Grammar Curriculum--please help me figure it out!

[whitestavern]

I'm trying to figure out what grammar curriculum to use next year for DD9. We will be finishing up FLL4 (which we've both enjoyed) and I've narrowed my choices down to the following programs:

 

R&S

Growing w/Grammar

Junior Analytical Grammar

Hake

Michael Clay Thompson

 

My questions:

--which of these would be set up most like FLL in order to make the change as seamless as possible?

--if you've used any of these, which have you and your children enjoyed or not enjoyed and why?

--which of them incorporate writing? I know R&S does. If I used R&S would I need a separate writing curriculum?

--I know R&S is not secular. How about the others? If you were looking for a secular program, how hard would it be to use R&S?

--any other comments/input on any of these programs is welcome!!

[LadyAberlin]

:lurk5:

[Ellie]

I'm trying to figure out what grammar curriculum to use next year for DD9. We will be finishing up FLL4 (which we've both enjoyed) and I've narrowed my choices down to the following programs:

 

R&S

Growing w/Grammar

Junior Analytical Grammar

Hake

Michael Clay Thompson

 

My questions:

--which of these would be set up most like FLL in order to make the change as seamless as possible?

--if you've used any of these, which have you and your children enjoyed or not enjoyed and why?

--which of them incorporate writing? I know R&S does. If I used R&S would I need a separate writing curriculum?

--I know R&S is not secular. How about the others? If you were looking for a secular program, how hard would it be to use R&S?

--any other comments/input on any of these programs is welcome!!

I can only answer a couple of questions. :-)

 

Rod and Staff's English series isn't just grammar; it's *English,* and it teaches composition, public speaking using reference materials, and more, in addition to grammar. IMHO, no, you would not need to add anything else for composition.

 

I think if you want something secular, Hake would be a good choice, although you'd want to be sure your dc could handle a 5th grade-level book, as that is the lowest Hake has. Of course, it is more expensive than R&S; it that's an issue, you could probably make R&S work for you.

[HollyDay]

My questions:

--which of these would be set up most like FLL in order to make the change as seamless as possible? That I dont know, I've never used FLL

 

--if you've used any of these, which have you and your children enjoyed or not enjoyed and why? We did well with GWG 3 but found GWG 4 to be terribly boring. I regret using it this year.

 

--which of them incorporate writing? I know R&S does. If I used R&S would I need a separate writing curriculum? GWG does not incorporate writing. There were brief (very brief) lessons on how to do a letter, envelope, topic sentence, but that was about it. It is certainly not a stand alone program.

 

--I know R&S is not secular. How about the others? If you were looking for a secular program, how hard would it be to use R&S? Based on what I have seen of R/S, I would think it could be problematic to overlook the religious nature of the publishers. GWG is completely secular.

--any other comments/input on any of these programs is welcome!! I looked at Hake quite seriously and almost chose it. But, it was just so dry that I wasnt sure it would do the job I wanted it to do. Personally, I did not like R/S. Coming out of BJU, it was too much review. I had read how advanced it was, but we did not find it challenging.

[Melissa B]

I'm trying to figure out what grammar curriculum to use next year for DD9. We will be finishing up FLL4 (which we've both enjoyed) and I've narrowed my choices down to the following programs:

 

R&S

Growing w/Grammar

Junior Analytical Grammar

Hake

Michael Clay Thompson

 

My questions:

--which of these would be set up most like FLL in order to make the change as seamless as possible?

--if you've used any of these, which have you and your children enjoyed or not enjoyed and why?

--which of them incorporate writing? I know R&S does. If I used R&S would I need a separate writing curriculum?

--I know R&S is not secular. How about the others? If you were looking for a secular program, how hard would it be to use R&S?

--any other comments/input on any of these programs is welcome!!

 

 

 

I've never seen JAG, but the other three are secular (obviously excluding R&S.) Hake includes writing, MCT has a separate writing book.

Both Hake and GWG would be similar to FLL 4. They both include diagramming and set up the year in a way similar to FLL. MCT would be very different. With MCT you analyze sentences rather than diagram. (Write the parts of speech below each word followed by the parts of the sentence, etc.)

It is also a narrative type grammar program where I would consider the others to be more clear and concise.

MCT is certainly the most teacher intensive. I would consider GWG to be the least, excluding JAG which I know nothing about. Hake and R&S would fall somewhere in the middle. The lessons in Hake are longer than the lessons in GWG. I've only seen the earlier years of R&S, but they seem to be longer than GWG but shorter than Hake. With Hake you would be starting at the beginning which is nice. Level 5 is their first level and I would consider it a smooth transition from FLL 4. With MCT you could start at level two - Grammar Town without any trouble. I'm not sure where you would start with any of the others.

