We know that simply exposing a student to new information by reading or watching a video is not enough to assure mastery. If it were, our job as homeschoolers would be much easier, wouldn’t it? Children (and adults!) need focused attention and review to move information into long-term memory so it can be used to…
Are you convinced of the importance of writing across the curriculum, but tired of the blank stare you get when you ask for a paragraph on a topic your child has just read about? Do you love the idea of bring-your-own-content writing curricula like Write by Number or Sprouts but get overwhelmed by coming up…
One of the most frequent questions I receive about my world literature curriculum, Exploring the World through Story, is how it approaches the study of religious narratives like the ones in Levels D-F. Specifically, secular parents are concerned about how the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are handled. (For the record, I have…
English Language Arts, or ELA, encompasses seven main instructional areas—reading, and its counterpart, spelling; handwriting; vocabulary; grammar; composition (“writing”); and literature. With so many moving parts, the subject can seem overwhelming to teach. Do you really have to cover all of that, year after year? Yes and no. Yes, you do need to cover all…
Exploring the World through Story takes students from foundational writing skills like oral narration, copywork, and dictation, through sentence- and paragraph-level composition, and on to three-, four-, and five-paragraph essays. What writing skills should high school students learn after completing EWS? There are three additional writing goals to consider for high school students, especially those…
One of the great strengths of homeschooling is that it gives parents the ability to tailor their children’s education to their individual needs. Although Exploring the World through Story was originally designed as a K-8 program, placement is flexible; the texts in the lower levels appeal to wide range of ages, and the upper levels…
Because EWS teaches writing skills sequentially, you should choose levels based on the student’s reading and writing skills, not other programs you may be using.
I strongly urge you not to rearrange lessons in EWS. Within each level, lessons increase in difficulty as students work through the program sequentially. Rearranging lessons means that this aspect of the program, along with the built-in review, will be lost.
In general, I recommend that families choose the age or grade level of EWS appropriate for each student to assure adequate challenge and academic progress. If, however, the students are at roughly the same level in reading comprehension and writing skills, you can use the same level of EWS with both. Be mindful of the…
Because each level of EWS is carefully designed to build writing skills sequentially, I do not recommend combining levels by picking and choosing individual lessons. If your student needs to make more rapid progress to get up to grade level, consider accelerating through entire levels by doing more lessons per week. In levels A-F, students…
