Primary Arts of Language (PAL) from IEW

I am so excited to finally be posting this review for Primary Arts of Language (PAL) from the Institute for Excellence in Writing.  Not only is this my hands down favorite review product ever, but it's also my favorite curriculum for teaching reading and writing and I've used a lot of different things in the 15 years we've been homeschooling.

We received the complete PAL reading and writing package which includes all of the following:

Primary Arts of Language: Reading Teacher’s Manual

Primary Arts of Language: Reading DVD-ROM

Primary Arts of Language: Phonetic Games

Primary Arts of Language: Phonetic Farm folder with Stickers

Primary Arts of Language: Writing Teacher’s Manual
Primary Arts of Language: Writing DVD-ROM

All About Spelling Basic Interactive Kit
All About Spelling Level 1 (Teacher’s Manual and One Student Material Packet) By Marie Rippel

We also received the following MP3 Audios:
The Four Language Arts , Nurturing Competent Communicators, and
Dictation, Narration, and Public Speaking  by Andrew Pudewa
Poetry as an Integrator and Intro to the Blended Sound Sight Program by Anna Ingham
Reading Comprehension  by Adam Andrews
Units 1 and 2 in the K–2 Classroom and Unit 3 in the K–2 Classroom MP3 Audio by Shirley George
Preparing the K-2 Writing Environment MP3 Audio by Richelle Palmer


When the package arrived it seemed like it could be a bit overwhelming.  However, I popped in the Instructional Video (included on the DVD-ROM) and author Jill Pike does a great job of explaining how to get started.  I found it very easy to just jump right in and get started.  PAL arrived on Saturday and we started using it first thing Monday morning.  Besides watching the video, I also started listening to the incredible audios that were included. These are inspiring for all homeschoolers and I highly recommend them.

When using the complete PAL program you have everything you need to teach reading, writing and spelling.  While the different parts of the program can be used separately, they are meant to be used in conjunction with each other.

Because there is just so much to cover, I recommend you watch this free webinar for an overview and you can watch this 3 minute video with Jill Pike and Andrew Pudewa that explains where to begin:


Click on this link if the embedded video doesn't appear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmR5K-ozQZ8&feature=autoplay&list=UUHuYYtnncZw7SCOQb-lY0pA&playnext=1

I thought the easiest way to share PAL with you would be to show you what a typical day of PAL looks like for us. We don't always follow the same order, but this is a rough idea of how the day goes.

I begin by opening the reading and writing guides and setting them next to each other.  I have an island so I stand on one side of the island while kids are on the other side.  I have a white board on my refrigerator.

I usually begin by writing in our classroom journal (a composition notebook).  The kids can tell me what they want me to write and I add things that I think are important.

Next, we work on our writing lesson.  In the early lessons, every lower case letter is taught with a letter story.  I can't tell you how wonderful these stories are in helping the kids to remember the letters.  Here is a sample of pictures of some of the stories.  There are cards that can be printed for each letter.

Each letter has its own name and story.  For example, d is the doggy letter.
You start by making his head and then his tail goes straight up and you go back down again.

Printable pdf worksheets are included on the Writing DVD-ROM.  Teachers are encouraged to have students practice on a white board before moving to paper. (My kids love this.) At first, the students write in blocks without any lines.  Later, they move to writing on lines using a house to guide the height of the letters with a main floor, and attic and a basement.  (You can see what I mean in the picture above with the Teacher Guides.)  Once students learn all of the lowercase letters they move on to the capitals, then finally numbers.  

3 of my children are using PAL.  Ellie (almost 5), Jenna (7) and
Connor (11 with Down syndrome)

We then do our Poetry Lesson. (Sometimes we start with poetry.)  I read the poem (or have the kids recite it once they've learned it) and then there are notes in the teacher's book as to what to do with the poem that day.  You might have things to underline or look for, you might draw a picture of it or act it out.  I've never been a big fan of poetry, but PAL has really changed my mind on this.  For the first time ever, I am enjoying poetry and love the way PAL uses the poetry to integrate what we are learning.

