Wisdom Words

by Sharon
(Leavenworth, Kansas)

Product: Wisdom Words, by R. Avery
Subject: Language Arts
Levels Used: K-6
Dates Used: 1999-2005

Likes: This is a well-organized program to assist the teacher in helping students learn language arts through their own writing. The writing includes information that the child has been studying in other subjects. This allows for a natural review of materials across the curriculum. The child is then not only learning how to become a better writer, but reviewing what he has learned in other subjects.

It can be used alongside the Weaver Curriculum by the same author or as a separate language arts program. One teacher's manual can be used to teach K-6. that makes the program very cost-effective.

Each grade is color-coded and divided into individual objectives. This makes it easier to find your child's specific grade level in the big manual.

The scope of what they will learn is very broad. Everything, including grammar, is integrated into this program. Spelling is encouraged through the student's own writing.

This is structured to make a child completely comfortable writing anything from letters to poems to research reports. All genres of writing are covered in this program.

Avery uses writing to help bolster the thinking process. She explains how to help the child through a systematic writing process according to his or her skill levels and grade objectives.

Everything you need is here! The manipulative section is full of things to make for teaching various concepts. The section labeled forms is a clearing house of useful pages: graphic organizers, flow charts, more detailed instructions for concepts like clustering thoughts, pretty lined papers with different designs and in varying line widths, spelling dictionary pages, spelling success charts, teaching goals lists for the child.

Mrs. Avery also shares her skill in teaching and managing her own home schooling household with various bonuses like chore charts, personal goal lists for the teacher/mom and even a daily journal page.

The owner of this wonderful resource has the right to copy anything in this notebook. Yes, the pages are in a three-ring notebook so that you may copy them easier. She thought of just about everything. This isn't a workbook program, but she even includes some grammar worksheets and their answer keys.

Here it all is!

Dislikes:
A child really needs to work with an incremental spelling program, even though pulling spelling words from the student's writing is a good addition.

Cutting out and preparing all those manipulatives will take some time. There is no daily lesson plan if you choose to use this without the Weaver volumes. You will have to design your own lesson plans if that is the case.

It was harder to set aside a specific time for covering grade objectives since some took two minutes and some required much more time.

Though persuasive and narrative paragraphs are practiced, the different types of essays are not covered. The bridge is obviously made so that it would not be hard to add that. If you want to cover essay writing in 6th grade, you will need to add another workbook which covers this.