The Logic of English - the name alone draws you in!

I was placing a small order on Amazon and had not yet meet the $25 free shipping mark. Then I remembered I had wanted to purchase Uncovering the Logic of English. I added it to my cart and made my purchase. It was one of the BEST purchases I have made in a long time! I read all the way through to chapter 15 the first night. I was hooked!! I knew The Logic of English Essentials curriculum was something I really needed to look into further for my son.  The next night I spent hours pouring over The Logic of English website. I downloaded the samples and studied them for a couple of days. I was sold. I knew this would be a curriculum worth investing in. Wow, was I right!!

I love that The Logic of English incorporates phonograms, spelling, grammar, dictation and vocabulary all in one book!!  We had been using separate programs for all of these areas and it was getting quite cumbersome. To be honest there were days when one subject (or more) did not even get done. (gasp!)  The teacher’s manual is amazing.  I love the clear and concise lessons.  Everything that you need to teach each lesson is clearly listed. The spelling analysis tips in each lesson are very detailed. The spelling words are then used in the dictation, composition, vocabulary and grammar portion of the lesson. The grammar section analyzes words using questions that make the child think about the relationships between words.  As you can see, with this integrated approach, all areas are covered thoroughly.

Another great plus of The Logic of English is the workbook. The pages are clean and uncluttered, a big plus in our family.  The program we were using before did not have a workbook component. I was making my own worksheets, very time consuming.  Now it is all done for me!!

The Phonogram and Spelling Game Book was another big draw for me. We like to incorporate games into our learning. The game book makes this incredibly simple. The teacher’s manual will even tell you when to use a particular game in the lesson. Of course, this is an excellent tool for review, which The Logic of English is definitely not short on.  Each lesson provides optional review activities.  You can do as little or as much as your child needs.

I originally ordered The Logic of English with the intentions of only using it for my 3rd grade son. However, my daughter (now in high school) has always struggled with spelling. We have used several approaches with no success. I will now be ordering another workbook for her to use. The grammar portion will be a nice review, keeping all she’s already learned fresh.  We are a Logic of English family now!

I have been asked a number of times how I developed the spelling list that forms the basis for the Logic of English Curriculum. Though I believe that high frequency word lists are a powerful tool, in my research I discovered that not all high frequency word lists were the same. For this reason I took on an extensive process to develop my own word list which will form the skeleton of all the Logic of English® programs.

The Logic of English spelling list is based upon a compilation of five high frequency word lists. The first three hundred words of high frequency word lists correspond very tightly with one another, however beyond that some differences are introduced based upon the source of the words.

For example the Ayres List was compiled in 1914 and 1915 from private letters and newspapers. Due to the newspaper articles used, there is a very high number of military words and criminal justice words. Other high frequency word lists have analyzed children's literature, words used by international speakers of English, and school textbooks. In order to develop The Logic of English spelling list, I entered the words from five high frequency words studies into a database. I then compared the words and noted where the overlap was between words within the lists, combined derivatives, and arrived at a list of 1,712 words. These words will form the basis of The Logic of English series of curriculum.

When I wrote the Logic of English Essentials program, I desired to provide students with a systematic path through the high frequency words. I organized the phonograms and spelling rules into a logical sequence of introduction. Each spelling list within the Logic of English Essentials program was controlled for phonogram, spelling rule, and part of speech. This enables a teacher to introduce a new concept before it will be encountered in the spelling list. The spelling lists, however, are not organized by rule or phonogram. Rather, once a concept has been taught it is “in play” throughout the curriculum. This means that students will be reviewing concepts and need to employ critical thinking skills as they learn each word in the spelling list. It also provides a natural spiraling conception throughout the program. In order to provide adequate review of each phonogram and spelling rule a limited number of words not found on the high frequency lists were added to the program.

Each Logic of English Essentials lesson includes fifteen words for a total of 480 base words. (Every fifth of the forty lessons is a review lesson.) The 480 words in the lists generate thousands of derivatives by adding suffixes and prefixes and by forming compound words. These concepts are taught in the Vocabulary Development section of each lesson.

