Character Quality Language Arts

by Cynthia
(Alaska)

We used level B of Character Quality Language Arts from 2007-2008.

Positives:

-It's all the LA need in one place except Reading/Literature.

-It is meaty.

-It utilizes copy work/dictation but is still mostly a traditional curriculum. (One benefit of copy work for us is teaching attention to detail. The benefit I have seen from dictation is it teaches listening skills, it catches misspelled words, and teaches awareness of proper punctuation.) It is a pain to do for me but I have seen benefit from it so I keep on.

-The writing instruction is step by step.

- You can make the lessons as challenging as your student needs by using the different levels. You can have the different sections at different levels of difficulty depending on your student's strengths and weaknesses.

-The Challenge Checklist for the writing!!!! This CC reinforces the grammar that has been learned by having the student use it in their writing passage.

- Editor Duty is great for catching all kinds of errors such as subject/verb agreement, capitalization, and many others.

- You are taught the importance of good character as you do your lesson.

- Spelling is based on phonics rules.

- Spelling has a space to include review words either missed from the previous week's list or misspelled on the dictation or other writings.

Negatives:

- Lacks spelling practice (not an issue for my oldest but would be for my 2nd dd)

- Print is small and a lot of text. (I'm a visual learner so it is more difficult for me.)

- Correcting was challenging for me.


CQLA is the meatiest all-in-one LA curriculum that I have seen. However, I have discovered that I prefer to have my language components taught separately as you can cover the topics in more depth than an all-in-one. So we will be going a different direction from now on.