Transcript for:
Overview of Classical Conversations Essentials

so what is the classical conversations Essentials program the essentials program is split into three parts there is an English grammar piece a writing piece and a math piece so math is just math games done in class just to increase fluency and speed um in those Operations Division multiplication addition and subtraction so really all you need to think about um for Essentials in math is just to work on those math facts so the only material that I strongly recommend personally is CC's flash cards these are the only flash cards you'll find except sort of DIY ones maybe on Etsy that go up to 15 * 15 this is my own box um but these are the flash cards they're really nice laminated and you just need to drill these you need to drill these so that the kids get them in their heads they Master them it's going to make math so much easier for them if they have those memorized so we're really just going to talk about the English grammar piece and the writing piece so Essentials is the first program in classical conversations where there's actually assignments but you need to keep in mind that all along in classical conversations even all the way through the challenge years you as the parent Remain the teacher of your child which means you maintain the final say in what your child produces so what their assignment ends up looking like um even sometimes whether they do the assignment or not uh as you get into the challenge years you need to take into account the fact that if your child does nothing for an assignment it might impact their ability to participate in class um that's kind of a separate discussion for Essentials that's not as big of an issue so if you choose to tailor an assignment or even not do it all the way in Essentials it's not going to be as a parent in class it won't really affect the class so you truly do have the ability to take tlor assignments or even um say this week we're not going to do this assignment because life or whatever but it's great to work towards doing the assignments as they are laid out it's one of the best parts of CC in my opinion starting the essentials program is the accountability that we have so I know for myself I wouldn't do as well with educating my kids if I didn't have the accountability of the CC program behind me so it's really one of the best parts and I think it's a part that a lot of people really love and thrive on within CC so in class so once a week in the afternoons after foundations we meet in class together led by a tutor who is just another parent and we go over English grammar writing and then we do some of those math games so in English grammar we're just going to talk about each piece um separately the essentials program is intended to be a three-year program that means that a first year student will Master This Much Information a second year in uh student will ma will Master this much and a third year will Master almost all of it so it's actually intended to be a three-year program in which a first year student does not master everything and that goes for The Mamas as well that goes for the parents as well you're not as a first year parent you're not going to catch on to as much of the stuff as you will once you've been in the program for a while and certainly if you come into Essentials with a really strong English grammar background which most of us don't have coming in um if you do come in with that background of course you're going to be um a little bit further ahead than most of the moms but it takes it takes several years to kind of get that Mastery base and it takes kids about three years so if you're coming into Essentials with an older child they're not it's not going to be the same for um an 11-year-old starting Essentials as a 9-year-old because an 11-year-old is older they have a more mature brain a more advanced brain they're going to be ble to take in the information much much quicker and master it much much quicker so they will Master a lot more of the information as a first year 11y old than a first year 9year old so don't worry that's not a um reason to not start Essentials later start Essentials when you can but ideally you're starting it at 9 is it's a three-year program they have that whole three years to master all of this information and that is the way it's designed so so have Grace on yourself have Grace on your kids you can't help them too much that's also a discussion for another time but it's just remember have Grace on yourself have Grace on your kids all right so we're going to talk about English grammar and then we're going to talk about the writing portion first of all over the course of the three years in the essentials program students will get a really solid handle on English grammar it is okay if they don't have any experience with grammar when they begin Essentials so this is this is very much a matter of opinion but it is my opinion and I do believe it is the official opinion of CC that you do not have to have grammar a grammar background or experience with grammar when you begin Essentials the whole point is they are going to be introduced to it and learn it starting in Essentials now you'll find loads of cers out there who have been doing Grammar with their kids at home home since they were five or as soon as they started learning how to read they're also doing grammar to each their own but if you are a type of um Mom more like me who you don't want to add a lot of stuff you kind of want to do a really good job with the minimum then you really you don't need to add grammar sooner that can be a tough thing and you can end up with some peer pressure when you feel like you're the only one who's not doing it but uh it really is going to be okay you can take it from me I've had two kids um started they're both very