I have begun work on an early childhood program which will follow a similar process. We hope to use real children's literature as the readers for the program. Therefore, I have been analyzing the words found in books such as "Little Bear." The phonograms and spelling rules will be introduced in the order needed to successfully read these popular children's books.

We have updated three spelling rule flashcards.

1) A minor typo has been corrected on the TCH Basic Phonogram Card. The back of the card now reads "Three letter /ch/ used after a single vowel that is not long.

2) We have added the long /e/ sound to the "I" card. While writing the Essentials Curriculum I analyzed thousands of words. In that process I discovered that "I" says the long /e/ sound more commonly than it says the /y/ sound. Therefore the "I" basic phonogram card now has four sounds which correspond to the sample words it, ivy, stadium, onion. "I" frequently says the long /e/ sound in Latin root words.

3) It is also possible to predict when "I" will say the long /e/ sound. "I" says long /e/ at the end of the syllable before another vowel. We have added this rule to Spelling Rule Card 7. It now reads: Y says long /e/ only at the end of a multi-syllable base word. I says long /e/ at the end of a syllable that is followed by a vowel.

A review written by a homeschool mom who has been using a pre-release version of The Logic of English Essentials Curriculum.

Denise,

I have to tell you that Mom and boys are all loving doing this program! I
can see a difference already in my boys ability to reason through
how to read or spell words.  We have a long ways to go, but I'm very
optimistic.  And they enjoy it!  That's the amazing part! We're having fun
with it and I love that.  The boys don't complain or dread doing LofE, which
is SO nice!  Also, now into my seventh year of home schooling, this is the
first phonics/language arts curriculum I've been able to stick with
consistently.  I know we're only 8 lessons into it, but that is a huge
accomplishment for me, as the parent-teacher!  Other programs I've tried
have overwhelmed me in terms of parent intensity to learn and use the
program day in and day out.  This program is so simple to use that I  was
able to open it and start immediately, with very little prep time.  And that
continues to be the case for each daily lesson.  To think it can be that
simplistic and yet incorporate phonics, grammar, dictation, and composition
is very impressive and a wonderful to relief to me as a busy home schooling
Mom!   Thank you for all the time and energy you put into developing such a
great phonics/language arts curriculum for us!  My boys thank you too!

Jean
Farmington, MN

This is a wonderful article on why to begin by teaching cursive first. As shown in the article, cursive is the ideal form of handwriting for young students. It is always exciting to find articles which demonstrate the importance of teaching handwriting beginning with cursive.

From the Suzuki School - Cursive vs. Manuscript: Why Learning Cursive First Benefits Early Readers and Writers

The Logic of English™ Essentials program is at the printers!

We will be accepting pre-orders next week.

Logic of English Essentials combines the science of reading with the art of teaching. Teachers and parents discover the logic of English alongside their students. By providing strong teacher supports though scripted lessons, sample words, optional activities, assessments, and teacher tips, Logic of English Essentials promotes instructional consistency whether a teacher is a trained specialist or new to teaching the underlying logic of English. Clear, streamlined lesson plans enable teachers to guide students in discovering the phonograms and spelling rules without being bogged down. Numerous optional activities, clearly marked in blue boxes, provide additional practice without needing to locate outside resources and empower teachers to determine the pacing of the lessons. Assessment and review lessons include a plethora of ideas for review and reteaching. Integrating phonemic awareness, systematic phonics, reading, vocabulary development, grammar, spelling, fluency, and writing, Logic of English Essentials is a holistic approach to mastering written English.

This story was sent to me by someone who began teaching her elementary-aged daughters the spelling rules as found in Uncovering the Logic of English.

Wow!  How exciting to watch the CLICK CLICK CLICK in each of my kids
brains!!

They're off school today and we spent over an hour starting to learn
stuff this morning.

Not to bore you - but you're the only one I know who will understand my
experience . . .

I started by asking them if you built a house out of bricks and left out
5 bricks on the first layer, what would happen in a couple of years? They
got the relationship between the house and their own learning.  This
prepared Callie to understand that learning this is also useful to her.
I explained it to her like this:  You know how a pinball machine works?
If you just hit the ball from where it lies, it doesn't go very far; but
if you pull back the trigger and let go, the ball goes flying!  That's
why we're going to "back up" a little bit and teach you the basics --
that way, with how smart you already are, there are no limits!

