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ELTL placement question
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I’m hoping someone here who has used ELTL can help me with placement. I want to use ELTL starting in the fall with my will be newly turned 11yo, reluctant writer, son. He is currently doing written narrations once a week, they are only a few sentences long. We’ve only covered grammar informally using grammar land, Bryan cleary and Ruth heller books.
looking over the samples of ELTL, I’m considering putting him in to level three because that’s when the real grammar starts, and it goes into diagramming. But that would be using it TWO years behind grade level, so I’ve also been looking at level four. Level four would certainly be a stretch for my son, but maybe that would be good for him? It covers grammar, but really moves into teaching writing. We recently had our yearly state testing which is making me feel a little stressed over how far behind in writing he is from the expectations. They wanted a 3-4 paragraph essay, my son wrote one long paragraph. I have not taught him anything about writing, including how to break your work up into paragraphs. We’ve done only oral narration (and his are more like summaries), this year beginning once a week written narrations.
Help me CM moms! Tell me it’s going to be ok. Lol
I think Level 4 will be fine…although Level 3 would probably be fine as well. My 13yo is finishing up Level 5, and it’s not at all “baby-ish” for her. The author recommends completing 5 before high school.
Both Levels 4 & 5 start with very basic narrations of a few sentences and simple outlines. There are no multiple paragraph narrations in the book, so if you’re really wanting to teach that, you may want to add another writing program.
I’ve only glanced at Level 3, but I believe it continues with having them copy their oral narrations as does Level 2. You are writing these down as they narrate orally, then it becomes their next copywork project. This is a great way to get started, but you could easily do this with the writing lessons in book 4 as well. My DD really struggles with narrations, so I’ve been asking her questions and “taking notes” of her answers. She then uses these to help with her narration. I’m not sure if this is against the CM rules or not, 😉 but it’s helped her a great deal.
The grammar in Level 4 is much more complicated than Level 3. Level 3 has very simple diagramming. My 13 yo is much more confident with diagramming than my 11yo, although both do fine with it, and neither previously had much grammar besides learning the basic parts of speech.
I also wanted to add that the writing lessons have been great for my reluctant writer! She’s still reluctant, but we are finally getting things down on paper. After my experiences with her (an my success with ELTL), I’ve decided to add a classical based writing program for my DC in grades 4 and up. ELTL is lightly based on these methods and we’ve really enjoyed them so far.
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