A major component of PAL are the file folder games.    The Phonetic Games, among other things, really set PAL apart from any other reading program.  It took me about a week to completely assemble all of the games.  This included taking the book apart, copying it and storing the originals in a 3-ring binder.  I could have saved time by just cutting the games out as we needed them but I preferred to have them all set ahead of time (and to copy them so if anything happened to one I could make another one.)

I have the games stored in a file folder box that I purchased for this purpose.  I also keep our classroom journal and some supplies in the box.

There are 40 games that teach everything from phonograms to vowels/consonants, beginning and ending sounds, matching, compound words etc.  The kids like to play these games and enjoy learning this way.  

In this game, Mugs the dog is fed bones with phonograms on them.  As the child says the sound they feed the bone to Mugs (you can place a box or bowl behind Mugs to catch the bones and prop up the folder.)  

Another game the kids like is feeding words to the "monster".  This is not a file folder game but we often play this during game time.  Connor especially likes this game.

Below is a photo of several of the games.  In the back, is a beginning consonant game where the child places the correct letter on the picture. The game on the left is a vowel and consonant game.  The child drives the cars into the proper parking lot (vowel-consonant- or VIP parking space for "y").  To the right is a game where the child places the proper color word on the color.  In the front is a charades game where the child chooses a card to read then acts it out.

Add caption

In the beginning lessons, the teacher's guide tells you which games to play. Eventually, the kids are to learn to play games on their own (or with you or a sibling) for 30 minutes per day.

Another fun component of PAL is the Phonetic Farm shown here:

The inside of the tri-fold folder 

The backside

As you learn new phonograms, students place stickers in the farm to help them remember rules for what sounds the letters make.  It's really cute yet effective.  The back side (which also shows the cover) has a few jingles to help children remember which words use er, ir and ur, as well as rules for the sounds of y and much more.

Besides poetry, we also use story telling.  In the early lessons, stories are provided in the teacher book. After reading the story, you begin to teach the children about setting, plot, characters etc by asking questions provided in the book.  

The remainder of the time is spent on reading worksheets.  For most lessons there are 2 worksheets.  One usually involves coloring then cutting and pasting words or sentence strips from the bottom of the page to the appropriate box under each picture.  The second sheet is a reading sheet for the kids to practice reading the words they have learned.  This is all in preparation for their first reader.  We are just getting to the first reader (we finished lesson 21 this week) and I am just so excited for my 2 older children using this program to get the reader.  It's a pdf reader that is also a coloring book that you print out for the child.

Jenna with her notebook

As they work through the lessons they build a notebook with 5 parts to it: Poetry, Posters (these are coloring pages that teach certain rules such as punctuation and phonetic rules), Homophone Clothesline (a place to record homophones as they are learned/found), Phonetic Farm Word Book (printable pages that mirror the Phonetic Farm), and Reading Practice worksheets.  We also choose to save all of the work pages and handwriting sheets as well.  We keep everything in sheet protectors.  The kids love their notebooks and even took them on a recent trip to read in the car! (with no prompting from me)

As I've been working on this review, I keep wanting to say that "this is my favorite part" about everything.  I just love all of the different components and how they work together. It is a joy to use PAL and I am thankful to have had this opportunity to review it and use it.  I really feel that I've barely scratched the surface with all that is included with this program.  It is amazing and yet so simple to use.

The final component we received is All About Spelling.  This doesn't really begin until after you reach lesson 20 and so I've only just started this with my first grader.  Connor and Ellie aren't quite ready for it.  I can't give an in depth opinion of it since we are only just beginning but I like what I see.  Other crew members have more advanced students that did use more of the spelling program so if you are interested in more details please read the other reviews.

All About Spelling starts by teaching phonograms to the child.  There are phonogram flash cards, a phonogram CD-ROM so you can hear exactly how each phonogram is to be pronounced, a teacher's manual, and a student pack. The student pack contains a phonogram chart, tokens, phonogram cards, sound cards, key cards, word cards, a progress chart and a completion certificate. Also, magnetized letter tiles that you use on a white board.  This is a step by step multi-sensory program.  I am truly looking forward to digging deeper with All About Spelling.