different students and both have thrived with zero prior knowledge of grammar so it really is okay but do what you feel like you need to do but do it because it's your choice not because you're pressured into it by other people the way that every Essentials year starts and by the way it's a three-year program but all three years are exactly the same so basically we'll start back at the beginning each of the three years and move through the program so they they do that three times in the three years the very beginning of each year is basically a fire hydrant of information where they where we basically just say here is all of English grammar and then on about week four we slam on the brakes or maybe it's week three we slam on the brakes and start going through each piece of that grammar just one little bit at a time so each week in class then from then on out through the rest of the year we're learning like one or two little pieces of English grammar and applying them so it's building right we're going to add a a one or two new things each week to what we've already been learning but it it goes so much slower so they basically do this massive fire hydrant of an introduction and then we slam on the brakes and do things one at a time each week throughout the year and the assignments will practice and reinforce those new things at home now because English grammar relies a lot on simply remembering rules or definitions or lists of words a large part of how this program works is to memorize those rules those definitions those lists of words and the way that CC has organized those is in something called charts okay you're going to start you get into Essentials you hear charts charts charts charts there are so many charts they all have names for a first year essential student you're going to hear tons about chart a so the charts are helpfully labeled with letters so that we can all know and quickly get to the chart that we need to be looking at together but each chart is going to have information on it so it's going to have lists of words it's going to have definitions this is another chart that first Year's work really hard on this is chart C this chart is about verbs so we've got a definition of a verb we've got different kinds of verbs different attributes of verbs all different kinds of things about verbs so here are two examples of charts and what we want kids to do with these is to memorize them and how do we memorize them we copy them so that's the number one way to memorize the chart is to copy them so CC provides us with filled out charts as well as blank charts okay so this is blank chart a here's filled out chart a this these lovely things that are kind of shiny these are dry erase these are called Trivium tables you there are Trivium tables of all kinds of things throughout the CC curriculum they all mean this type of thing this is like an 8 and 1/2 by 11 dry erase fold out kind of thing so that's what all Trivium tables are and do these are just the ones for Essentials that have charts so we have filled out chart a here blank chart a here so a child could uh copy chart a onto this chart you could also photocopy it for them to handw write it um there are other ways to memorized charts some charts including chart a have been put to music and are very very catchy you can listen listen to music you can watch the music on YouTube um and of course then the YouTube ones also have a little bit of visuals you could also photocopy this chart cut it up and have kids put it together as a puzzle there's lots of different ways to help your kids memorize these charts the number one way again is by just copying them but there are other ways to do it if your child struggles with that but copying charts and memorizing charts is a large part of this English grammar piece so keep that in mind because copying charts is going to be something we do at home that's going to be one of the things that we do at home to reinforce and to input this the grammar um knowledge base the other main part of learning English grammar in this program is through parsing and diagramming sent sentences so this is the process of examining each word in a sentence and identifying what kind of word it is and what it's doing in a sentence so for instance are we is this word a noun is it an adjective is it a verb what is it if it's a noun is it the subject or is it the direct object or is it what is it what's it actually doing so that's what parsing means once the sentence has been parsed once all the words have been labeled as far as what kind of word they are and what they're doing in a sentence then we can use that information to then diagram the sentence so we do a lot of this at in class we do a lot of parsing and diagramming so that you get it um uh demonstrated for you in class so that you know how to do it and then you go home and you diagram sentences with your child at home now you could diagram 10 sentences a day man they would become Masters real quick if you did that or you can just do one maybe two sentences a day and that really is enough I I know you got to I you're going to have to make your own choice on that but for me and my kids we really truly truly only diagram one sentence a day one and that's the sentence that you find actually in the curriculum so I'm going to show you what that looks like here's an example of a sentence from the actual Essentials curriculum that CC gives us to diagram at home so I read this sentence to to my student they write it down so they're not looking at it they are listening to me dictate it and they write it down and then they parse the sentence with my help so parsing again you would say who or what this is this sentence about the answer is and look the questions are right here I didn't know what I was doing I did not have a strong grammar background at