We believe in learning the ESSENTIALS of words, numbers, and sentences.
The Essentials Program
Why do people in other countries know several languages and on average we do not?
It is because we do not know our own language. We do not know the basic grammar of the English language because it is no longer taught in schools. You have to know your own language in order to learn other languages. Essentials not only teaches excellent grammar skills, but it lays the foundation for acquiring a foreign language.
The second step in learning anything is to sort, compare, and understand the words and basic parts.
A few items that students in Essentials learn:
- Capitalization and punctuation
- Eight parts of speech
- 112 sentence patterns
- Sentence diagramming
- How to analyse sentences by purpose, structure, patterns, and speech parts
- Writing structure and style through the Institute for Excellence in Writing
- How to write an outline, narrative, expository, and essay
- Greater speed and accuracy in multiplication facts
Children will succeed if they are taught the essentials of language, writing, and arithmetic.
The Partnership
The Essentials Difference
Essentials FAQ
We recommend starting the Essentials program in Year 5. Maturity plays a big part in this decision. The majority of Year 4 students do not have the attention span and stamina to sit through two hours of intense instruction. Another reason involves the CC program as a whole. Challenge A, which follows the three years of Essentials, requires that a child be twelve years old. When a student starts the Essentials program in Year 4, the family then faces the dilemma of wanting to enrol the student in Challenge A too early, at age eleven.
Generally speaking, the EEL portion should take approximately 30 minutes a day. That includes copying the Mastery charts and the dialectic element of dictating and parsing sentences. The writing portion of Essentials will vary by student based on age and ability but generally takes 30-45 minutes.
The Essentials program offers a complete language arts program. The Essentials of the English Language Guide provides a comprehensive grammar program complete with English grammar, spelling, and punctuation rules. Our writing curriculum teaches the skills needed to write strong paragraphs and essays. There should be no need to have an additional Language Arts program.
Essentials class is not just for students! In fact, students will have a difficult time succeeding in this class without a parent's constant involvement. Some parents may think that the tutor is there to teach the child, when, in fact, the tutor is there to teach the parent how to teach the child. Each week during class, the tutor will model the lessons for the students and the parents. It is the parent's responsibility to understand the lesson so that he or she can go home and model it for the student. If the parent is not an active and engaged member of the class, the student may become confused and frustrated with the lessons and won't thrive in the Essentials environment.
