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I have to say that language arts is my favorite area to teach.
We do stuff orally, on the white boards, play games etc..
It's never just an issue of giving assignments and checking work.
I love it too much to leave it at that. LOL

However, I was thinking about making our Rod and
Staff english more independent as the kids are getting older now.
They'll be in 4th and 5th next year.

How can I or should I make the Rod and Staff more
independent for them? Cut out the oral work, board work etc?
English can easily take an hour some days b/c we spend so much time
doing stuff orally and on the boards. We also do more than one lesson a day most
days, depending on the subject matter.

Suggestions, comments?
Thanks,
Carly

You could have them read the assignment, do the written work in their notebook, and then be ready to do the oral assignment with you later. Would that help?

My dc (3rd and 5th grades) do their assignments independently. I do the oral drill with them each, which only takes about 5 minutes, then they do their assignments. It has worked out well for us.

I agree that the 5 review questions given in the Teacher's Guide at the beginning of each lesson are necessary to do together. The oral drill is also a quick way to see if the kiddos have the concepts. However, much of the rest of the lesson could be done independently, depending on how much time you want your kiddos to spend writing.

At the younger levels of Rod and Staff English (2 and 3), our grammar lessons take us 10-15 min. We do much of it orally. At levels 4 and 5, they take us 20-25 min.

Blessings,
Carrie

We do a good portion of R & S orally. We are on 3. We do the 5 oral questions, and then we do 2/3 of each section orally or on markerboard, and the last 1/3 of each section he writes. We're doing in about 20 minutes. I think "orally' is the ticket to finishing it in a more timely fashion - at least at our house.

In Christ,
Julie