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When do you think grammar and spelling become essential?


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DS 5.5 will be starting K in the fall at a private school. He is currently reading very comfortably at least at a 4th grade level without any formal instruction. He is also one of those "wow! Teach me more!" kids. I'm currently deciding what home supplementation we are going to provide over the summer, keeping in mind that I have a very relaxed attitude to teaching him at this age. He has been working very hard this year on handwriting, where he is average, so we will continue with that.

 

At what point do you think I really need to teach grammar and spelling? It seems almost silly that he can read these complex books, but somebody is going to have to go back and teach him nouns and verbs. He also hasn't been taught very much phonics. I'm wondering if I'm leaving a big gap here, or if I should leave something for him to learn in school. I'm perfectly content to just keep up the book supply for the summer and work on his handwriting/drawing journal if these gaps can easily be filled in later.

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Spelling- never, if the child is a "natural" speller.

 

Grammar- by middle school. MCT is a wonderfully engaging program if you decide to do it in elementary. MCT's "island" level is totally doable by a bright 1st grader but be forewarned that there are big jumps in the writing between "island" to "town" to "voyage".

 

The problem with leaving grammar to the schools is that most schools these days don't teach more than just the very basics of mechanics.

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I think most students learn to read well before they learn grammar. And that is, IMO how it should be. I would be really reluctant to teach grammar seriously to an emerging reader.

 

My son is a natural speller. At ages 4.5-6 or so he kept a binder with alpha dividers and when he asked for a word spelling he put it in there. One day I noticed how quiet it was when he was writing something because he wasn't asking "how do you spell (blank)?" When I peered over his shoulder I saw he wasn't asking because he was getting everything right. We didn't revisit spelling until he started preparing for spelling bees and then mostly with Latin, Greek and etymology. Definitely no need for a regular spelling program.

 

We started MCT Grammar Island when he was in the third grade. Now he is on CEII in 5th grade.

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I think it really depends on the child. If your child needs instruction in spelling, I think it's fine to wait until 1st grade or even 2nd grade to start. If your child is not picking up correct spelling on his own, I would not wait beyond that to start some instruction. Of course, if your child is a natural speller then you may never need to do a spelling program at all. Many kids prepare for spelling bees instead or simply study vocabulary, root words, and/or Latin rather than ever needing to do spelling.

 

Grammar, on the other hand, is something all children benefit from. With a bright child you may just be thinking in terms of doing a couple years of grammar versus having to repeat the material every year from 1st until 12th to master it. We start grammar in 4th, but I think it's fine to wait until middle school. I would be hesitant to wait until a child is beyond middle school for grammar instruction.

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Thanks for the input! I'm in no hurry to do this. I was just curious if age or reading level is more a factor. He will hit middle school reading level shortly, and he speaks naturally in complex sentences, so I don't think there is any real need to teach him grammar right now. As for spelling, he hasn't shown any natural tendencies, and refuses to do inventive spelling, but I'm sure they can cover it in school when he gets to that point.

 

Maybe we will just start to cover some of it informally as he writes in his journal instead of getting any sort of a book.

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"Essential" threw me, because it's so subjective and depends on your goals for your children. I can tell you what we're doing. DS who was reading fluently at 6.5, started phonics-based spelling shortly after he started reading well, and it seemed useful for growing his skills in segmenting words and syllables. DD who was reading fluently before she was 5, I figure I'll start phonics-based spelling after she's pretty solid on handwriting, around the time she starts public school kindergarten. I have to admit that it is not a fun subject to afterschool, IME.

 

I wasn't feeling like grammar was going to be super valuable before age 8-9, but my DS was getting really interested in parts of speech and subject-verb agreement, etc. so we took the plunge with Grammar Island this past month. I notice that DS7 has experience puzzling through things and having Socratic, no-wrong-answers conversations with me, so he can really engage with me and with the material. DD5 is joining in, taking her turns reading the pages with us, but doesn't really have any interest in the deeper discussion. I also don't ask her to do any of the other output (parsing sentences, making up silly stories, etc.)

 

So I think for now it feels like "doing" grammar with her can wait till older, and we'll play it by ear to figure out when.

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Maybe essential was too strong :) What I meant to ask was if it is difficult going back to do grammar and spelling once a kid is reading at a very high level. Do they get bored or feel it is beneath them? He's so young that I don't know exactly how his personal educational mindset is going to develop.

