Logic of English Essentials Review

Reading, writing, and spelling have never come easy to my 11 year old son. A few years ago he was diagnosed with dyslexia and dysgraphia, and we realized that struggle would continue but we needed to find the right tools to help him. In fact, although he has made great progress in the last year, reading has been his most difficult subject. I was so grateful to get the chance to review a product that is perfect for dyslexic students. For the past several weeks my son and I have been working through Essentials 2nd Edition from Logic of English.

We received quite a few products from Logic of English for this review including the student workbook, the teachers guide, the spelling journal, the essentials reader, the advanced phonogram flashcards, grammar cards, spelling rules cards, morpheme cards, and the tiles.

When I first received this curriculum, I started scanning through the teachers guide. While it might appear intimidating, at first glance, it is jam packed full of helpful tips, lesson plans, and information to guide you in teaching this material. It is quite thick and has a tremendious amount of information in it. It even has notes on using this material and creating a routine and schedule.

One of the first things I noticed is how organized the teachers guide is. The book in divided into lessons and each lesson into Day 1- Day 5. Each day is then divided into sections with a little box that either says “all” for every student or “A” “B” or “C” depending on what spelling level your child is working through. There is a different spelling list, for each level, and a variety of activities included.

Another reason I love this curriculum is that it is not overly writing intensive. For children with a lack of fine motor skills or dysgraphia, there is ample opportunity to use the letter tiles and play games with flash cards and game cards. These games reinforce the phonemes and spelling rules without frustrating the child who has problems writing for long periods of time.

I’ve found this to be very thorough in providing information to help you as the teacher. There is very little for you, as the teacher, to prep. As long as you keep your supplies nearby you will be fine to open and go. I also like that you can choose to go at a slower or faster pace, depending on the needs of your child. There is a section on spelling analysis, there is another page devoted to teaching handwriting and another on the phonograms.

I decided to start with doing a placement test on our son. The pretest was quite extensive and ranged from phonemic awareness, understanding the basic phonograms, handwriting skills, reading words, and spelling words. He landed in spelling level B which simply means that he will do the “B” section everytime we see that symbol in the book.

We aimed at completing one days section of work each day from Monday-Friday. We found that to take about 40-45 minutes to complete. If this is too much for your student, or if they need more practice and review you could divide it up into doing the day segment in two parts – maybe 20 minutes in the morning and 20 in the afternoon. You could even choose to do less in one day in order to keep your student’s attention.

I received the Essentials Reader in a PDF format. This book is divided up into lessons just like the teacher and student book is and coordinates nicely. This provides extra reading practice and reinforces the phonics and spelling rules that the child is learning in his workbook.

The spelling journal is another really nice part of this curriculum. In this book, the student can see the sounds that are made, the letter combinations which make them, and the rules for deciding which letters to use! There is ample space for the student to keep a running list of words that fit into the different categories. I think this is especially important as the student tries to make sense out of the English language – it helps to use this as a reference.

Pros

I love that it teaches the roots, prefixes, and suffix.
It can be used with a variety of ages/grades/levels
It’s open and go – easy for the parent/teacher
It is very thorough
Hands on
Fun games
All in one language arts: grammar, spelling, reading

Cons

There are lots of parts – stay organized or there is a chance of misplacing “parts”
It might take a long amount of time to work through the lessons
It can feel intensive at times

I decided to organize my flashcards and letter tiles in a little plastic bin. I’m not especially organized, but I knew that if I didn’t keep them together they would get lost throughout my house. I put each set in its own ziplock and then stuck them in this little bin. The bin sits on a shelf in our homeschool area until the time we need to do school. This ensures that the little ones don’t get into them during play time and it keeps me from searching for them when we need them!

Overall, I’m very happy with Logic of English Essentials 2nd edition. It is such a thorough program and is perfect for reading and spelling remediation and for children who have diagnosed or even suspected dyslexia.