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Recommendations after FLL


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Since ALL (Advanced Language Lessons) has clearly been shelved yet again (even the thread asking for volunteers to write exercises and diagram sentences has apparently disappeared, and my email offering to do exactly that never got a response), I'm going to need recommendations for a replacement. Please don't just throw a curriculum suggestion at me. I need to know why it worked for you, and what you think are its strengths and weaknesses.

(Oh, and if anyone happens to know what happened to ALL, I'd greatly appreciate being put in the loop. I was really looking forward to that. I'd ask PHP directly, but I know from past experience that questions are often either ignored or "answered" by essentially saying they don't know.)

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 Rod and Staff 6 after FLL 1-4 here. 

 

I like it because it is extremely thorough, includes diagramming and is non-consumable. I like that the teacher's lesson has a copy of what the student's page looks like. Also, the lesson is less wordy than FLL. I am confident teaching grammar and just ignored most of the script for FLL 3 and 4 - drove me crazy! We just do the straight up grammar, not the writing exercises in R&S. 

 

The Christian orientation doesn't bother me, though I can see that it might be very irritating for a family with firmly non- Christian views.

 

R&S was SWB's pick in the early editions of TWTM, before FLL existed.  :thumbup1:

Edited by ScoutTN
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ALL provides lot of exercises for improving our grammar and it has helped alot with kids who are struggling with their language. 

 

Perhaps it would if they ever actually publish it. It doesn't exist yet, except as a partially completed, still-on-the-drawing-board concept. I'm curious how it could have helped anyone in that form?

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 Rod and Staff 6 after FLL 11-4 here. 

 

I like it because it is extremely thorough, includes diagramming and is non-consumable. I like that the teacher's lesson has a copy of what the sutdent's page looks like. Also, the lesson is less wordy than FLL. I am confident teaching grammar and just ignored most of the script for FLL 3 and 4 - drove me crazy! We just do the straight up grammar, not the writing exercises.

 

The Christian orientation doesn't bother me, though I can see that it might be very irritating for a family with firmly non- Christian views.

 

R&S was SWB's pick in the early editions of TWTM, before FLL existed.  :thumbup1:

 

Thank you, Scout. I will take a closer look at those. We are Christian, although I do tend to avoid anything with a marked slant in that direction because some of it tends to be rather heavy-handed.

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Other options that have been thrown around is Hake (nka Saxon) Grammar 

 

Also R&S which prior poster mentioned

 

WTM Press will send you a pdf of the portion of ALL that was finished if you want to use that. I think it is the first 18 weeks or so.  I contemplated doing that but ultimately knew I just needed something complete. It was going to be more work than I could manage to merge it with some other program.

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Thank you cintinative, I will probably contact them to see if I can get that PDF. If nothing else it will help me evaluate other programs when I can compare them to what I wanted to use. I also checked the other threads you linked and there were some good suggestions there as well.

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I am using FLL 4 with my son this year and love it. I wish ALL would come out soon as well, but I know life happens.

I plan on using Abeka next year for language. Not my first choice, but it was given to me, and it will work. It was also listed in the first publication of TWTM as a great language arts. Voyages in English was listed as well. I really like the looks of Voyages in English, but the price tag keeps me away.

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I tried Growing with Grammar after FLL 1-4. We hated it and then went to R&S.  I used R&S 5-8 with ds1 and now again with DS2.

 

Now, the whole reason we started with GWG is that R&S is absolutely OTT with the religion. We are not christian and it is...wow.  But after seeing what else was out there I decided to make it work.  I do stuff like replace names things like that. I will use Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or Doctor Who instead of just BibleBibleBibleBible.  R&S also has way more exercises in a lesson than I would ever need to do. So, if an entire section is all Biblical it's easy to just skip to the next set of exercises.

 

We also do most of it orally, which makes it feel a lot more like FLL.  There is an oral review in the teacher's book and we always do that. Then I read the lesson to ds2, then we do some of the oral exercises, maybe some of the written ones (orally) and then I have him diagram a few sentences. It only takes about 15 mins a day and we do grammar three times a week.

 

I don't use the writing exercises in R&S, which is pretty common. I find them dry and uninteresting. And a lot of them are also very religious in nature. We use WWS for composition.

 

The other major grammar program people use after FLL is Hake grammar. I don't have experience with it. With Hake, as with R&S, a lot of people only use the grammar portion and skip the composition. I think with Hake they are two separate books, so you only need to buy the grammar one.

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peaceful isle, I'd love your take on the pros and cons of Abeka.

 

purple owl, good to know it hasn't been taken completely off the shelf. It doesn't explain why I never received a reply when I responded to the request for help, but that's okay. My email might have got lost in the shuffle.

redsquirrel, that's my concern with R&S, although I'll still take a look at it. We're Christian, but I really dislike how in-your-face the stuff is from some publishers. That's a huge no-no for me with sciences and history (appropriate mention in the right places is a good thing, but many don't stop there), but I can probably live with it in language arts.

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My 5th grader went straight from FLL to Analytical Grammar (not the junior one).  He had no problems moving from one to the other.  We are doing Analytical Grammar at half speed though (and through a co-op class).

 

With my oldest we went from FLL to Hake Grammar (I believe Level 5).  I was never a huge fan of this but it got the job done.  We were going to skip Level 6 and go to Level 7 for 6th grade, but he went back to school instead.

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My plan is to move to JAG and then AG after FLL4. We are about to start FLL4 so have not tried the Analytical grammar courses yet but I have JAG ready and waiting so we will at least give that a go.

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