The Basic Phonogram CD-ROM allows you or your student to click on a phonogram to hear the sound or sounds that it makes.  This is fun for your student and helpful for anyone not familiar with the phonogram sounds.

Before I finish, I want to point out that we have only used part 1 of PAL:Writing and Reading.  The Writing Program has 3 part and the Reading program contains 4 parts as follows:

Reading:
Stage 1: Foundations (as discussed throughout the review)
Stage 2: Activity Time (Students play the games and being with their readers.)
Stage 3: Discovery (Once the student has mastered the phonetic rules by playing the games they move on to discovery cards (included).  There are 30 pages of cardstock, each containing ten Discovery Words
Stage 4: The Library (The student moves to reading real books.  A book list is provided.)

Writing:
Part I: Printing and Story Summaries
Part II: Copy Work and Style with All About Spelling
Part III: Composition with Style


I hope it is clear how much I love PAL.  If you have any questions please feel free to ask. I do want to mention that I was already familiar with phonograms as I have taught phonics in the past.  I felt like this was a "no-prep" type of course, but if you have no experience with phonograms you might need to spend a little time familiarizing yourself with them, but I still think minimal prep time is needed.

The price of this is a little high, but worth every penny.  Connor (my son with Down syndrome) has really taken off reading with this.  Jenna (my first grader) is making great progress in her reading.  The pace was a little fast for my 4 year old, but her writing is coming along wonderfully and she is learning so much.  I love having the three of them working together.  We will continue using this for the rest of the year.

Purchase Primary Arts of Language as individual components or get the best deal on complete packages.  Primary Arts of Language: Reading for $69 and Primary Arts of Language: Writing is $89 (includes All About Spelling). Samples of each program are available by scrolling down on either of those 2 links.


Visit the Institute for Excellence in Writing for a variety of Language Arts curriculum for all ages.  I am so happy to have found IEW!

See what others are saying about Primary Arts of Language on The Schoolhouse Review Crew blog.




disclaimer: I received Primary Arts of Language in exchange for an honest review.

Create Better Writers

I think I have found the answer to how to teach writing. Create Better Writers is an easy to use, affordable writing program that you are going to want for your homeschool. Over the years, we have tried many different writing programs.  Create Better Writers uses a step-by-step approach that works for all types of writing. I received three e-books from Create Better Writers: How to Write a Paragraph, How to Teach the Five-Paragraph Essay, and The Home School Writing Action Plan.

If you're like me, the following statement could cause you to scoff. "Writing instruction does NOT need to be difficult." This is the claim of author David S. Dye. For the first time in my homeschooling life (since 1998) and the first time in my educational life (started school in 1973), I think I believe that.  You begin teaching your students how to set up their paper to write a paragraph using a pre-writing technique that focuses on one main idea for each paragraph.  Students practice setting up their paper and then delve into paragraph writing.

Watch this video to see what I mean:

How to Teach the Paragraph will teach you to teach your children how to write a paragraph starting in the 3rd grade.  If your students are older that is OK too.  This works for anyone (even adults). Once they know how to write a paragraph they can transition easily into writing essays, research reports and more. The e-book version is only $7.99 and comes free with How to Teach the Five Paragraph Essay or The Complete Writing Program.

How to Teach the Paragraph is 21 pages long including 2 topic sentence worksheets and a paragraph assessment worksheet.

The Homeschool Writing Action Plan presents the intricate subject of writing in clear and uncomplicated fashion. It presents a Summary of Steps, moves on to Pacing Charts, and finishes with The Road Map. After completing this study, your student will know how to write strong essays, research reports, great stories and intelligent descriptive sentences. They will also have a well developed vocabulary and be completely prepared for the SAT/ACT writing college exam.

This book is divided into 3 parts:

Part I – Summary of the Steps: We will begin with a summary of each step. The summaries of the steps are listed on a few pages. This will help you know, at all times, where you should be, where you are headed, and where each step fits into the big picture of your child’s writing.