all so if it wasn't for this script right here which tells me exactly what to say to the kid and exactly what they should say back to you I would not have done well okay so this is a lifesaver here this script and guys if they don't know the answer you tell them who or what is this sentence about um and you say it's about Jackson right so what does that mean Jackson is um it's the subject right because whatever the sentence is about that's the subject subjects are noun so that's our subject noun we're going so you walk them through it using this script here so the script helps us to parse the sentence to label the sentence with each word what it's doing in the sentence and then we diagram the sentence and there are rules about diagramming but we learn those in class and it gets reinforced at home also the curriculum itself if you read the lessons and you should read the lessons every week you will be well equipped to do this at home but you're going to help your child to diagram and that is diagramming a sentence so you're going to do at least one of those a day maybe two but aim for at least one so so far at home what we're doing for grammar is we are copying charts and we are diagramming sentences the other thing that I really really love that I didn't do it all for my first student but for my second student I have done it for both years and it has made a huge difference in how fast he has caught on and actually I learned a ton too is that CC connected um in the essentials Learning Center is an eing called onward and in onward there are some extra practice Pages I'm going to show some to you these practice pages so there's one onward magazine per week so in each magazine there are some practice Pages they look kind of the same so once you identify them you'll be able to find them easily for each each week hang but these practice Pages basically just give a short little practice for the thing that was learned that week so some some parent made these years ago and thankfully cc is putting these out in the E so this is the practice page I love that at the um there are three practice Pages a week usually and it reminds us what charts we're working on normally it doesn't say review all it says review all because we're at the end of the week but usually it'll tell us what charts to be working on and it gives us a place to check off but so these are practice pages that I did with my first year student and now my second year student is able to do these alone and there's an answer key each week There's an answer key so if you don't know the answer or why the answer key will really help you so like I said I actually learned a ton my first year doing those with him so I would recommend doing that as well so here's what a sample week might look like for you doing Essentials at home you have your community day that's where you're going to learn one or two new grammar Concepts so you're going to go home on your first day at home you're going to copy some charts and remember the the curriculum and the tutor will remind you which charts to be focusing on that week so you're going to copy those charts working on memorizing a couple for first year students I'm pretty sure it's chart a and chart C that we hope that by the end of the year they have these memorized but other charts they might be copying just to help them out but anyway Monday or sorry day one day two day three day four at home they're going to be copying a a chart or a few at home depending on what you ask them to do they're also going to be diagramming a sentence every day maybe one maybe two one sentence a day and they could do that optional practice page from that onward magazine which only has three pages so that would only be for 3 days so for one day we got to copy some charts diagram a sentence do a practice page all of that together if the child is working steadily isn't um really struggling with handwriting then they can easily get through all of that in probably about 20 minutes it's going to start off longer with a brand new student who doesn't know what they're doing and of course every kid is different you may have a child who really struggles to put pen to paper and is going to really stretch out that chart copying process but I would just say on average this grammar portion of the day is going to take you 15 to 20 minutes a day and really that's all so don't get overwhelmed that last day before class time you parent need to read your lesson in the essentials curriculum before you go to class that's going to help you um have a clue what the tutor is going to be talking about and will help you absorb more because when we're not hearing something for the very first time when we have already read it and then we hear it presented again with some examples and such it's going to make a lot more sense okay so that's the grammar portion of the essentials program now let's talk about the IW portion iew stands for institute for excellence in writing there are a lot of acronyms in the essentials program I'm sorry you will catch on to them all I will do my best not to use acronyms in this video too much because I really want you to understand what we're talking about so iew stands for institute for excellence in writing okay so now I will be calling it IW because that's a not a mouthful so the IW program is not CC's own but they have a great relationship with IW and it's a phenomenal program so that's the one we use using the IW program students will write they will have a writing assignment every single week but don't get overwhelmed let me show you my a first year this is one of my kids their first year of Essentials their very first paper looked like this see how short that is okay let's look at a third year his very first paper in his looked like that so first year third year okay so still not super long