With a name like Logic of English, you might expect this curriculum to be a bit of a contradiction. After all, isn’t the English language quite difficult to decipher — far from logical? With the rules spelled out in the step-by-step fashion of the Essentials curriculum, one does start to see the logic in it. Based on the Orton-Gillingham method, The Logic of English: Essentials teaches that most words are made up of 74 phonograms (sounds) that follow 30 spelling rules.
So what exactly is this curriculum that makes sense of the English language? The Essentials curriculum is published by Pedia Learning, a family owned and operated company that seeks to improve English language literacy. We received a package that contains the Teacher’s Manual ($95), Student Workbook ($25) – this is offered in either manuscript or cursive, Phonogram Flash Cards ($18), Spelling Rule Flash Cards ($15), Phonogram and Spelling Game Book ($15), 2 sets of Phonogram Game Cards ($10 each). A complete printed package ($218.70) has everything above plus a Spelling Journal, Grammar Rule Flash Cards, Advanced Phonogram Flash Cards and a Quick Reference Chart.
When our box first arrived, I was overwhelmed. “There are so many bits and pieces”, “this seems too “textbook-y” for us (or is that me?)”, “where do I start” and “which of my four children ages 7 to 12 will be using this”? The Teacher’s Manual is the logical place to start. There are many pages spelling out each part of each lesson. I realized that my eldest daughter (12 years old), while still a bit of a struggling reader, was not the best fit for this (although I may include her in later lessons). My third daughter (9 years old) was also beyond most of what is covered. My second daughter (10 years old) would be a perfect fit. The 7 year old? Not quite ready for this — actually, he would do fine, moving at a very slow pace, and I wanted to focus on just one learner at a time. Feeling a bit better, but I’m still not convinced I shouldn’t be overwhelmed.
Now that I know which of my learners I’ll be using this with, it is easy to narrow down how to break down the lessons into what we will do each day. There are 40 lessons, which works out nicely to last a full school year or increase the pace to complete the book in a semester/20 weeks. This is the pace I was aiming for, but we are ending up somewhere in between. Some weeks we get through 2 lessons, other weeks it is only 1. I am hoping now that our year has officially begun (this week!) it will be easier to stick to the quicker pace.
Within each lesson, there are three parts – Reading, Spelling and Writing. This is the place you can really customize your plans to include just what your learner needs. Part one covers reading through the phonograms. Part two, spelling, is done through dictation and analyzing the rules that apply for the lesson. This part within the lesson may not take much space, but there are many pages devoted to how the process is done in the introduction. I really appreciate the lengthy introduction (complete with how-tos for each part) and that all the resources (spelling lists, lists of phonograms and spelling rules, etc.) are here at the beginning. The third part rounds out this complete language arts curriculum with writing — including grammar, vocabulary development and composition.
One of the biggest things we have noticed while going through our lessons, the parts are separated but integrated. We had initially thought to just do part two as this is where my daughter has weakness. She reads well (and voraciously) but spells awfully. Because of the way the lessons are laid out, the fullness of covering spelling is found in doing the complete lesson. The phonogram portion might be merely a review, taking just a few minutes of our lesson time. Or, it might be that this is one of the stumbling blocks or gaps and so we spent much more time thoroughly covering this part. Part one is where the spelling rules are covered. The same was found in the writing/grammar section. The activities used the words from the lesson’s spelling list (giving more practice with them) and also taught suffixes/prefixes, etc. in the vocabulary development portion — again relating to the spelling portion of the lesson.
The activities cover a range of options for all types of learners – visual, audio and kinesthetic. The optional activities are noted as such in the lesson and the type of activity is indicated with a symbol — making it easy to determine how to use them — or skip them. While many are optional, they are all quite worthwhile and (most important for my children at least) fun. There are games that come from the separate Phonogram and Spelling Game Book, games utilizing the various cards and some that can be done without any of the extra materials. On of our favorite games comes from the Phonogram and Spelling Game Book, Dragon. This is played using the phonogram game cards — if you will be playing the games with more than two players, you will want more than one set of these. One set for every two players seems to work well for us. Though I only had one child using this during the review period, many of the others joined in the games. If your child reads and spells reasonably well (not needing the lessons of the curriculum), the game book and cards are great just for practice and fun.
All of the lessons are to be completed within the pages of the student workbook. This is available in either cursive or manuscript, print or pdf. This is a consumable book — and at 480 pages might be overwhelming. I plan to utilize the pdf for my other learners and will only give them the printed pages for a few lessons at a time. The pages of the printed book are perforated to remove easily. If the size of the book overwhelmed my daughter, I’d only give her the necessary pages as she needs them. There is not enough of a margin to remove the soft-cover binding and place in a 3-hole binder though.
In case you were wondering, I’m not feeling overwhelmed anymore. The layout of the book makes this easy to teach. The games and activities make this fun for my learner. One of the best ways to really get a feel for how Essentials works – and how easy it is to use – is this video that The Logic of English has available on their website. There are numerous samples as well.
