Climbing to Good English

Comprehensive Grammar and Writing Skills
Curriculum for Grades 1-8

To purchase individual items, please scroll to the bottom of the page.

• Christian values - solid instruction in language arts, research and writing skills without a lot of frills and fluff. Suitable for home educating families and for Christian school classrooms. Written originally for Amish parochial schools.

• Economical - Climbing to Good English packs a lot of value into very inexpensively priced teacher guides and student workbooks.

• Designed for all student abilities - The workbooks fit both slow and fast students. Each page has plenty of work for the average student.

• Equally effective in a single grade or multi-grade situation. - Climbing to Good English (CGE), is different from most others in that it is programmed for use in multi-grade situations.

• 3 to 5 lessons per week - Grades 1-3 each have five lessons per week. Grades 4-8 have three lessons per week. Optional supplemental practice pages are available for use on the other two days, or as practice work for those needing it, as extra work for faster students, or as an end of year review.

• Easy-to-use teacher guides - "A book is only as good as the teacher who teaches it." Though a teacher's edition can't substitute for the teacher, it certainly can help a teacher along by suggesting ways of presenting lessons, giving ideas for drill and extra work, and saving time by giving the answers. Review work, tests, and suggested grading methods are also given.

• Dual grade teaching guides for grades 5/6 and 7/8 - The publishers have tried to help these teachers save time by making it possible to teach two grades in one class session by combining two grades into each hardbound teacher guide. Both grades study the same concepts at the same time. However, sixth and eighth grades are generally on a harder level and often have more work than the fifth and seventh grades. How this can be done is easy to understand if you consider how the skill subjects such as arithmetic, reading, and English are taught. It is very much like building a wall. Each course has the same kind of blocks and mortar, but each is on a higher level than the one before.

• Encourages independent learning - "Doing work independently may mean making a few mistakes, but this trains pupils to think for themselves and is an important part of the learning process." The pupils are expected to help themselves do much of the work independently without much teacher help. The older a pupil becomes, the more he is expected to do this.

• Compete and thorough - Starting with a phonics review and introduction to basic parts of speech and writing skills in grade one, Climbing to Good English takes the student through to advanced language arts skills in grade eight.

• Placement - As Climbing to Good English is very thorough and tends to be advanced, if an older child has not had strong foundations in grammar and writing instruction, seriously consider starting with Level 2 or 3. A grade three student coming out of the school system will usually benefit from a quick run through Level 2 to establish confidence. Grade 4 and 5 students would often benefit from the strong foundations laid in Level 3. Call us at 519-925-9721 for further information on determining where to start.

In other series, eighth grade is usually just another step in the ladder of formal education, while for Climbing to Good English it involves tying together some loose ends which others deal with farther on. This may mean dropping a few things of doubtful value to make room for those of practical value. However, this should in no way hinder the student who chooses to continue his formal education. It may, in fact, help him even more.