One of the best ways to reinforce knowledge is through games. This is a game I designed to quiz your children’s knowledge on the Revolutionary War. It’s a fun way to wrap up a unit or even to review information that you have studied in the past. Download Road to Revolution here!
Did you have fun playing Road to Revolution? Use this link to learn about the 13 US colonies and purchase Colony Quest for only $1 (reg. $3.50) Or buy all 15 of my learning games for only $15 at CurrClick.
Emily has used the Middlebury Interactive Languages program for the past two years and we have been very impressed with the courses. Emily completed the first semester of the regular High School Spanish 2 course last year. I’ve always been curious about the difference between the “competency” and “fluency” courses, so we decided to try out the High School Spanish 2 Fluency Course this year as she continues with the second semester of Spanish 2.
A semester of a high school Middlebury Interactive Language course has 90 lessons, each taking 30-60 minutes to complete. The Fluency course that Emily is using is broken up into 12 units for the year. Each unit includes 8 lessons, a review, 2 evaluations, and 2 projects involving research and writing. Each unit is focused around a theme: food, celebrations, travel, etc. and includes one or more topics of grammar instruction as well. All of the instructions for High School Spanish 2, written or spoken, are given in Spanish.
The student proceeds through a variety of activities each day, including watching short videos that introduce the lesson, matching, fill-in-the blank, and recording answers to questions. Lessons frequently include cultural information as well as vocabulary, grammar, and comprehension.
The Spanish 2 Fluency Course shows days in the the lives of teens that live in Spanish speaking countries. Through video, the student is introduced to these teens and follows them through various scenarios. These actors don’t slow down their speech or necessarily use only vocabulary that has been previously taught, leaving the student to pick up as much as he can as he watches. Each lesson begins with a video and asks the student to answer several questions about the content. Then the activities teach and reinforce new vocabulary and grammar, often using shorter clips of the original video. This creates an immersion effect, requiring the student to listen carefully in order to get the general meaning of the conversations if not the whole conversation, much as he would have to do if visiting another country. Fortunately, the video and audio clips may be listened to multiple times and we found that we both were able to understand a bit more each time we listened.
I don’t see a huge difference between the traditional course that Emily took last year and the fluency course, but she is enjoying this one more. There is still some direct grammar and vocabulary instruction, but each unit is centered around one main video vignette. Cultural education seems to be more incorporated into the story than presented in a separate, unrelated lesson. The conversations that the student listens to are very realistic. The speakers speak quickly and chatter to each other instead of the camera, just as in real life. This really stretches the student’s abilities.
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Emily is really enjoying her Spanish course this year. She often completes more than one lesson a day and is making great scores, which tells me that she is mastering the material. She says:
I like Middlebury a lot this year because they have really improved on it. I am able to understand the audio more and it repeats things that I have already learned, so that I really get it worked into my mind. The evaluations at the end of each unit are also very helpful because they pack a lot of the information I learned into the test. I find it very helpful that it is repetitive. I learn better if I hear something over and over again.
We are very pleased with Middlebury’s High School Spanish 2 Fluency Course. It is a good mix of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, with possibly the largest emphasis on listening. The teaching is challenging, thorough and enjoyable, and there is plenty of review. It is designed to be used independently, so parents don’t have to know the language in order for their students to use the program.
Want to learn more? Read my previous reviews of Middlebury Interactive Languages Spanish 1 and Spanish 2 or visit the Homeschool Review Crew blog to read reviews of other languages.
We have recently been supplementing our homeschool curricula with ready-to-use lessons from the Educeri Lesson Subscription Service. Educeri ....... Educeri a division of DataWORKS, is a source of online lessons for grades K-12. Over 1000 lessons cover topics in English, Math, History, Science, PE, Music, and more. Our focus was on the lessons available for high school students.
We primarily used the English lessons from the site and I found plenty of great material to keep Emily busy! Just the high school English category includes over 50 lessons with topics like “Analyze the Development of Theme,” “Determining the Figurative Meaning of Words and Phrases,” “Evaluate Influences on American Literature,” and “Analyze and Evaluate Multiple Interpretations of a Literary Work.” The lessons were meaty and very relevant. I really prefer that English courses, particularly at the high school level, consist primarily of reading and writing, rather than short lessons “about literature” or worksheets. I felt that most of the lessons gave Emily tools to interpret and write about literature, and to improve her writing skills in general. They never felt like busywork.
What is an Educeri Lesson like?