and overwhelming throughout the year papers never get longer than five paragraphs and that only happens maybe twice there's a couple times where it's a three paragraph and a few more times where it's a two paragraph So it's just it's not overwhelming and it's it it stays simplified so anyway don't get overwhel with that so what we do in class with writing and IW is students throughout the whole year are going to learn through nine different units of writing that are slightly different styles of writing but in class basically the tutor is going over some of like the new thing that week and then we go home and we add that to our paper for that week so it's similar to grammar in that in class they're learning like one or two new things and then going home and their assignment kind of reinforces that new thing so one of the most important things to remember about the IW program and doing it within Essentials is that there are videos to watch by IW it actually goes with this notebook see this says seminar and practicum workbook this notebook it is used alongside these videos so you your community should own their own set of DVDs and they should be offering CommunityWide viewings like group viewings where everybody gets together and watches these DVDs together or you could buy your own set of DVDs or you could stream these videos off of the IW website so you have multiple ways to watch these videos but you really do need to watch the videos because what happens in the videos is Andrew pwa the creator of IW is teaching teachers that's us how to teach this program to their students so it's a very equipping wonderful videos yes they are kind of long I would say um each unit is going to run you one to two hours and there are nine units I would say count on more like an hour and a half and he talks kind of slow so if you can speed it up if you're watching it on something that allows you to speed it up then um that's a great thing to speed it up but so anyway you're going to use this notebook to go through all the videos and watch the videos so if you can't watch a video one time then reading what's in these portions will be the second best thing but it's best to watch the videos very diligently every single year so that is a really important part of the essentials program so you want to make sure you have a plan in place for how are you going to get those videos watched if you're a busy you know Mom Sports mom or whatever and you can't ever get to those Community viewings then you need to you need to get the DVDs for yourself or you need to plan to stream them okay all right so we watch those videos we watch them before we um start a new unit that way we have a clue what's coming and we understand and we get to be taught by the creator of IW which is really wonderful and we use these history based writing lessons so this book here is the only book that changes in the three years of the program this book actually goes along with the cycle that we're in for foundations so this year we're in cycle three so we're doing US history based next year is cycle one so we'll be in ancient history and then cycle two is like um the Middle Ages so it's really fun that this particular book changes each cycle because this is the book that gives us our writing assignments so the way that each writing assignment works is hang on let me get to a good one to show you it's going to give us a source text so Source text means this is the source that we are going to be using to write a paper from so you can see this one says Englishman arrive in America this is the Teacher book by the way the kid book actually looks exactly like it's what's inside this black box so it's a great teacher book because we can see exactly what the students are seeing but this is the source text this IW book always gives us the source text to use that means that's the information that's going to be used to write the paper uh so we first we read The Source text together and then using the source text we're going to create something called a keyword outline so here's another acronym for you K wo key word outline this is the first thing that kids are going to learn in the um IW the writing portion of Essentials is how to write a keyword outline they're going to use this through all writing assignments through all of Essentials they'll even use it in the challenge levels because this is a really great skill basically the way that you write a keyword outline is you look within your Source text you decide what the important bits of information are and you write down words symbols or tiny little pictures to help you remember those important pieces that you want to be in your paper so it helps to prevent plagiarism it helps to kids to identify what are the important and interesting things that I want to put in my paper it helps kids keep things brief it helps them retell there's just so many skills happening here within the keyword outline writing so this is something that is going to be part of writing every single paper after they've written their keyword outline the next day they're going to use this keyword outline to write a rough draft so essentially each line is roughly one sentence so I would say typically each line is a sentence now you will come have sometimes occasionally where two lines might be one sentence or one line might even be two sentences so there is flexibility there but let's just generally think of each line is one sentence so they're going to look at the bits of information they wrote down the day before and they're going to turn this into a complete sentence so not even having read The Source text anytime recently I can tell you that this complete sentence what I'm going to say here is in 1497 England sent explorers to America so there's my first sentence and then I'm going to look here and I think plus