Shurley for Grammar :: Love it?

[shukriyya]

I know there are a plethora of threads on Shurley and I've read through several pages of them but it's an overcast summer afternoon here and swimming lessons don't start till later so humor me. For those who are currently using Shurley for grammar what do you like about it? What grades does it work best for? For those who used it in the past what didn't you like about it? How does it compare with GWG? We're slated to start GWG but now I'm second guessing myself.

 

TIA

[Staceyshoe]

:bigear: I've been looking at both GWG and Shurley, so I'm curious what the hive has to say.

[Catiejoy]

I started teaching the Shurley Method in a private school and loved it except, the kids did not be able to isolate words and tell what part of speech they were or tell what the adverb questions, were etc . . . Also I grew to prefer IEW for writing Fast forward, we now homeschool and my older two had had 5-6 years of the method so I did not finish them. Now I realize how much my youngest missed and we are doing the homeschool version. Granted it has only been a week and I see some nice improvements that I believe address my concerns; however I think I would prefer the school ed. In your opinion, does each homeschool year assume it is their first year?

[simka2]

We really enjoy it here! I did get each child a white board to classify their sentences on. I enjoy the jingles...and when they get stuck I can just hum a certain tune to point them in the right direction. We use everyother year as there is a lot of material to cover!!!

 

I also use a seperate writing curriculum.

[dkholland]

I have also used it for many years. My oldest (just graduated) came out of the womb knowing grammar and loves to correct us, so I can't count him when reviewing Shurley:001_smile:

 

But, I have used it for two other dss and they both learned much basic grammar. I had one son for 3rd-6th in Shurley and then last year I decided to try R&S since it was given to me free. I found some things that I don't remember covering in Shurley that we learned in R&S. One thing not covered much or clearly was pronoun usage as far as using objective case pronouns, Indefinate pronouns, and relative pronouns. Working with different kinds of clauses was something that my dss seem to miss in Shurley also.

 

Now that I have written that down, I can say that my dss still use the question and answer format to find parts of speech! It works with finding the basic parts of the sentence but I find that it did not work when we were working with adjective or adverbial clauses. Also, my guys memorized the jingles (even though they rolled their eyes!) but now refer to them often.

 

I would say Shurley is for elementary grades. I think it was good reinforcement to change grammar curriculum after using Shurley for awhile. That way, I felt like I got it all covered. We have used Shurley, Our Mother Tongue, and R&S...this year we made the jump to MCT for one ds. I am a little apprehensive, but we're going to give it a go! I am also using Shurley 4 for my youngest ds and plan to keep at it for a couple of years.

 

HTH.

[Guest Cheryl in SoCal]

I LOVE the grammar sections (the parsing, etc) but dislike everything else so we only do the grammar;)

[Sunshine State Sue]

I LOVE the grammar sections (the parsing, etc) but dislike everything else so we only do the grammar;)

I can relate to this.

 

We used Shurley 5 in 5th grade. My husband had used LLATL for 3 years prior to Shurley, but we both felt that our son needed something more rigorous.

 

Pros:

• Great job of teaching how to label the parts of speech in a sentence

• Question and answer flow great tool for learning parts of speech

• Jingles on CD helped to learn and reinforce parts of speech

• Good retention of parts of speech

 

Cons:

• Scripted teacher’s material is very wordy

• Writing instruction is inferior

• Vocabulary work useless (looking up words in a dictionary, writing down the definition and using the word in a sentence). Zero retention.

• Subsequent levels are very repetitive

 

Overall, I was very happy with Shurley. My son did very well and has retained a lot of what he learned with it. However, because of the repetitive nature of subsequent levels, we are using Analytical Grammar for junior high.

 

We abandoned Shurley Writing mid-year. Here is an example of ds’s writing:

I have three favorite animals. These animals are hamsters, dogs, and leopards. My first favorite is a hamster. I like hamsters because their cute and cuddly. My second favorite is a dog. I like dogs because they like to plan and run. My third favorite is a leopard. I like leopards because they live in the jungle and run fast. I think these animals are cool and would like to play with them all.