With the house concept in mind, I asked what words are made of.  Callie
said, "Letters . . . " a moment of thought ". . . and sounds!"  With
that, we learned what phonograms are and learned how to write the sound
symbols for A B and C on whiteboards.  After learning all the A sounds, I
had them guess how to write the sound(s) for B.  Their mistakes made for
a great learning tool (consonants don't use symbols above them -- only
vowels do.  B only has one sound. After C we took a "break" and learned
spelling rule #1.

We then continued on single-letter phonograms to F, where we learned
about voiced & unvoiced pairs and skipped to S to reinforce that idea.
Sadie got indignant when she realized no one told her S says /z/ in
kindergarten, "Those teachers are mean!"  I was able to explain that not
even the TEACHERS know this stuff -- so they're not mean, just
uninformed.  :)

We stopped at that point, then Callie noticed the word Logic on your book
cover and said, "The G says /j/ because it's followed by an I . . . " big
smile . . . questioning look from mom . . . "I read ahead to the next
rule!"  (I started writing the rules on index cards.)

Then Sadie asked if she could read me her fairy book.  She got to the
fairy's name and said, "MOM, LOOK!  Her name is Alice -- the C says /s/
because of the E!"

What joy!  I know from reading your stuff that we're in the honeymoon
phase and we might fall off the excitement wagon -- but I really want to
get through this stuff with them.  Thank you for the suggestions on your
website to keep it fun.

In the past sixty years China has successfully reversed the literacy crisis that ravaged their nation going from less than 20% of the public being able to read prior to 1950 to 93% literate in 2002 (UNESCO). In addition, China is continually raising the standard for calling their citizens literate. In the meantime, the U.S. has continued to ignore the most fundamental skill needed to compete in the new economy - reading.

In the same time frame, reading scores in the U.S. have remained the same. According to the National Adult Literacy Assessment, only 13% of adults are proficient while 43% read at the lowest levels of literacy or are illiterate. The same is true of literacy rates for 17-year-olds (NAEP). Today only 39% of 17-year-olds can read and understand complicated information and only 6% read at the level necessary to learn from specialized documents such as scientific texts.

With labor and manufacturing jobs disappearing, the U.S. is failing to keep up in the world economy that we built. The  economic success of nations is now being defined by the educational levels of their citizens, and China has understood that literacy is the foundation. Rather than making excuses that their literacy problems stemmed from poverty or the fact that they have arguably the most complicated writing system in the world, China determined to teach its citizens, young and old, to read.

While the U.S. is beginning to wake up, our focus is wrong. Daily news reports talk about the importance of STEM education (science, technology, engineering, and math). However, our deepest problems do not begin in our math or science classrooms but in our reading classrooms. Students are not prepared to read the texts they are presented.

In addition, many gifted math and science students struggle with reading and spelling skills because they have not been taught in a manner that respects their strengths. These logically minded students thrive in math and science because the answers are clear cut: one plus one always equals two. However, for the past eighty years reading has been widely taught in a haphazard fashion, where students are either asked to memorize sight words by rote or to memorize countless exceptions.

There is a simple solution that would improve the ability of our nation’s students to read and write. We need to provide students with a complete picture of the English code and stop telling students, “that is an exception,” whenever we do not know the answer. There are rules which logically explain how to read and spell 98% of English words.

It is time Americans stop making excuses that the problem with reading resides in the illogical nature of our language or with poverty. The real problem is that most of us have no idea why English words are spelled in a particular manner, yet this information is foundational to learning how to read proficiently. It has been shown that with eighty hours of systematic teaching almost 100% of students can learn how to read (NIHCD).

By providing students with the tools which explain 98% of English words, we will drastically reduce the number of students in remedial reading classes, increase students’ ability to read and comprehend texts, prevent unnecessary discouragement in our nation’s gifted students, and free up funds currently used for remedial reading to be used on subject areas vital to our society such as math, science, and technology.

To unlock the potential of American students and raise up a generation of mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and doctors, we must begin to teach reading logically and systematically so that all students will learn to read at the highest levels of proficiency.