While the lessons are designed for classroom use, they were just as easy to use with one student. Each lesson is tied to a Common Core ELA standard. (While I don’t care about following Common Core, the topics were relevant for us, and were ones that I wanted Emily to cover.)
First, an opening page provides an overview of lesson content, usually in chart form. This slide can be referred back to for reference at any time during the lesson.
Subsequent slides provide practice in analyzing written material in regards to the topic. Typically, the student is asked to not only answer multiple choice or short answer questions, but to identify sections in the text that support his answer. Each click of the “next” button reveals another answer in red for checking answers as “the class” proceeds.
Discussion questions are provided in the margins for teachers to use, ensuring that students understand the terminology and are applying the concepts.
Each lesson took about an hour, but could be easily completed over two or more days if desired. The last three slides are designed for periodic review, although we’ve generally been completing the whole lesson, including the review slides at one time. A few of the slides referred students to longer works found online to use for analysis, but generally, the text was a paragraph from a longer work and was printed on the lesson page.
While a high school student could do a lesson independently (and Emily usually prefers to work independently), we did these together because I felt that discussion of the topics was an important part of the lessons. We found that most of the target literature selections were ones commonly assigned for high school reading, such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Walden, and Moby Dick, and other writings by Jonathon Edwards, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Edgar Allen Poe, that Emily was already familiar with.
Other Subjects:
There were only six history lessons, covering the American Revolution, Principles of Democracy in Historical Documents, The Cold War, and Great Awakening.
The history lessons followed a similar format with passages to read, questions to answer, and identifying key phrases in each passage to support the student answer. There was also independent practice with application and compare contrast essay questions. We didn’t use any of these, but probably will when the lessons coordinate with what Emily is studying.
16 Science lessons cover a variety of lessons in earth science, biology, and chemistry. Over 60 lessons cover topics in algebra and geometry. If a student needed extra help on a particular topic, these could be useful. The teaching style is very much what a student might see as a teacher explains a topic and works out problems on a white board or smart board in a classroom.
What we thought:
The ELA lessons were very useful to us. Unless a homeschooling parent has an English degree, he or she may not be entirely comfortable teaching topics like development of character and theme, literary periods, structure and tone of a text, or figurative language. These lessons are a very nice resource that teaches concepts that can be applied to any literature.
Likewise, although the other subjects didn’t include content areas that were useful to us right now, they seem like a good supplement to other curriculum.
Other Homeschool Crew members used other subjects and levels of Educeri, so be sure to check out some of their reviews as well!
Our latest review product is the Excellence in Literature Handbook for Writers by Ian Johnston and Janice Campbell. This handbook is published by Everyday Education, LLC. This amazing tutorial and reference book for student writers is actually two books in one, each with a a different focus.
Part one of the Handbook for Writers is an introduction to essays and arguments. Over 200 pages are devoted to teaching the student how to structure an essay. Campbell emphasizes that the thesis of a good essay must be “arguable.” If the reader, or the population in general, already agrees with the point being discussed, then the paper will be of little interest to the reader.
She then takes the student step by step through the writing of a quality essay from the introductory paragraph through each paragraph. The techniques she teaches are much more rigorous than the writing of a typical three-point, five paragraph essay. She encourages the writer to include paragraphs that define important terms, give background information, and provide detailed examples. She also instructs the student to outline the entire essay, including topic sentences for each paragraph before beginning the actual writing process. I am certain that a student who masters these essay techniques will produce exceptional writing.
Part two includes a more than 200 page Usage and Style guide that includes hundreds of tips and guidelines for grammar and word usage. Each topic is listed in the lengthy table of contents, making it easy to locate information quickly. Topics such as spelling, punctuation, parallel structure, formatting, and APA and MLA guidelines are all covered here.
A page from Part 2: Usage and Style
Emily is in love with this book! In fact, she asked if she could write the review herself—I’m not sure that has ever happened. Because she hasn’t been home much over the past 2 weeks, she didn’t get the whole review written, but did type up some comments on her phone and sent them to me from a mission/service trip she is on this week.
Emily’s Thoughts:
Before reading Excellence in Literature Handbook for Writers, by Janice Campbell, I was always not the best at writing reports or essays. I always had some strangely worded sentences, or kept saying the same thing. Sometimes I would even wander off the topic . After reading this book, I went back through an essay I had written and edited it, making it so much better. The book taught me how to make the essay arguable and also something that I wanted to read myself many times. Not just something that would be interesting to someone else, but also something that struck me as interesting too.
