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I was pleasantly surprised to find that one of my daughter’s favorite parts of the Reading 2 curriculum is the journal…
She is always excited to find out what the latest journal prompt will be, and she is disappointed when it is a day without a journal. In Reading 2 of the Ron Paul Curriculum there are journal assignments for the first three lessons of every five day school week.
One of the features of the RPC is that starting in Grade 4, each course has a weekly writing assignment. Reading 2 begins to prepare RPC students for this expectation by giving a writing assignment on the fourth lesson of every week. This is why there is no journal assignment on the fourth day of the week.
Weekly Reviews to Aid Retention
Another feature of the Ron Paul Curriculum is that every 5th lesson is a review lesson. Reading 2 is no exception, that is why on every 5th day there is no journal assignment because this day is set aside as a review of the previous four lessons and a spelling quiz.
I have talked to several other parents of home-schooled and brick-and-mortar-schooled children, who have told me that their children enjoy writing a journal.
Each journal entry begins with a unique prompt. Journaling can be a challenge for any person of any age to undertake. It can be difficult to think of what to write about. Sometimes a journal turns into nothing more than a rote list of facts of what the journal writer did on a particular day. For some people, perhaps this is the kind of journal they intend to keep. For other people, they want to communicate about who they are on a deeper level.
The prompts given in the RPC are age appropriate and relatable. They give the student a jumping-off point to talk about their thoughts, feelings and interests in ways they may not have thought to on their own.
A student who keeps up with their RPC journal will have a keepsake to look back at that will tell them much more about their grade-2-self than any amount of worksheets or spelling quizzes could ever demonstrate.
Linking Journals to the Lessons
Each prompt is tied in to the rest of the Reading 2 curriculum. The prompts use some aspect of the lessons they come from as a launch-pad.
Sometimes it is a grammar lesson that inspires the prompt. For example, if the lesson is about parts of speech and there is a focus on verbs, the prompt might be related to the student’s favorite action based activity.
Other times the prompt is related to the book that is being read and studied. When this is the case reading comprehension comes into play, and even critical thinking if the student is asked to give their thoughts, opinions or criticisms.
Sometimes the inspiration is as simple as a word on the spelling list. No matter what part of the lesson the prompt comes from it is always in harmony with the curriculum as a whole.
My hope is to instill a love of writing in my own children. I don’t want them to get into high school, college or their future career and feel any kind of dread about having to write.
One of the best ways to get good at anything is practice, practice, practice. Doing something over and over again is also a good way to take away fear and anxiety surrounding that thing. The Ron Paul Curriculum takes this approach when it comes to writing. If your child graduates high school using the RPC, he or she will never be afraid to write!