CAMPFIRE’S LANGUAGE ARTS APPROACH!
OUR COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY
Campfire’s language arts approach is a blend of spiral and mastery learning. It is designed to build a strong foundation while allowing for flexibility and deeper understanding in multiple circumstances. I’ll explain below.
Spiral Learning: Campfire introduces concepts—for instance, “adjectives”—in one unit, then revisits them in future units in new ways. One unit might have a focus on “speech” but is integrating adjective use, where another is focused on sentence structure and bedside communication or note-taking and essays, etc. It is always applicable to real life and skills one would need in higher education or career fields (such as applying actual report writing that would be completed by a volcanologist). Sometimes, it’s a deep dive into grammar, and other times, it’s applying that knowledge in creative writing or analysis. This ensures skills aren’t just memorized but truly used in different contexts. The consistent reiteration of topics (spiral) allows you to choose any unit in any order.
Mastery Learning: On top of that, many units also go “bottom-up,” focusing deeply on a single concept until it’s mastered (for example: “Adjectives” or “Creative writing” or “Public Speaking”). This allows students to develop real proficiency before moving on, rather than just skimming the surface. Then, they’ll see that same topic pop up again in other units, but in a different way. Campfire ensures that it doesn’t matter which order you go in because of that “combined” spiral/mastery approach.
Leveled Structure: Campfire structures their Core Connections program into Elementary > Middle > High School, so learners can move at their own pace. If they need reinforcement, they can review earlier levels on the former page of the lesson; if they’re ready for a challenge, they can advance to the following page of the lesson (higher level). This flexibility lets parents tailor the learning experience to their child’s needs without feeling locked into a rigid path—and again reiterates a mastery approach, even within a “spiral” system.
Ultimately, Campfire’s approach makes language arts applicable to the real world, so that students truly understand and apply what they learn, not just check off a box.
WHAT IS NOT COVERED
One point to reference is that our older units do not have quite as much explanation or “hand holding” in the language arts sections. Originally, our Core Connections approach was simpler, when the units were predominantly designed as an extracurricular. Each unit’s description on the product page will detail what language arts is included and if it is a newer or older unit. The older units still have language arts (in fact, some of our favorites!), but it’s just a less guided approach.