We’re raising a bilingual child in France, in a non-bilingual school within the French school system, but we want her to fully develop her English literacy skills. So, we’re working with her English teachers at school to choose materials appropriate for her level, that she can do during her ‘independent work contract’ time while other children are learning English at their level.
Her teachers have a ‘Word Study’ book (vocab and spelling development) that they’ll probably have her work in next year. I was looking for some more wholistic ‘language arts’ materials that would help her develop her writing skills more fully (she loves to write in both languages and is prolific).
What I would choose for her for the next year (grade 4) are these:
1. ‘Climbing to Good English‘, levels 3 and 4 (selected parts of level 3 this summer and level 4 at school)
2. ‘Reading Comprehension, Grade 5‘, by Spectrum publishers
3. ‘Writing, Grade 5‘, by Spectrum publishers
More on ‘Climbing to Good English’ –
I really like the ‘Climbing to Good English’ series, which lives up to the publisher’s description of being more advanced than most school grade levels. What I like most is that it’s a very integrated Language Arts program – spelling, grammar, writing – and it’s full of exercises that are ‘real life’ (if you live in a rural setting! 
)…and wholesome, and full of relationships between friends and family members…teaching ‘values’ in the process of teaching English. Not that I’m big on the need of materials that do this, but I was surprised at how refreshing I found it…how much I enjoyed reading through all the texts in the workbooks. This series is used in Amish schools, so there are very occassional uses of specifically Christian vocabulary; we’re comfortable with discussing the content of any such exercises as they come up as part of our daughter’s general cultural and religious education.
To use the ‘Climbing to Good English’ book 3, I’m changing the instructions for all of the ‘respelling’ exercises which are intended to teach children how to spell using an older version of dictionary spellings…not necessary in my book. However, the word lists that are used for these exercises are very good for focusing on sounds and their spellings, so instead, I’m having my daughter do ’sound sorting’ and ‘alternative spelling’ exercises that I sketch out for her, using these same word lists. (The ’sound sorting’ and ‘alternative spelling’ exercises are those I learned from ‘Phono-Graphix/Reading Reflex‘ materials, for teaching the ‘advanced code’ of English.)
I think the ‘level 4′ book is more appropriate to where she is in general, but there are a lot of important basics covered in book 3 that she hasn’t ever dealt with in her English instruction at school, such as recognizing and fixing run-on sentences, identification of parts of sentences, writing dialog, some punctuation and capitalization rules, plus stylistic things like choosing ‘good titles’ and ‘good beginning’ and ‘good ending’ sentences for stories. I’m choosing which exercises she should do. One could use the ‘Chapter Tests’ at the back of the book as assessment tools to decide where to focus a child’s work, if this book were used for remediation as I’m using it.
One can see some examples of the pages of these workbooks on using the links above. It’s notable that they’re ‘old fashioned’ in appearance, which might dissuade a parent or child…but I took others’ advice to not be disuaded by the lack of modern illustrations and up-to-date appearances as in some more readily available and modern language arts workbooks–I’ve bought and read some of these and have found some very difficult to read. I actually find these ‘Climbing’ workbooks more legible and more nicely organized, as they aren’t trying to squish a single topic on each page.
The series is produced by Pathway Publishers, SchoolAid. I bought my copies from JOY Center of Learning, located in Canada. Shipping to the US takes a bit of time…I think it was about 2 weeks for delivery. I don’t recall whether they even offer to ship to Europe.
More on the Spectrum books –
The Spectrum Reading Comprehension workbook has a mix of fiction and non-fiction, one-page texts, with comprehension, dictionary skills, word study and vocabulary questions on each facing page. Particularly attractive to me is the exposure to American culture through the fairly multicultural reading selections. The more modern and multicultural content help to balance the rather narrow, rural Americana content of the ‘Climbing’ series.
The Spectrum Writing workbook is also a good complement to the ‘Climbing’ series (which is quite strong in developing writing skills). What one gets with this workbook is more mainstream examples and topics and a modern, global presentation of the Writing process, the explicit teaching of which I’m a big fan. After looking at writing good paragraphs (topic sentences & supporting details) and introducing the steps of the writing process in the first chapter, each subsequent chapter leads the child through the process while doing different kinds of writing (Friendly letters, stories, etc). I particularly like the repetition of the writing process, the introduction of different kinds of prewriting exercises and the emphasis on editing and rewriting.
An advantage of these books is that they’re easy to purchase online, for example through Amazon, but one can also find them in big bookstores in the US, so it’s possible to look at actual lessons and see what suits a particular child.