I've never read a book about writing and gotten so much out of it that it really made a difference in my writing. I feel a lot more confident with the information and tips I have now and it makes me want to use them to see how good of a writer I really can be. Not only will this help me with normal essays and reports, but it will also be very helpful with the writing part of the ACT and college essays. I can't wait to keep reading this book to learn more tips. It has helped me a lot so far, so who knows what it will bring in future chapters!
Debbie’s Thoughts:
We received the PDF edition of Excellence in Literature Handbook for Writers for review, and while it is formatted well with a clickable table of contents for navigation, I think it would certainly be worth the extra money ($39 instead of $29) for the print edition. This is a book that you will want to keep on your shelf and flip through for reference and that is so much easier with a print book. (I also tend to forget about my e-books since they are not on a shelf in front of me!) Other than that one drawback, this is a fabulous book for reference as well as actually teaching the process of essay writing.
There are many many programs available to homeschoolers for teaching math. CTCMath is an excellent online math option. We received the CTCMath Homeschool Membership for review, so Emily has been reviewing her Algebra 2 skills this summer.
CTCMath is a full curriculum for grades K-8 and is recommended as a supplement for high school. From my experience using CTCMath over the past year, I would note that the Algebra and 2 and the Geometry programs are quite full and didn’t seem to miss any topics as compared to other curriculum options. I’d feel pretty confident about using them as a complete curriculum instead of as just a supplement. The Pre-Calculus and Calculus levels don’t seem to have as many lessons and may be less complete. Since Emily hasn’t completed those subjects yet, it’s harder for me to evaluate their completeness.
How Does CTC Work?
(Please note that this is my description of the high school courses. The format of the elementary courses may vary—I didn’t use them.)
An enrolled student receives access to all grade levels. Within each grade level, there are multiple topics to choose from, with several lessons within each topic. This makes it easy to either work sequentially through all lessons or to focus on particular topics that the student may need to work on. Some topics included a diagnostic test. I found this very helpful (and would love for the diagnostic test to be included for every topic). Since we were using the Algebra 2 course as review, I could have Emily take the diagnostic test, then review the 2 or 3 lessons that she needed to work on rather than require her to work through all of the lessons.
Each lesson includes a short video and a worksheet. The worksheet can be printed, then the student enters answers online and the program grades the work. The videos very clearly explain the concept and are less than 10 minutes long. The worksheets have a multiple choice/matching format for ease of entering answers with symbols. A few lessons, such as those that require proofs or drawing graphs require the student or parent to self-check and manually enter the grade.
The program keeps track of progress and gives a grade by using an average of multiple attempts, weighting the first attempt more heavily. (The low scores pictured below resulted from a first score of 0 and a second score of 90-100.)
A single student membership includes both a parent account and a student account for the parent (so I could actually use the program as if I were a second student). The parent account allows the parent to see log-in times, lessons attempted, and grades earned. It also allows the parent to assign particular lessons as “tasks,” giving them a due date.
Our Experience:
Emily enjoys using CTCMath. The teaching is solid and concepts are clearly explained. The video lessons are just long enough. I appreciate that they don’t take a lot of time. Emily liked being able to print worksheets out, so that she could do her calculations on paper rather than entirely online. She also said that she liked that when she made an error, the evaluation would show her which questions she had missed and that on the next attempt, she was just required to resubmit answers for the missed questions rather than for all of them.
The program keeps progress records that the student can see and more detailed records for the parents to view. I can see when Emily logs on, which lessons she has viewed, how many times it took her to master a lesson, and the grades for her first and last attempts.
I also have the ability to assign her tasks if I want her to work on particular lessons. This was very helpful after she completed a diagnostic test. I would look through the test, note which concepts needed more work, and assign her those tasks.
A new feature that I love in the parent account is the ability to clear grades from particular topics or lessons. This can be nice if you want your student to have a “fresh start” and not to be penalized for previous performance.
Emily did experience one glitch. Although CTCMath runs on HTML5 devices and can therefore be used on iPhones, iPads, and android devices, Emily reported a bit of trouble using it on her i-Phone. The videos worked, but each time she started to enter her answers, she would be logged off and need to log-in again to complete the process. The program would give her a score of 0 for her first attempt, then correctly record her score the second time. This, of course, impacted her grades. I don’t know if this is a common issue, or just a glitch with her device.
CTCMath is a solid, easy-to-use program that we plan to continue using throughout the upcoming school year.
CTCMath Homeschool Membership offers a huge discount for homeschool families. Prices range from $11.97 per month for a single student to $118.80 for a 12 month membership for 2 or more students.
This summer, Emily has been polishing up her writing skills with , 2nd Edition, published by Writing with Sharon Watson.