Part II – Pacing Charts: Part 2 gives you sample pacing charts that will help you decide where and when to begin and how much time to spend on each activity. If you are beginning this program with an elementary school student, you will see how to slowly build you child’s writing skills over time. If you are beginning this program with a high school student, you will be shown how to quickly, but effectively, deliver the same information.

Part III – The Road Map: Part 3 will show you how to implement each step and give you strategies to help reinforce the writing concepts. However, this section will not give you specific lesson plans.

I like this book because it is written with homeschoolers in mind and really works for students of all ages (grade 3 and up). The one thing I didn't like about this book was that sometimes the sample sentences talked about vampires and ghosts.  (not big on that here)

How to Teach the Five-Paragraph Essay is the third book I received.  This builds on How to Teach the Paragraph using the same straight forward pre-writing approach. You can see the Table of Contents and view The Steps in detail. The steps are: List of Steps, Pacing Chart, Detailed Lesson Plan, Bells and Whistles, and the Next Level. The steps are covered in the first 36 pages of the book followed by 10 appendices: Topics for Five-Paragraph Essays, Sample Essay Outlines, Five-Paragraph Essay Assessment Sheet, Five-Paragraph Essay Rubric, Types of Introductions, Interesting Introductions Worksheets, Commas, Transition Words, Transition Sentences, Writing Portfolio Project-Cover Sheets.  Comprehensive?? YES!

I think this is the first time that I feel confident teaching writing.  I couldn't be happier to have found this.

Watch this video to learn more about Teaching the Five-Paragraph Essay: (I tried to embed this but I am having trouble with the html in this post.)

All in all, I highly recommend these e-books (though I think I would prefer physical copies-which technically I have since I printed them all.)  I am very glad that I had the opportunity to review this and I will be using this all year with all of the kids (4th grade and up). I will admit that Ryan was not thrilled with doing any of this but I can see progress in the short time we've been using this and so we're all going to be doing it. I think this will help me as well. (Now please don't go checking my paragraphs!! ;) )

There is a page on the website dedicated to homeschool teachers that you should check out.  It also includes a 53 minute video.


You can purchase How to Write a Paragraph (e-book) for $7.95, How to Write a Five-Paragraph Essay (includes How to Write a Paragraph) for $17.95 (pdf) or $19.95 (soft cover) and The Homeschool Writing Action Plan for $17.95 (pdf).  You might also want to check out the website for The Complete Writing Program, Idioms e-book and Standards Based Grammar (go to the main page and click on the grade level you are interested in.)

Read what other crew members are saying about Create Better Writers on the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog.


disclaimer: I received a free copy of How to Write a Paragraph, How to Write a Five-Paragraph Essay and the Homeschool Writing Action Plan in exchange for an honest review.

Write Shop Junior

I think most homeschooling moms would agree that writing is one of the hardest subjects to teach.  I was very excited when I found out I was going to have the opportunity to review Write Shop Junior Book D. Write Shop is an incremental writing program with resources for grades K-high school.  I received the Write Shop Junior Book D Teacher's Guide,  Activity Pack and the Time Saver pack all in pdf format.

Book D is recommended for 3rd, 4th, or reluctant 5th graders. Students learn to write and publish fiction, nonfiction, and poetry using a variety of pre-writing games, graphic organizers, and self-editing tools. The accompanying Activity Pack is required. The Time Saver pack is not required but is very helpful.

The Teacher's Guide walks you step by step through everything you have to do.  One thing I really like about the Teacher Guide is how detailed it is, including scripted conversations you can have with your child to get their creativity flowing. This is a problem for us. We just aren't all that creative. So these scripted conversations were a big help to me.

The activities are often hands-on and not just sitting with a blank piece of paper in front of you.  Even the brainstorming sheets are fun and age appropriate.

brainstorming worksheets

I have to admit this was quite overwhelming at first.  I ended up printing out quite a bit of it to get a handle on it.  Once I knew where everything was it was pretty easy to implement. I've shown a picture below of what the pdf Teacher's Guide looks like on the screen. It is not a typical one document pdf.  Each chapter is separate and you view and download them individually.