plus knowing IW means many let's see for many years they tried to establish colonies so that's my second sentence and then they would go on that's how you write a rough job from a keyword outline the third day they are going to add dress ups now dress ups is something new to you you don't know anything about that if you haven't started the essentials program but essentially what dress ups are are little things that make your writing more interesting so each week kids will learn one new dress up once they've learned I think seven dress ups then they learn sentence openers different sentence openers and again there are six different sentence open openers and all of these things the intention is to help vary kids writing and help it more be more interesting so this is actually sort of the secret sauce of the IW program and making turning out really excellent writers is giving them these tools helping them learn to look for these things look for ways to put in these different things making them conscious of starting sentences in um variable ways this is the kind of thing that doing this this formula for three years drills it into the kid's brain so deeply that it becomes second nature by the third year most students are writing doing the these writing assignments independently without the parents help and they're able to add in dress ups they're able to use their sentence openers without any help and then they go into challenge knowing these things and doing these things so they don't necessarily do them to the extent that the this culum asked them to but that's sort of the beauty of working within a a really strict formula for so long is that it creates a really really solid foundation that allows older students to Branch off because they have these skills that have become second nature kind of like muscle memory and they're able they they add these things in kind of without even realizing it without even thinking so I love it it's really really wonderful it's a great way to create good writers each writing assignment has this little checklist and the checklist is where it's going to remind you what are the dress ups that we're working on so this is a very early writing assignment where they have only learned one dress up it's an ly adverb so that's all they are going to add in this week is an ly adverb so you just help your child identify where is a verb okay what what can we say to make this verb more interesting or to like tell the story better by adding so he went to Jan's house okay how did he how did he go he quickly went aha he quickly went so that tells us more about how the person went of course went becomes a band word but you don't know about that yet this is a later writing assignment now we have five dress ups ly adverbs who which Clauses strong verbs a clause and a quality adjective and look we have six different sentence openers so we can open our sentence with a subject that's the easiest one preposition an ly adverb an ing word a clause or have a very short sentence so in class we learn these one by one throughout the whole year until by about week 20 19 or 20 they've learned them all and so they're using them all in every paper so what might Essentials well hang on so after they've added in their dress ups and they do their check then they do their final paper which typically is typed I know in our community we ask for the final papers to be typed often that means that the parent is typing but and for me personally in my own family by a the second year I'm asking my child to type at least part of their paper just to practice typing because we've been working on typing by the time they're in fifth grade they will have been typing for at least a solid year if not two so typing is a skill that everyone should should have at this point so do add typing to your homeschool program and start requiring your kids to type a little bit they're going to need to do that a lot more in the challenge program so let's talk about what uh the writing portion of Essentials might look like at home for your week so you have your community day where you're going to learn your new little bits of information find out what the assignment is for that week then you go home and on your very first day at home you are reading the source for that week which you might have already read in class we do a lot of times so you're reading your source and you're creating your keyword outline so that's what you do in your first day also ideally after you're done writing the keyword outline you have the child read it back to you like how might this be in 1620 Goodwin Howard was on the Mayflower so have them read it back to you and see if they even remember what all the words and symbols mean day number two they turn it into a rough draft where they're turning their keyword outline into complete sentences day number three they're adding dress ups day number four they are typing the final they or you are typing the final paper so what happens at home in Essentials really does fall into by about week three it falls into a very predictable pattern where every week basically looks the same we are copying charts we are diagramming sentences we are walking through the writing process of a paper for IW so it becomes very routine same thing every day if you can get into that routine of doing the same things every day it's going to be much easier much simpler the kids will get to Independence much quicker because they know what to expect a couple little notes about optional things within the IW program and each lesson at the very beginning of each lesson first of all they recommend what you could do at home as well so you could go byy this if you need a tiny bit more handholding but also they have to teach some of the new Concepts they have these Pages called style practice so these Pages this this