Sharon Watson’s wonderful writing and literature programs are not new to us. Last summer, we reviewed Illuminating Literature: When Worlds Collide and continued using it throughout the year as our primary literature program. We also purchased and used the first edition of The The Power in Your Hands: Writing Nonfiction in High School. When we received the second edition of this high school writing program last month, Emily just moved to the corresponding unit in the second edition.
The Power in Your Hands includes two components: a student book and teacher’s guide. The student book is very self-explanatory, allowing the student to work through the exercises independently. (Of course, discussion of the completed exercises with the parent/teacher is always beneficial!)
Each of the 23 chapters focuses on a different type of non-fiction writing assignment. The topics include several types of persuasive essays (compare-contrast, logical, emotional appeal), letters, process writing, position paper, newspaper articles, biographies, descriptive essays, and more. Within each chapter are several lessons that teach the type of writing by analyzing others’ writing, creating outlines and introductory paragraphs, and learning more powerful writing techniques such as active voice, choosing precise words, writing to a specific audience, and figurative language. The book is really packed with powerful content!
Each chapter concludes by requiring the student to write a complete essay or other non-fiction piece, using the techniques and principles taught in that chapter. A checklist is always provided to make sure that the student includes the key elements and strategies from the chapter. This is a wonderful feature, because if the student follows the checklist, she will not only write a quality piece, but knows she has included elements necessary to earning a good grade for that essay.
A couple of the chapters focus on proofreading and common grammar mistakes and don’t require the essay.
The teacher’s guide gives instructions on how to grade the essays and provides answers for the student exercises. The current edition offers grading rubrics for every single writing assignment. I love these because they give concrete ways to assess students’ writing and allow students to see areas in which they excelled and areas in which they need to improve. Also included in the teacher’s guide are a year’s worth of writing prompts or “14-minute power surges.” We haven’t used these yet, but look forward to doing so after Emily finishes the student book.
Improvements in the Second Edition of The Power in Your Hands:
The student book is virtually the same between the two editions. The main difference is that each daily lesson is clearly labeled. The chapter includes many exercises, labeled 16.1, 16.2, etc. Since these exercises take varying amounts of time, the student might need to complete 1-3 exercises on a particular day. In the first edition, a suggested stopping point was marked by a horizontal line on the page. This was easy to miss. I often had a problem with Emily not finishing a full lesson because she didn’t know where to stop. The second edition labels each lesson, making the daily work much more clear.
first edition second edition
Another change is that the SAT essay chapter from edition 1 was removed (because the SAT essay itself has changed), and a chapter on common grammar mistakes has been added.
The teacher’s guide now has grading guides for each assignment instead of a generic one to use for all of them. That is a great improvement!
Our Thoughts:
Emily has really enjoyed The Power in Your Hands: Writing Nonfiction in High School. It is one of her favorite subjects. She has completed 16 of the 23 chapters over the past year and we plan to continue into next year. As a parent, I find it difficult to teach “how” to write, but The Power in Your Hands breaks down the process, explaining techniques that are effective for many different types of non-fiction writing. It is a very thorough course that challenges the student, but allows for a great deal of creativity in writing topics and style. I think that being able to choose any topic that interests her is one reason Emily has enjoyed the course so much. Completion of the book would equate to a very intensive writing course for one year or a more relaxed two-year course.
Connect with Sharon Watson:
Writing with Sharon Watson (Sign up for the newsletter to receive free writing prompts!)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WritingWithSharonWatson
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/writingwithshar
If you want your child to improve his vocabulary, one of the most efficient way to do so is to teach Latin roots. Olim, Once Upon a Time in Latin: Derivatives I, published by Laurelwood Books, is a program designed to teach Latin roots and derivatives and/or to supplement a more formal study of Latin. The workbook can also be used with the Olim, Once Upon a Time readers and workbooks. The vocabulary is matched up with the Olim readers, but since Emily isn’t studying Latin, using the derivatives book by itself worked just fine. If you are studying Latin as a language, however, I think that including a English derivatives program is a great way to ensure that your student makes those connections that will improve his English vocabulary as well as his Latin knowledge.
Olim, Once Upon a Time in Latin: Derivatives I is a 144 page consumable workbook that is written for 5th and 6th graders, but can be used for older and younger students as well. The book includes 15 chapters and at the recommended pace of 2 weeks per chapter, would take most of a school year to complete. The assignments for each chapter are similar, including:
One of the activities that I thought was particularly good was matching Latin words with their derivatives. For example, the Latin words malus, mala, malum (meaning bad) are part of the English words, malicious, maleficent, malice, malaria, and malodorous. I think this exercise will train students to dissect unfamiliar words, looking for their roots to help decode their meaning. (Emily has been studying Greek roots over the past year, and I’ve frequently seen her break down words to figure out their meaning. It’s wonderful to see your student actually using the knowledge that she has been studying for school!)