This is how you view the book.  Each chapter is a separate document.  

It is only $5 more for a printed version of the Teacher's Guide. My personal opinion is that it would be well worth it to have this in a book format rather than the pdf format.  If you have more than one student you would benefit from having the pdf version of the Activity Guide and the Time Saver Pack but with one student, I think in the long run you will save yourself time, money and aggravation by just spending the little bit extra and having all of that work already done for you.

A few sample worksheets

Write Shop Junior Book D has 10 lessons.  Each lesson takes 2 to 3 weeks to complete depending upon which schedule you choose.  Both schedules are included in your Teacher's Guide.

The required student activity pack is two books in one.  It includes 60 activity pages your child will use to complete portions of each lesson. Games, word banks, worksheets, and graphic organizers introduce children to lifelong writing skills such as brainstorming and self-editing. Part one of the activity pack includes the worksheets, part two contains the Fold-N-Go Grammar Pack (another 63 pages). An answer key is also provided. The activity packs are available in a tear off pad or as a pdf.  You can reproduce as many as you need for your family if you own the pdf.  The tear off pads are NOT reproducible.


Student Worksheet Pack includes

• Pre-writing Activities
• Skill Builders
• Journal Prompt Pages
• Brainstorming Worksheets
• Reading Log Forms
• Self-editing Checklists
• Writing Skills Evaluation Charts

Your child will make the following guides using the Level 1 Fold-N-Go Grammar Pack:

• Lesson 1: Punctuation Marks
• Lesson 2: Self-editing
• Lesson 3: Nouns
• Lesson 4: Pronouns
• Lesson 5: Verbs
• Lesson 6: Adjectives
• Lesson 7: Adverbs
• Lesson 8: Prepositions
• Lesson 9: Capitalization
• Lesson10: References

The Fold-N-Go Grammar pack is my favorite part of this program.  Each Fold-N-Go has 6 pages which I printed on colorful paper. Then I trimmed each page to the appropriate size, stapled the pages together and used glue stick to affix them to a colorful file folder.  The Fold-N-Go has a two fold purpose (no pun intended).  First, they are worksheets where the student learns about a new subject such as punctuation marks or self-editing and second, once completed correctly they can be used as a reference. I highly recommend these! Within this set you also get 20 bookmarks for quick review.  It would be a good idea to laminate these and keep them in a place where your student can find them easily.

the self-editing checklist

Teaching children to self-edit their work is key in WriteShop Junior.  I love this part of the program.  There are some fun ideas included for motivating your child to edit their work.

The Incredible Shrinking Machine activity

 Here is an activity we did to help learn how to narrow down a topic.  Emma made an incredible shrinking machine and we used various sized paper with post it notes to demonstrate how to narrow down a broad topic.  This is something I never would have thought of on my own.

The Time Saver activity pack is the last component of WriteShop Junior Book D.  It includes 20 pages of game spinners, cards and other props that you could make yourself if you wanted to but would be so much easier to just print or tear off.

Emma really enjoyed using this and actually lists it among her favorite things we did this year.  We plan to continue on with this when we start school again in the fall.

Download a free sample or view placement information.

You can purchase Write Shop Junior Teacher's Guide for $39.95 (print) or $34.95 (pdf), the Activity Pack is $39.95 (print) or $34.95(pdf) and the Time Saver Pack is $13.95 for print or pdf.  Also available separately is the Level One Fold-N-Go Grammar for $19.95 (print) or $11.95 (pdf). Visit Write Shop for writing programs for all ages or check out their Story Builder Writing Prompts.

Kim Kautzer, author of WriteShop, has been kind enough to offer 15% off any WriteShop Primary and Junior products in the WriteShop store (including e-books) using coupon code CREW15 at checkout. Offer valid through June 15, 2012.

See what others are saying about Write Shop elementary writing programs on the TOS crew blog.



disclaimer: I received  a free copy Write Shop Junior pdf teacher guide, activity pack and time saver pack  in exchange for an honest review.