Grades K–2 — sounds, sentences, and the first stories
Six rooms, in the order they build on each other: the sounds inside a word, the words that break the rules, the sentence, and what a story is made of. Two daily strands run beside them.
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The courseEnglish, Grades K–2
4 units, 8 chapters, numbered lessons — each with a reading, key words, a source or the numbers, and three checks. Chapter reviews, unit tests, a word match and a writing task.
Course contents
1
Sounds and Letters
Foundations
Sounds in Words; Letters and the Code.
2
Words and Sentences
Foundations and Language
Words You Know by Sight; A Sentence Is a Whole Thought.
3
Stories and True Books
Reading
Who, Where, What Happens; Story Books and True Books.
4
Writing and Telling
Writing and Speaking
Beginning, Middle, End; Say It, Write It, Share It.
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Sounds and Letters
A letter has a name and a sound, and they are not the same thing. Stretch a word and hear its first, middle and last sound; push three sounds together and a word comes out. The five short vowels, the three pairs that make one sound, and why no English word gets by without a vowel.
Words You Know by Sight
Sounding out works on most words, and then you meet said, was, of and one. The surprise is that they are not all strange: in said only the middle is odd. Find the one part that breaks a rule and the rest of the word behaves.
A Sentence Is a Whole Thought
A sentence is not any group of words and it is not a long one — it is a whole thought, with somebody in it and something happening. Four words can be a piece; two words can be a sentence. Count the parts, not the words.
Who, Where, What Happens
Every story is holding three things: somebody it is about, a place and time it happens in, and the things that change. Name those three and you can retell anything — and tell a real event from a detail that is just sitting there.
Beginning, Middle, End
A story sets you up, then something goes wrong, then somebody does something about it. The end is not where the story stops — it is where the trouble is settled. The middle is the biggest part, and the part most retellings skip.
True Books and Story Books
Some books tell a story; some tell you what is true. They are not read the same way — a story front to back, a true book opened anywhere. Headings, labels, captions and a contents page, and how to take one fact out without reading it all.
Every day · language artsTen daily lines of reading, vocabulary and conventions — pick the grade.K12 Every day · writingOne prompt, a plan, a draft and a rubric — pick the grade.K12
Grades 3–5 — words, meaning, and your first paragraph
Six rooms, in the order they build on each other: the pieces inside a word, the sentence around it, the claim a paragraph makes, the one a story never states, the frame under any text — and then one you build yourself. Two daily strands run beside them.
6 units open · 0 in the workshop
The courseEnglish, Grades 3–5
5 units, 13 chapters, numbered lessons — each with a reading, key words, a source or the numbers, and three checks. Chapter reviews, unit tests, a word match and a writing task.
Course contents
5
Word Power
Language and Vocabulary
Word Parts; Context Clues and the Dictionary.
6
Reading Stories
Literature
Story Elements; Theme and Point of View; Poems and Plays.
7
Reading to Learn
Informational Text
Main Idea and Details; How a Text Is Built; Charts, Sources and Research.
8
Writing
Writing
The Paragraph: a Claim and Reasons; Stories and Explanations; Revising and Editing.
9
Grammar, Speaking and Listening
Language and Speaking
The Grammar of a Sentence; Conversations and Presentations.
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Word Parts
A long word is not one thing — it is a root with pieces bolted on. Find the root first, then read the front for a prefix and the end for a suffix. Un-, re-, dis-, pre-, and the suffixes that change a word’s job without changing what it means.
Context Clues
Writers know which words are hard, and they leave help nearby on purpose. Five kinds of clue and the signal words that announce each one — including the contrast clue you have to read backwards, and the substitute-and-check step that separates a guess from a wild guess.
Main Idea and Details
The topic is a word or two and cannot be true or false. The main idea is what the paragraph SAYS about it, and it takes a whole sentence. Everything else holds it up. Where the main idea hides, how to build one that is never stated, and why both wrong answers are usually true.
Story Elements and Theme
Character, setting, problem, resolution — and the theme a story never states out loud. Build it from what the character wanted, what stood in the way, and what changed. A theme is a full sentence about people in general, and there is no name in it.
How a Text Is Built
Nobody writes facts down in the order they thought of them. Five shapes — sequence, cause and effect, compare and contrast, problem and solution, description — the signal words that announce each, and why the same three facts arranged two ways leave a reader with two different conclusions.
