The Writing Road to Reading

[margiecampbell]

Hello
We are homeschooling 4 children and the oldest will begin 3rd grade this fall. We have successfully used The Writing Road to Reading and are wanting to use Harvey's Grammar in the future. When googling these two curriculums, Cathy Duffey's review of your program came up. I searched your message board and couldn't find any mention of WRTR and how it is incorporated into the program; however, I did see that you have seamlessly merged Harvey's into your middle school "Homer" for grammar. May you please expound on how/where you use WRTR? I am so excited about everything I have read about your program tonight. Without doing any searching or fretting, God has faithfully led us from one level of homeschooling to the next. It seems as if Classical Writing may be our next step. Thank you for your help!

[KathyWeitz]

Welcome to Classical Writing!

The integration of a program like WRTR with Classical Writing is very simple. In Aesop, we use words from the weekly models and have the students analyze them. Since I was using Spell to Write and Read (based on WRTR) for example, I would choose words from the model that reinforced similar spelling rules/concepts to words my students were currently studying. We broke them into syllables, analyzed the applicable spelling rules, and added them to our weekly spelling list. The way the workbooks are written, this process can be used with any number of different spelling programs - the idea is to make 'real-world' application of your phonics program in your student's writing.

In Homer, we continue to study spelling in this way as part of a larger routine of vocabulary analysis.

I hope this is helpful. Please ask if you have any more questions.

Thanks!
Kathy

[margie campbell]

Hi Kathy
Thank you for the reply. I do have a couple of questions. Since you're familiar with WRTR I'll assume you will understand the context of the program...the spelling lesson, the writing lesson and the reading lesson. Aesop is supposed to have grammar, writing, ect. included so basically I will no longer be doing WRTR but will be implementing the method of marking and the spelling rules that we learned from K-2nd WRTR. Is this correct? The reason I am asking is because in the past I have purchased the teacher's lesson planning book from WRTR and it has wonderful lesson plans for each of these skill areas. I'm not wanting to do that this year if Aesop is going to become my new "general" LA program.

[KathyWeitz]

I am not really familiar with the language arts program that goes along with WRTR. SWR is mostly just spelling lists - we don't do the rest of the possible grammar/language lessons. Classical Writing Aesop does include all of the grammar you will need.

Now, whether you need to continue with the weekly spelling lessons will depend on the needs of your students. I tend to continue the spelling lists up through 3rd or 4th grade.

Does this help?

Kathy

[margie campbell]

Yes. I think I'm beginning to understand. I'm sure I will have more questions as I get further into it but for now I need to order and get started! Thank you!

[thehickeys98]

I'm so glad someone posted about the Writing Road to Reading and I hope I can get some assistance here! I have all of the Classical Writing materials here and have read through them several times. Our eldest is beginning 4th grade and we're starting Aesop 1 since we've never done writing before. I think if we start in August we might be able to get through 1 and 2 by September '11. I am signed up for the webinar next month and I'm excited to begin!

Here is my problem - we've never done the Writing Road to Reading. I had purchased it years ago and was just overwhelmed by the whole thing, so we ended up just doing Simply Spelling this past year which is copywork-based. I was hoping to start a a spelling program this year that was more rigorous but I'm totally scared of WRTR. I need something that is very teacher-friendly and easy for the child to use on his own. I would totally be on board with WRTR but I can't figure out how to use it! And I know you said you had used Spell to Write and Read, but I don't understand that, either.

Please please help me! It's the only thing keeping us from starting!

Thanks so much.
Karen

[KathyWeitz]

I think SWR is more user-friendly than WRTR, and you can even get the training course on video now (I attended the classes - so worthwhile!) I personally needed to learn phonics, so following that program with my older kids gave me the confidence I need so that with my younger boys I taught them the basics of marking words and spelling by syllables, phonograms, and rules, and now we are using Simply Spelling b/c it is so easy for me to explain things to them. I think it is the best approach, but I could not have done it with my older kids, b/c I didn't know enough. So, I would say that SWR/WRTR is teacher training!

There is another well-planned, tactile, scripted spelling program called All About Spelling, which follows the same principles. You might find it helpful.Take a look at that and see what you think.

Kathy