particular lesson is only one page sometimes it might be several pages but it just it gives the child practice with that thing that you worked on now I'll be honest I don't usually do those personally uh because it's a three-year program I am okay with my kid catching on to some of these things a little bit slower they're getting practice with those things while we're doing the paper and so that's just something that I have chosen not to do myself but if you want your kids to catch on much much faster or maybe you have a child that's not going to get three years of ass Essentials or if you're trying to learn the concept yourself those pages might be excellent so definitely consider them you could look at them each week and decide whether you really want to do it if it's a concept that's really really difficult for your student then those would be really wonderful but please know that they are optional the thing that we really hope happens is that writing piece also at the end of the student book this is a teacher book so it doesn't have it but imagine here at the end of a student book there are some colorful card stock Pages those contain vocabulary cards that you can cut out these vocabulary cards we don't technically do anything with vocabulary in class normally some classes might play games with the vocabulary or something um and the vocabulary words are wonderful to include in your papers and it actually is on that little checklist to a goal to use at least one vocabulary word per paper uh but technically it is um optional so I have I myself have worked on vocabulary with a student and then my first student I worked with him and then my current student he works on these himself he basically just studies them for like five to 10 minutes a day and he does it independently all by himself so really it's whatever you make of it you can do the vocabulary piece but there there are such good words and they always choose vocabulary words that are going to go with the different writing assignments so they conveniently give you words that will be easy to use in your writing piece what else can I tell you about IW and Essentials so let's talk about some more General things about the program you have total ability to tailor assignments for your student so when it comes to the grammar portion you can make things more complicated by using the advanced sentences to diagram that you can find in those onward magazines and it's really great because those sentences look exactly like the ones that are in the curriculum with that script and showing you exactly how to diagram it and everything it's just right there in the onward magazine so I loved those I used those for my first student his third year I used those Advanced sentences really loved that um you also for chart copying I already talked about you could just do songs you could cut it up and make it puzzles you can have them copy less if it's just such a struggle you could just do it verbally there's lots of ways to make things simpler if you have a really Advanced child you can have them copying more charts or working towards Mastery quicker like I want you to fill this out without looking at the filled in one can you do it from memory for IW IW themselves help us tailor so in the very front of the student books and the parent books I do believe is a colored piece I think it's usually blue and it tells us right here how to access some of the extra things that IW offers such as simplified Source texts so if you need some sources that are just that are simpler simpler to read simpler to understand IW offers us those they also have some Advanced additions that again for an advanced student who needs a little bit more and they have advanced checklists as well that just ask the child to include even more things in their paper so that right there will help you to tailor IW to work for your child and for you also for what you can handle the tutors that's also one of their roles is to help you to assist you in making things just right for your student so we talked about like what a week might look like for grammar and what a week might look like for the writing but sort of what is that all equal how much time does Essentials take at home it really depends it depends on how experienced and comfortable the mom mom is and also how experienced is the student a first- year mom with a first year student is going to take a lot longer at home than an experienced mom with a first year student and certainly more time than an experienced mom with a third year student so you really you need to keep things in perspective as you compare to others you need to keep in in context how experienced you are with grammar period much less with the essentials program as a whole and and just also take into account your student because I know there are students are all different there's such a difference in how independent kids are um how willing they are to work how they do with putting pen to paper there is a lot of push back from a lot of students particularly males who just really hate to handw write anything and so everything feels like a chore um there could be learning disabilities at Play lots of things that could affect how long it takes you at home but I want to encourage you to expect the the essentials work will not take you more than one hour a day now I've heard of it taking people twice that long when they first start but when I hear that I tell the mama please like try something that's going to be too much it's going to be too much and you're both going to end up super super frustrated and a lot of times when it's taking that long it's because the mom is using writing time to also be handwriting time and I want to encourage you not to do that don't use the essentials program as handwriting practice it is not okay there's a difference