The Paragraph: a Claim and Reasons
Five rooms of taking writing apart; this one you build. A claim that could be wrong, reasons with something checkable under each, a shape chosen before drafting, and a close that says more than the opening. Then the hard part — cutting the sentence you liked that held nothing up.
Every day · language artsTen daily lines of reading, vocabulary and conventions — pick the grade.345 Every day · writingOne prompt, a plan, a draft and a rubric — pick the grade.345
Grades 6–8 — words, grammar, and the first novel room
Four rooms. One is a whole novel. Two are about stems — one in the class’s own unit order, one to play with. One is grammar.
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The courseEnglish, Grades 6–8
5 units, 12 chapters, numbered lessons — each with a reading, key words, a source or the numbers, and three checks. Chapter reviews, unit tests, a word match and a writing task.
Course contents
10
The Novel
Literature
Characters and Conflict; Plot, Setting and Theme; Reading a Whole Book.
11
Nonfiction and Argument
Informational Text
Central Idea and Evidence; Argument: Claims, Evidence, Reasoning; Media and Sources.
12
Words: Stems and Meaning
Vocabulary
Greek and Latin Stems; Connotation and Figurative Language.
13
Grammar and Style
Language
Sentences and Clauses; Punctuation and Usage.
14
Writing Across Forms
Writing
Argument and Informative Essays; Narrative and Poetry.
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Novel study · The Outsiders, chapter by chapter
S. E. Hinton’s novel one chapter at a time: pick the chapter you just read and get its own study cards and a three-level quiz, with nothing from later chapters on the screen. The whole-book set and seven worksheets that check themselves — Frost’s poem line by line among them — wait at the end.
Class Units · the stems from class
The class’s own stem units, stem by stem, in the order the class studies them — Units 11 through 20: learn the cards, quiz both ways, find the stems hiding inside real words, rehearse the test from a word bank where spelling counts, and fill in a study guide shaped like the handout. It prints. This page sends nothing.
The Word Foundry
Stems, analogies, mystery words, poetics, four-level sentences, and the forge where a student coins a word and defends it.
Grammar
Sixteen modules, quizzed in the real test’s format — in the Foundry’s own skin, so the two rooms feel like one.
Every day · language artsTen daily lines of reading, vocabulary and conventions — pick the grade.678 Every day · writingOne prompt, a plan, a draft and a rubric — pick the grade.678
Grades 9–10 — how a writer argues without arguing
Six rooms, in the order they build on each other: one word’s charge, one comparison’s smuggled structure, the attitude a hundred choices add up to, that attitude organized and aimed, and then the two finest scales — the marks, and the clause boundary itself.
6 units open · 0 in the workshop
The courseEnglish, Grades 9–10
5 units, 12 chapters, numbered lessons — each with a reading, key words, a source or the numbers, and three checks. Chapter reviews, unit tests, a word match and a writing task.
Course contents
15
Literature: Close Reading
Literature
Fiction; Poetry; Drama.
16
The Language of Persuasion
Rhetoric
Rhetoric: How a Writer Persuades; Tone and Voice; Argument in the World.
17
Words and Structure
Vocabulary
Context Clues and Word Parts; Figurative Language.
18
Grammar for Writers
Language
Clauses, Parallel Structure and Usage; Punctuation That Changes the Meaning.
19
Research and Writing
Writing
The Research Process; Essays That Work.
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Context Clues and Word Parts
At this level the word you do not know is usually the one carrying the argument. Roots and affixes as a system that predicts whole families, the difference between what a word means and what it is doing, and the habit of naming the neutral word a writer refused.
Figurative Language
Every figure is a transfer: it carries some properties across and silently refuses to carry the rest. The eight figures you will be asked to name, and one method that works on all of them — say what crossed, say what did not, and propose the rival comparison.
Tone and Voice
Tone is never stated, so it can only be proved. Telling tone from mood and voice, the four sources it is built from — diction, figures, sentence length and what is left out — a precise tone vocabulary, and finding the line where a passage turns.
Rhetoric: How a Writer Persuades
Tone is attitude with no plan; rhetoric is attitude with one. Ethos, pathos and logos, the devices that carry them, and the three questions that come before any of it — who is the audience, what are they being asked to do, and why have they not done it already.
Punctuation That Changes the Meaning
Not a room about neatness. Two commas change how many brothers you have; a pair of quotation marks calls a word a lie without arguing. The removal test, what each mark claims, and four ways to repair a comma splice that each say something different.