Emily really enjoyed this program. At 16, she went through the exercises at faster than the recommended pace. She especially liked the story writing and fill-in-the blank stories, saying that these exercises helped her remember the target words better. She said it was “too easy” and that she would recommended it for 10-12 year olds (which is exactly what the publishers recommend). The English derivatives were easy for her; there wasn’t much new vocabulary. The Latin vocabulary was new to her however, and I know that exposure to it will help her decode other English words. Although she considered it “easy,” she informed me that if I didn’t assign her this book next year, she would just work through it for fun! For some reason, she LOVES studying word roots!
Connect with Laurelwood Books on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Laurelwood-Books-173789899339380/
Read reviews of Olim, Once Upon a Time in Latin: Derivatives I Laurelwood Books’ Scripture Scribe series, Patriotic Penmanship, Olim Once Upon a Time readers and workbook (These look really fun!), or State the Facts, A Guide to Studying Your State at the Crew Blog.
As we are finishing up our school year, I needed something to give Emily just a bit more practice in Algebra 2 because I want her to be very solid in the subject before she goes on to pre-calculus next year. LearnBop provided me with a subscription for review that came at just the right time! The program was already available for classroom teachers, but LearnBop for Families is brand new, though. We reviewed the single student plan, but a family plan is also available.
LearnBop is an adaptive online math program for third grade math through Algebra 2 that is designed for helping students catch up in math, work ahead at their own pace, or to fill in gaps in knowledge. It is Common Core aligned and each concept is tied to a specific Common Core standard.
Getting started with LearnBop is quite easy. From the parent account, you must choose a “roadmap” for your student. Roadmaps options include grade levels (Grade 3 through algebra 2) and subjects (measurement and data, functions, statistics and probability, etc.). When the student logs on from her account, she will do a “warm-up” exercise, which is a pre-test of about 10 questions for each unit. If any weaknesses are found, the student will need to complete some “building block” exercises before beginning the unit.
A nice feature of LearnBop is that the parent can also set up a roadmap for herself. I did so, and have been working through Algebra 2 myself. I found this very helpful in assessing just how the program works.
The Algebra 2 Roadmap is divided into 5 units. Each unit is subdivided into multiple concepts. Within each concepts are several short teaching videos and problems (called “bops) to solve. The videos often included a “Common Misunderstanding” example, that demonstrated common errors and how to avoid them. I thought this was very helpful!
To achieve mastery of a concept, the student must receive a score of 90% or higher and complete at least 5 bops. I found that if I didn’t make any errors on the first 5 bops, I could master a concept in only 10-15 minutes. With such a high level of success, the program was quite fun, almost like a game. I found myself saying, “I’ll just keep going and do one more concept before I log off.”
Each bop has an option to ask for hints. The hint feature takes the user step by step through the problem. If the user completes all the steps, he receives credit for the bop. I really liked that aspect—it encourages the student to ask for help rather than guessing.
When bops are answered incorrectly, the user is also required to go step by step through a teaching sequence that will hopefully show him where he went wrong.
The user sees a progress chart after each bop that shows his progress.
There were aspects of LearnBop for Families that I loved. The teaching steps were very helpful. The progress charts were motivating. If the user has mastered a concept, he is not required to spend a lot of time on it to demonstrate mastery. The Warm Up tests identify concepts from earlier levels of math that the student may need to work on before completing the grade-level material.
Emily thought that the videos were very good—she said that the teachers “didn’t have boring voices” and that they explained things well. She also liked the way the program would walk her step-by-step through a problem after she missed it. She was also more enthusiastic about using LearnBop after she discovered that it would work on her Kindle Fire in addition to her (slow) computer.
We did experience a few frustrating issues with Learnbop. The answers to several questions were incorrect. Working through the required step-by-step help section might or might not register and give credit for the correct response. In one concept, after I had correctly answered 2 of the 5 bops, the program hopped me to a completely different concept, so there was no way to actually complete the first concept. If I hadn’t worked through the program myself, Emily might not have realized that the program’s answers were sometimes in error instead of her. I feel like Learnbop needs to do more error checking of their software. Once these glitches are corrected, it will truly be an effective and fun way to practice math.
