kitchen table math, the sequel: ester's recommendations

Saturday, July 14, 2007

ester's recommendations

I had never heard of this series before:

Voyages in English. The Exercises in English workbooks look like they have potential for afterschooling purposes. The entire website looks interesting, actually.

Ester also likes Writing Skills from EPS. (I mentioned earlier that I'm starting with EPS's Paragraph Book, which I ordered yesterday.)

I've just noticed: Ester left two other resources in June, which I haven't had the time to dig into, unfortunately.


wanted: a good writing program
Susan S on her summer writing program

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've been digging into the Writing Skills book from EPS, also. I have book 2.

It works well with The Paragraph book. Book 2 is a bit more sophisticated than The Paragraph Book, so it feels more like a book pointed towards remedial upper-middle school, or high school.

It delves into formula, but is not so rigid about following a specific one like The Paragraph book.

The Writing Skills teacher's guide is not so much a book with the answers, but a good overall how-to for teachers and parents. I still like answers (even if there's more than one) when I get a teacher's guide, but this guide is really informative.

Writing Skills is very specific with its target concepts, (like The Paragraph Book,) but covers more ground in a more advanced way.

The Paragraph book looks deceptively simple, but it has revealed some interesting things about my son. For instance, book one is all about writing a simple paragraph about how to do something. They have to write several of these kinds of paragraphs with the formula: FNTF (which means First, Next, Then, Finally...)

My son wrote one on how to put toothpaste on a toothbrush. He wrote as sparingly as he could since he thought it was a stupid exercise. I kept telling him he needed more detail, but he argued that he didn't.

Finally, I had him read to me his paragraph while I tried to follow his directions exactly as though I was an alien. After bursting out laughing at my attempts to follow his directions, he finally got what I was saying.

He seems to have no sense of audience.

Catherine Johnson said...

You read my mind!

Or maybe I read yours.

I've been thinking PROCESS PARAGRAPH.

First thing.

Catherine Johnson said...

Ed said last school year C. had no idea what is or is not inside his reader's head.

Catherine Johnson said...

Apparently his paragraphs weren't incoherent, exactly, but they would have made no sense to the person reading (if that makes sense -- I think what Ed meant is that the sentences probably had transitions, etc.... but too much info was left out).