 

Edit to add: he has not been tested, but I suspect he is probably EG, and PG would not surprise me.

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I just want to mention that being most kindergartens are teaching kids letter sounds and sight words, your son may be pretty bored in kinder. I'm speaking from experience. My daughter is currently in 4th grade, and they have not yet begun grammar. From what I understand, it's not really taught in schools anymore, other than a basic sentence fragment, this is a verb type instruction, and that happens between 5th and 6th grades. I am going to be teaching my kids next year at ages 10 and 8, and they're both eager to learn it. They know something's "missing" and I explained that grammar tells them the rules of writing and they both want to know what the rules are so they are doing it "right". LOL  I would not worry that he's not going to want to do it. If he's that advanced, he'll just pick it up as you teach it when the time comes.

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I would just add that for a child who is still average in handwriting I would wait on spelling. I have a natural speller who also reads way above grade level. If you ask him to spell orally there are few issues. If you have him write it down, he makes more mistakes simply because his brain hasn't got full automaticity of handwriting yet. Once handwriting is down, then I would expect his written spelling output to make a giant leap and catch up closer to his reading level. At that point we will evaluate and see IF we need to add spelling as a subject in school. But since even his written spelling is way above grade level-- just not as high as his reading level-- then I'm not going to even worry about it for one or two more years.

 

As for grammar. We started when DS was 5.5 with MCT simply because he loved it and wanted it. He enjoys finding grammatical errors in books he reads. He read a grammar book that was on the bookshelf for fun. So we started. But there would be no harm in waiting for a lot longer time.

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I would just add that for a child who is still average in handwriting I would wait on spelling .

This brings up a good point that I had not considerd. I am a terrible oral speller myself, but have few problems when writing. Once the hand and brain get better connected, the spelling may just happen.

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Thanks for the input! I'm in no hurry to do this. I was just curious if age or reading level is more a factor. He will hit middle school reading level shortly, and he speaks naturally in complex sentences, so I don't think there is any real need to teach him grammar right now. As for spelling, he hasn't shown any natural tendencies, and refuses to do inventive spelling, but I'm sure they can cover it in school when he gets to that point.

 

Maybe we will just start to cover some of it informally as he writes in his journal instead of getting any sort of a book.

 

I think it's not so much about the age or reading level, but when your ds hits the logic stage, being able to analyze language with formal grammar skills becomes important. Prior to that, I'd just keep adding to the stack of books.  If your ds is in school, you can expect them to cover spelling rules by second grade, and BASIC grammar rules by third grade.  My dd had figured out that level of knowledge on her own long before it came up at school, most likely from her extensive at-home reading, so trying to instruct her in it would have been a waste of time for both of us.

 

My dd9 was in logic stage mode this year, and it was a good time to introduce MCT's Grammar Town and Caesar's English. Formal grammar has become increasingly relevant as she has gotten deeper into studying languages.  Before this year, her Latin, French, and Spanish studies were mainly about learning songs and vocabulary, but she has shifted her focus to writing sentences, expressing ideas, and this requires a different type of knowledge.  She has gone from accumulating information to analyzing it, and this has made the difference in making her current grammar study essential, and worthwhile.

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  • 3 weeks later...

My son taught himself to read very young. No phonics at all. Sight words only when he wanted to really increase his speed and became obsessive about them. (My mother is a literacy specialist and had a list of sight words. When the boy saw the list he was just over the moon needing to memorize them all as fast as possible.). Anyway, spelling and grammar were not issues for us at all. What really threw him was syllables. Tests all had stuff on syllables and he was clueless. So that one I would really hit.

 

We wouldn't have done grammar as early as we did (started at five) if Ds had not expressed an extreme interest in languages. Man! If there is one place grammar and spelling have paid off it is in his foreign language learning. I don't know if you are wanting to do Latin or another foreign language, but if so then start grammar immediately.

 

I agree about schools not teaching it effectively. It does not matter a bit if you can identify a noun/verb/adjective, if you cannot then find the predicate to differentiate a predicate nominative from a direct object or differentiate between a preposition and an adverb in a clause. It is as though schools teach the very beginning, but then stop before that foundation becomes valuable.

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