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grammar for visual-spacial learners?


rose
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I recently started teaching my 2 11yo children grammar (yes, we're behind). The first few lessons have been so sad. Lesson 1 was nouns, lesson 2 was verbs, lesson 3 was adjectives. Each lesson was just a basic introduction, no subcatagories. By the time we were on lesson 3 my dd had forgotton what a noun was! She struggles so much with any vocabulary related learning which seems to be all of grammar. Do any of you have any tips or curriculum suggestions that we might be able to work with?

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Grammarland might work, since it gives each part of speech a different personality. There's another program that makes them into family members who wear different colors, but I can't recall the name of it at the moment. 

 

We are using FLL4, which would work also, even for older children if they have had no prior grammar. DD is a V/S kid, and although FLL isn't a program that caters to that, it covers the basics well. She can generally remember what the parts of speech are now, whereas with some of the other stuff we used, she had no retention at all. 

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My mind jumped to diagramming, since its very visual.  But I suppose diagramming assumed you know a noun is a noun.

 

Would they think a montessori grammar farm was unforgivable babyish?  You can easily google it, but here is one example: http://livingmontessorinow.com/2013/06/18/inexpensive-simple-to-prepare-montessori-grammar-farm/

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What about The Sentence Family?

 

There is some grammar program that has characters that look like eggs?  It was pretty visual/fun... can't remember the name?  ETA:  It's called the Humpties (Lamppost Publishing used to sell it but I don't see it on their site anymore). :p

 

Also, Grammar Punk?

Cozy Grammar?  School House Rock videos?

 

 

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Grammar was tricky with my vsl.  We had a fair amount of success with Grammar Tales and Parts of Speech Tales.  I also got some of the Fun Decks from Super Duper Publications for some of the parts of speech, like Adverbs, and for Subjects and Predicates.  Diagramming is helpful.  Posters are helpful.  Read through them together.  Schoolhouse Rock is helpful.  We did The Sentence Family and The Humpties, and while they were fun, I'm not sure they contributed much to understanding.  (Although perhaps so.  My mind is not vsl.)  I liked Singapore's First Grammar book as it has lots of pictures.

 

In 7th grade, we bought Oral Language Exercises from Abeka and just talked through the various grammar points.  We also used Adventures of Genius Boy and Grammar Girl, and that was really fun and also helpful I think.

 

Copywork from Writing with Ease workbooks worked fabulously for my vsl as far as learning punctuation and getting a feel for how sentences should flow and stuff.  Editor in Chief software from Critical Thinking Company also really helped in that area.

 

If I had to do it over again, I might use MCT Grammar Island and such.  I think it would really speak to her "big picture" thinking.

 

 

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Choose something that represents the parts of speech visually and in context.  They are plenty old enough to do this for entire sentences (starting with simpler noun-verb ones, of course) because the context is key for a VSL to understand the meaning (function) of the part of speech.  Memorizing the definition of a noun in isolation is, IMO, not the way to go for a VSL.  Present that definition only after demonstrating the parts of speech in the sentence.

 

What would be cool would be a diagrammed sentence that included some sort of off-shooting explanations of each part of speech.

 

Montessori or other type of color/shape coding of parts of speech, later followed by actual diagramming, would be one way to go.

Edited by wapiti
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I'm going to also say Montessori grammar. We used the symbols when we labeled the parts of speech in sentences. (Of course, there's more to it than that.) We introduced the parts of speech as described in the curriculum albums. Later, after she could pick some of them out in a sentence, we switched over to MCT island but still used the symbols to identify the parts of speech.

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First, that's a lot of quick shifting from one grammar concept to the next when first being introduced. MANY students require more practice than just 1 lesson or 1 day before they really absorb the concept and are ready to learn a new one. You may want to try doing lesson 1, and then focusing on supplements and other practice on JUST NOUNS for 1-2 weeks. Then move to lesson 2 and learn about verbs, and switch to supplements that focus on JUST VERBS for 1-2 weeks… etc. Just a thought!

 

 

DS#2 here is a VS leaner. We used a "spine" and several supplements to learn and then practice/reinforce grammar in several different ways:

 

spine

- Winston Grammar (Basic)

uses cards with helpful "hints" to remember what part of speech a word is; can also can do the exercises on a whiteboard with colored markers and single underline the subject, double underline the simple predicate, and use arrows, circle words, etc. to mark and show connections (see my post in this past thread of

Talk to me about Winston Grammar please, on how we tweaked Winston to use it visually on the white board and incorporate Joyce Herzog's tips)

 

- 6 Weeks to Understanding Grammar

Joyce Herzog's tips on teaching grammar to VS learners -- I strongly recommend using this to help you see how to adapt any grammar program into a more visual and concrete way of teaching grammar; see sample

 

supplements:

- Schoolhouse Rock: Grammar (parts of speech) -- both the DVD of all videos, and the computer CD games

- Mad Libs (parts of speech) -- good for your first 1-2 years of grammar

- Grammar Ad Libs (parts of speech -- includes ones not in Mad Libs) -- good for your first 1-2 years of grammar

- Comicstrip Grammar (parts of speech, phrases, clauses, word usage, etc.) -- use AFTER 1-2 years of grammar

- Take 5 Minutes: A History Fact a Day for Editing (punctuation, capitalization, word usage, correct homophones, etc.)

- Grammar With a Giggle (gr. 3-6), or, Giggles in the Middle (gr. 6-8) (punctuation, capitalization, word usage, verb agreement, and overall grammar concepts review)

- fun, early elementary-level parts of speech books by Brian Cleary
- Noun Hounds and Other Great Grammar Games (Egan)

 

other visual options
Cozy Grammar videos
- Grammar Island, Town, Voyage (Michael Clay Thompson)

 

past threads with more ideas:

What grammar are you using for your visual-spatial/whole-to-parts learner?

- What LA/Grammar works for your right-brainer / visual spatial learner?

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