between wanting your child to write their own things and wanting them to write it with good handwriting you know because some kids struggle so much to even get pen on paper don't turn this also into I want nice looking letters because right now we're working on grammar we're working on parsing we're working on writing and getting complete sentences we're not going to worry right now about spelling we're not going to worry right now about handwriting we're just trying to get the ideas out of their brain and onto the paper so cut them some slack and even consider being their scribe let them dictate to you what they want to write and you write it down because during Essentials we're worried about content not handwriting not spelling that's for another time we do do handwriting at our house we do do spelling but we don't do that during Essentials time so I'm going to encourage you not to do that as well I would say once you mama are more confident and more comfortable with the program you can probably get your daily Essentials work time down to 30 minutes or less a day I would say that's pretty typical for my family is that I have one student next year will be the first time that I'll have two students at a time two students at the same time that is so I will be working for probably longer on Essentials but each of them individually still will probably not be working for longer than 30 minutes keep in mind that you cannot help them too much if you start off with this mentality it will help give you the freedom and perspective to give your child more and more ownership over the course of the three-year program so just start off knowing I'm going to help a whole whole lot and I'm going to help help help help help help help help help until eventually they're like I got it Mom I got it now sometimes even Andrew P says that and sometimes that can feel scary and risky to us parents because we want to teach our kids something and they get it and they go but this program isn't designed that way this program is designed for three years so that means that might not happen immediately it might not happen when you wish it would happen so keep helping keep helping and they will eventually say I got it Mom I've got it I'm going to do it now so that might take a year and a half it might take two years but they will get there just keep keep finding ways to take one finger off maybe two you know just keep looking for ways like you're helping helping helping but I'm going to let go by one finger I'm going to let not that you're holding control it's not that it's you're helping them because they're not quite there yet but but you're looking for ways that you can tiptoe tiptoe away and leave them being in successfully independent a final thing that I'm just going to mention is more of a logistical thing how are classes put together every Community is different you could have one Essentials class you could even have up to three Essentials classes so in the case of having more than one Essentials class how are the classes made up CC recommends that directors make Essentials classes based on the experience level of the parents not the students but the parents and I believe that that is so that we don't have one whole class full of inexperienced parents with kind of nobody to encourage and pull along with the tutor and mostly for that so that we want we want to have new parents surrounded by parents who have been there have done that can give encouragement and advice and also assist the tutor so it creates this kind of one room Schoolhouse where students who are first year second years and third years are all in class together the tutors are trained to and do an excellent job at presenting things that are for First Years and for second years and for third years and um you know asking a first year to do this thing and now a third year show the first year how it's done and second years let's do this and it's a really cool thing to see how effective that can actually be so your tutors are one of your best resources in this program if you have questions also your director I hope that this video has helped it is frustrating how challenging it can be to explain the essentials program in a way that leaves moms feeling less anxiety uh if it didn't and you're still feeling really anxious then all I can say is I just want to encourage you that this is an excellent program and by about week four you will have a really good handle on what you're doing so if you will hold tight and get into it then I think you will see all the pieces fall into place and become this predictable thing of what happens at home so you will not stay frustrated and confused I really don't think especially if you are reaching out to your tutor if you're reaching out to your director the other moms who have experience in class you should not remain in that confused state so but I really do hope that this the video helped um every year I try to you know what can I do to help the newbies feel more confidence going into this amazing program because I want people to be successful because it's such a great program and I've already seen it how wonderful it is uh setting up kids for the challenge program and just for Life having such a great handle on our English language and as great communicators it's so important to be a strong communicator and so that's that's the writing piece and the grammar piece when you can speak clearly people listen better when you can speak eloquently people will be more interested in what you have to say so I am in total agreement with CC that this is vital and this program will give you the tools and equip you as a parent to do this really really well and it offers you the um accountability to get it done and to do it really well so let me know in the comments if you have any questions and have a great day