Shurley English level 1 vs First Language Lessons

[Guest RWhiting]

I am looking into grammar for a first grade level. I am considering Shurley English Level 1 homeschool kit and First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind with Audio companion by Jessie Wise. Can anyone give feedback whether negative or positive regarding either of these curriculums?

Edited March 6, 2010 by RWhiting

[plain jane]

In my opinion, First Language Lessons is a nice, gentle yet thorough introduction to grammar for a first grader. We finished the entire book in grade 1 and went on to Shurley2 in second grade. FLL is very scripted, it tells you everything to say to the student. Some people like that while it's a big strike on the cons side for others. Shurely is another program that is fairly scripted, but less so than FLL1/2 IMO.

 

I like that FLL has poetry memorization built into the grammar lessons, and my dd has really retained a lot of the material she learned- she still knows her poems and chants almost 3 years later.

 

Shurley does sentence parsing, not diagramming and while SWB does recommend Shurley in WTM and a lot of Classical schools like VP recommend Shurley, you may want another resource if you want your child to learn how to diagram. I think there are resources for just diagramming mentioned in the WTM. There are many people who use Shurley and skip levels, only using levels 2, 4, 6, and 7 or 1, 3, 5, and 7. We used FLL1/2, then Shurley 2, followed by Shurley 3 and I have not found the repetition unbearable. I find Shurley has a thorough, no-nonsense approach to teaching grammar that has worked nicely for my family. In Shurley, the lessons give instruction but there are also worksheets to be completed using the knowledge the child has learned, as well as a weekly quiz at the end of each week. Each week follows the same pattern and is divided into 5 day weeks. You could easily combine a couple of days if you want to do a 3 or 4 day week of grammar but I have always left it as 5 shorter lessons. One of the days is designated for the test (day 4) and one for the writing lesson (day 5). The other 3 are grammar instruction and sentence parsing.

 

I'm one of the few on this board who like Shurley. I do use the writing assignments although we also do a separate writing program. I like how it provides different kinds of writing genres for the child to practice.

 

When I do it over again with the next one, I will again use FLL1/2 for grade one and then on to Shurley. HTH Let me know if you have any specific questions. :)

Edited March 6, 2010 by plain jane

[Guest RWhiting]

Thanks so much for your response. I had no idea you could skip around with Shurley and not use it in sequential order. I guess the levels build on each other but FLL could lay groundwork as well. I like the way you describe FLL as being gentle as I am concerned about the early burn out that some people seem to experience with Shurley.

 

Did you use the audio companion with FLL? I only have the book and was wondering if this was something I should try to locate.

 

About how long did it take to do Shurley 2 - just curious as some people seem to think the program is quite intense.

 

How many kids do you have?

 

What other curriculums do you use and enjoy?

[plain jane]

Thanks so much for your response. I had no idea you could skip around with Shurley and not use it in sequential order. You do use it in sequential order, just skip every other level. :) I guess the levels build on each other but FLL could lay groundwork as well. I like the way you describe FLL as being gentle as I am concerned about the early burn out that some people seem to experience with Shurley. I can't comment on the burn out. I had heard horror stories about Shurley too, but honestly, I do not know what all the fuss is about. I find it quite straight forward and easy to follow. Each lesson takes about 15 min. We're only just done level 3 though, so I can't comment on the long-term knowledge of grammar using Shurley exclusively.

 

Did you use the audio companion with FLL? I only have the book and was wondering if this was something I should try to locate. I didn't use the audio companion at the time with FLL. I did find a used copy for cheap after we finished it so I snagged it. The only thing I would use it for with my next dc is for the list of prepositions. The rest of the chants are quite scripted in the text and last time, we didn't need to listen to the poems repeatedly, although that wouldn't be a bad thing. :)

 

About how long did it take to do Shurley 2 - just curious as some people seem to think the program is quite intense. Shurley 2 is 28 weeks long. Each week is broken down into 5 lessons. The first 3 are sentence parsing and grammar lessons, the 4th day is the test and the 5th day is the writing assignment. It took us about 15 min per day and I did it consistently so we finished in 28 weeks of school. The writing lessons sometimes took a bit longer but we wouldn't use the writing program on those days so it worked out fine. Just last week we wrapped up the final (only 25) week of Shurley 3. I find it to be really do-able if you commit to doing a bit each day. Another perk is that since we've used Shurley before, a lot of this year was independent work for my child so I could spend that time with other kids.

 

What other curriculums do you use and enjoy? This list could get really long. ;):lol: Any specific subjects?

.

Edited March 7, 2010 by plain jane

[shanvan]

FLL 1 is a nice gentle intro, but it drove my DS crazy because it was too gradual. We both felt like it took us forever to get to any new learning. I can see how it would work well for some kids, but we needed something that moved faster.

 

Shannon

[plain jane]

FLL 1 is a nice gentle intro, but it drove my DS crazy because it was too gradual. We both felt like it took us forever to get to any new learning. I can see how it would work well for some kids, but we needed something that moved faster.

 

Shannon

 

:iagree:

 

I forgot about that. It was a bit frustrating at first. :) We did end up doubling up on a lot of lessons and were able to finish the entire book in grade 1 instead of doing it over 2 years.