Rest too. It is really excellent and puts parenting efforts in the perspective of our faith!
Now, What Literature? (Grades 1-8)
As for how to decide what literature to read, I recommend following literature from or relevant to what period of history you are studying. Literature is the one area of English that isn’t skill based. That is, you can read and study some of these books as a family. (Through audio books or reading aloud to those for whom the books are above reading level). Although you may not do all literature together, it may certainly be advantageous for larger families to at least have some of the literature reading and discussion be done as group.
A quick note: I am not going to put full book lists here. There are many great works out there and you can decide for yourself what are the must reads for your family. But if you aren’t sure where to start my recommendations below give a good starting point.
Periods of Literature
So for Ancient Times (5000 B.C. to 300 A.D.) you could read books about the pharaohs of Egypt or ancient Japanese myths. For younger grades, try picture book adaptations of works like the Illiad. You could certainly include some Bible reading in this category as well. Aesop’s Fables are a classic that can be used for any grade level.
Medieval Literature covers 300 A.D. to 1500 A.D. Certainly try to find adaptations of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for younger readers. (Try Tolkien’s translation of the later). Retellings of The Canterbury Tales, or Le Morte d’Arthur, or even of Dante’s Inferno could be suitable. Another good idea for this is to read some of the early hagiography – that is, medieval renditions of stories of the lives of the saints. Robin Hood, and other literature set in medieval times, also work.
The next period of history and literature is Renaissance and Early Modern (1500 A.D. to 1850). This is the time to read some of Shakespeare’s plays (or adaptions of them). Some of Gulliver’s Travels may be interesting to read. You can also take your child through the great poets such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. There is also Catholic convert Richard Crashaw. The original Grimm Fairy Tales could be studied here. And also consider Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allen Poe.
The last phase of history and literature is Modern – from 1850 to the present. C.S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien all can’t be missed! Arthur Conon Dolye is also an interesting writer. Or perhaps Robert Louis Stevenson. Graham Greene‘s The Power and the Glory or another of his works, may be suitable for a more mature student. Girls may enjoy Frances Hodgenson Burnett’s A Little Princess.
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What books would you recomend reading in homeschool? Let me know in the comments below. Be sure to check out our other homeschool category posts!
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