Clauses, Parallel Structure and Usage
Where a sentence is actually built. What sits in the main clause is asserted; what is tucked into a subordinate one is handed over as already agreed — so the swap test shows you what the structure was doing. Plus parallelism, danglers, agreement and the usage pairs worth owning.
Every day · language artsTen daily lines of reading, vocabulary and conventions — pick the grade.9–10 Every day · writingOne prompt, a plan, a draft and a rubric — pick the grade.9–10
Grades 11–12 — the instruments turned around
Six rooms that finish the argument the earlier bands started. The scale keeps growing — a suffix, a sentence, a chapter break — until the last room turns the whole course around and hands you the instruments to use on your own writing, with nobody checking.
6 units open · 0 in the workshop
The courseEnglish, Grades 11–12
5 units, 10 chapters, numbered lessons — each with a reading, key words, a source or the numbers, and three checks. Chapter reviews, unit tests, a word match and a writing task.
Course contents
20
Literary Devices and American Voices
Literature
Literary Devices in Depth; American Literature, 1620–1920.
21
Diction, Syntax and Style
Language
Diction and Syntax; Concision and Style.
22
Reasoning and Argument
Argument
Reasoning and Fallacies; Founding Documents as Argument.
23
Advanced Grammar and Usage
Language
Advanced Punctuation; Usage in the Real World.
24
Capstone: Research, Cite, Defend
Research
The Research Paper; Defend It.
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Literary Devices
The unit of analysis grows: not a word or a sentence but the distance between two places in a text. Irony, symbol, motif, foreshadowing, allusion and structure — each one a claim made by arrangement, and each one provable only by naming both places.
Diction and Syntax
Where the actor goes to disappear. The agentless passive and the nominalization delete the person who acted while leaving a perfectly grammatical sentence behind — so the repair is always the same: restore the agent and read what you get.
Reasoning and Fallacies
Premises, conclusion, and the warrant nobody writes down. Validity is not truth and soundness is not persuasiveness; the named fallacies are a vocabulary, not a verdict — and the fallacy fallacy is the trap waiting for anyone who has just learned their names.
Advanced Punctuation
The punctuation of quotation, treated as what it is: an ethical matter. Ellipsis, brackets, block quotation and the semicolon — and the honest-cut test, which asks whether the writer you quoted would accept the sentence you built from their words.
Concision and Style
Concision is not brevity. The rule is that every word does work — because the quickest way to shorten a sentence is to delete a qualification, which makes it briefer and false at once. The deletion test, deadwood, buried verbs, and the hedge that carries the load.
Capstone: Research, Cite, Defend
The last room. Judge the source, size the claim to the evidence, quote so the author would accept your use of their words, and answer the objection you would raise against yourself. Every check is easy to skip, because skipping leaves no mark on the page.
Every day · language artsTen daily lines of reading, vocabulary and conventions — pick the grade.11–12 Every day · writingOne prompt, a plan, a draft and a rubric — pick the grade.11–12
The engines
Every room here is one of these kinds, and all four work now.
Study cards, hints and a practice quiz
Open · the novel roomTap-to-reveal cards, a hints sheet with the charts a student is allowed to lean on, and a quiz at three levels that tells a student what the wrong answer was thinking.
Worksheets that check themselves
Open · the Worksheets tabSort into bins, put in order, label a plot mountain, read a poem line by line, and write a claim with evidence and a chapter number — blank on the printed packet, answers in the key.
Stem practice, both directions
Open · Class UnitsStem to meaning and meaning to stem, find-the-stems inside real words, and a test rehearsal from a word bank where spelling counts.
Ten daily lines
Open · the grade buttonsDaily Drafts: a fresh sheet every day for every grade K–8 and both high-school bands, reviewed on the spot, in language arts and in writing.
For the teacher
<b>This page is a map.</b> It saves nothing about a student and sends nothing anywhere. Each door opens an activity page; a finished activity sends its one summary row to your Sheet, under the name the student typed, and nothing else leaves the device.
<b>Hand out one band.</b> Add the band to the address and the page opens there: <b>/english#6-8</b>. Every door has a short address too — <b>Show on the board</b> prints it large enough for the back row.
<b>In the workshop means not built yet.</b> A unit with that mark has no page behind it and no link, on purpose. When one opens, it appears here with a real door.
<b>One room here sends nothing at all.</b> Class Units has no send channel — a student’s study guide stays on the device and on paper. The Word Foundry, Grammar and the novel room send one summary row when a set is finished, and only to a Sheet you connected.