I have to say right away, I personally think that the company Institute for Excellence in Writing is pretty awesome, and *I* thought it would be just great to learn with their Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization, I was NOT so very sure about the kids. As you know, I have all boys. Boys? Poetry? I didn’t know how well that mix would be.
First, here is what Institute for Excellence in Writing provided to us for the purpose of this review:
- Spiral bound Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization teacher’s book
- An attractive case containing five CD’s which have all of the poems and speeches for each of the five levels in this course
- 7 audio MP3’s
- The DVD “Nurturing Competent Communicators”
- downloadable e-book of the Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization Student Book
The Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization teacher’s manual is very thorough!
Institute for Excellence in Writing very generously also included in our package a spiral bound copy of the student book, which you may, if you wish to have it already pre-printed and bound, order here.
Right off the bat is a blue page with special instructions for the owner of this curriculum to go to the IEW website and log into our account. At that time I was able to check off the e-resources I wanted to download. It gives full instructions as to how to get exactly which resources we would be using with the Linguistics through Poetry Memorization course of study. This is where we were able to download the seven MP3’s:
- Nurturing Competent Communicators
- Mastery Learning, Ability Development, and Individualized Education
- Ten Thousand Times and Then Begins Understanding
- On Listening
- On Speaking
- On Reading
- On Writing
As the owner of this course of study, we were also able to download the Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization Student pages for personal use only, within our immediate family or classroom. I believe strongly that this is an extremely generous copy-wright policy.
I found it very interesting when reading the Teacher Manual to see how much I had never really thought of. the author Andrew Pudewa, begins by talking about why memorization is very important, especially in this day and age when students are not being taught to use it very much anymore. I don’t know why it is considered useless, given that every single child I have ever known can recite or sing lyrics from a song or a commercial they heard years ago, and in the case of at least a couple of my kids, recite lines from cartoons or movies that are so old I don’t even remember them!
Not only do we read about the “why” of memorization, we read about the “science” of memorization. It helps with brain development. I learned this a long time ago with my oldest child who was born with brain damage as a result of his birth mother’s alcohol consumption. When I would break Bible verses up into sections and give them a cadence such as one might hear in a poem, he could do it. He memorized the whole of Psalm 23 when he was quite young because we did that.
In the course Linguistics through Poetry Memorization, the whole idea is to begin with the first poem in level one (there are five levels), which starts with short, enjoyable poems. This way, one can begin at any age to gain mastery. This plan is similar to the Suzuki plan for music instruction, something I became familiar with through friends who’s children learn with that method.
To teach the program, the teacher and the student(s) recite one poem together several times a day. They can use the audio CD to recite along with, which will help with correct pronunciation. Using the downloaded student book allows for each student to put together their own book of memorized poetry into a notebook. I like this because then they each have the pre-printed chart for checking off all poems memorized to date. In order to remember previous poems, whenever a new one is started, and recited several times a day, all previously learned poems should be recited at least once per day. Hey, I just realized that this method also will cause ME to learn all of the poems and speeches to mastery, won’t it! How nice!
Another positive about having the downloadable student pages is that several poems come with a coloring page for those who may enjoy personalizing that poem.
We like very much that there is a wide variety of poems and speeches to appeal to all of us. There are poems for the young, poems I enjoy, and definitely poems my boys can enjoy, too! I imagine this course will take us a good long time to complete, but I like that, myself. We enjoy things that we can take our time with, and really dig in deep. I think in the end, we will (including me!) have learned and memorized all 20 poems in each of the first four levels, and the twenty speeches in level five!
To see what my crew mates thought of this wonderful resource, please click the banner below.
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