 

HTH!

[PeterPan]

Are you planning on continuing on to WT2? WT2 has significantly more grammar than WT1. It gets interesting because they apply to the student's writing all that grammar to improve sentence structure, word choice, etc., bringing the process full circle. If you're going to do WT2 (which we did and really enjoyed btw), I'd suggest just a light dusting of grammar. Some people like Easy Grammar. Is your dc young to be going into a 5th grade grammar book? If so, you could do the book 5 but do it 1/2 pace alongside your WT2. That way it doesn't add a lot to the load but keeps things fresh. Or you could do some of the contextualized grammar and diagramming from the free program Angelina (Cajun Classical) linked people to a while back. http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=89799&highlight=angelina+grammar It's called KISS grammar.

 

If you do WT2, you can still do the WTM-recommended narrations, book reports, etc. Or at least we did. And if you need more grammar options, WTM usually has secular options listed as well.

[whitestavern]

My questions:

--which of these would be set up most like FLL in order to make the change as seamless as possible? That I dont know, I've never used FLL

 

--if you've used any of these, which have you and your children enjoyed or not enjoyed and why? We did well with GWG 3 but found GWG 4 to be terribly boring. I regret using it this year.

 

--which of them incorporate writing? I know R&S does. If I used R&S would I need a separate writing curriculum? GWG does not incorporate writing. There were brief (very brief) lessons on how to do a letter, envelope, topic sentence, but that was about it. It is certainly not a stand alone program.

 

--I know R&S is not secular. How about the others? If you were looking for a secular program, how hard would it be to use R&S? Based on what I have seen of R/S, I would think it could be problematic to overlook the religious nature of the publishers. GWG is completely secular.

--any other comments/input on any of these programs is welcome!! I looked at Hake quite seriously and almost chose it. But, it was just so dry that I wasnt sure it would do the job I wanted it to do. Personally, I did not like R/S. Coming out of BJU, it was too much review. I had read how advanced it was, but we did not find it challenging.

 

Holly,

Thanks for the info. May I ask what you ultimately decided to go with? Thanks,

Gayle

[siloam]

JAG is secular, but it doesn't follow a traditional sequence, so it would vary from FLL in that way.

 

In JAG you cover:

 

Articles & Nouns

Adjectives

Pronouns

Prepositions and Prepositional phrases (diagramming starts here)

Subject and Verb

Adverbs

Sentence type 1 (N-V)

Sentence type 2 (N-V-DO)

Sentence type 3 (N-V-IO-DO)

Sentence type 4 (N-LV-PN)

Sentence type 5 (N-LV-PA)

Diagramming conjunctions

 

Heather

[HollyDay]

What did we ultimately decide to go with?

 

This year - which we finished up recently, I supplemented GWG 4 with LL for Elementary Child Vol 2. My 7th grader used Winston Advanced the first 1/4 then LL for Secondary Child vol 1, Vocab from the Roots Up, and Jump In

 

Next year we are trying something different. I was given Abeka 5 TM and all the answer keys from someone locally. I bought a new worktext for 50% off, so we are going to give Abeka a try for 5th. I will also use LL for Secondary Child vol 1 with my 5th grader and maybe Ignite Your Writing. My 8th grader is starting LRTEG with LL for Secondary Child vol 2 as a supplement. I am still on the fence about writing. We will start the year with Jump In, but I dont think that will take up much past Christmas break.

 

HTH!!

[yoda]

I'm in the exact same boat, I thought I'd use R& S but looked at the sample pages on their websites and it was really ofputting to my dd, we are christians but in R&S almost every single sentence has a religious reference and she said it felt too strange, like little house in the woods, it was too much for us. Then I looked at Voyages in English, that was appealing to my kids, lots of color, stories about pirates and mozart etc. but I thought it looked a bit confusing plus it was expensive. I've decided to go with MTC vocabulary and poetry and Growing with Grammar for the Grammar component, with writing strands for writing. I felt it gave us a chance to try MTC, which is also fairly expensive, and have something for dd to use independently at the same time for grammar and writing. If we really like MTC we might shift over to the complete program next year.

 

Marie-Louise

[mcconnellboys]

I think Intermediate Language Lessons, by Emma Serl is the closest thing to what you were doing in FLL. Of those you mentioned, I know that R&S is very sound. I have no experience of the other programs.