AG users - Skills Support ?

[1bassoon]

Calling all AG users. . . . .

 

Is it just me, or does anyone else ditch the "Skills Support" page?

 

I'm using this with my 13yo son, doing 2 years to make it through all 3 seasons. Next year, I'll start with my 10yo dd, when she's a sixth grader.

 

But I have just never done the skills support. I read through it, and didn't like the way they paraphrased things.

 

Am I missing something? Have you done it and would really recommend it??

 

Thanks for your insights. . . .

[Sunkirst]

We just started AG this year (we're starting unit 4 tomorrow, so we're not seasoned users). We do the skills support for two reasons: first it's a chance to parse a passage that wasn't written specifically for a grammar text (AG doesn't have super easy sentences to begin with, but I found it useful for my son to realize that a sentence may not contain a pronoun, for example), second because using the thesaurus is a skill that my son wasn't exposed to, and I think it may help his writing (it's also been useful for him to realize that a word can be many different parts of speech).

 

However, both of these benefits are temporary, and we typically do a 4 day week, so we may give it up, if it becomes too much of a burden.

[siloam]

Yes we did drop it, but not for the same reasons. In Homer dd has to summarize multi page stories into scenes with intro, body (with sub headings) and conclusion. It just seemed like busy work to make her do more.

 

Heather

[jensway]

We started using AG this year, so not the expert on this. One week we label the parts of speech, then the next week we are para phrasing the skills support. We also do a 4 day week and to do both on the skills support page is too much for us.

 

So alternating seemed like a good mix to me. That way my ds gets used to reading paragraphs and identifying parts of speech in something other than one sentence at a time. Then he gets the para phrasing every other week so he can practice that as well.

[Amy in CO]

We have given it up as well. My dd is doing Classical Writing which also covers parsing. And if we took it out, it would make AG a 4 day subject, which we needed since we have an enrichment program on Fridays. So I like parsing, we are just covering it elsewhere.

[kangato3]

I remember reading somewhere in the teacher's materials that skills supports were optional. We try to keep the difficult academics mostly to 4 days, so we ditch the skills support.

Louise

[PollyOR]

We skip it too. DD balked. I decided to choose my battle. I would rather have her do the rest of the unit willingly than have to battle with her weekly over one small thing.