MCT Island level, "basic set" vs "complete set" ??

[BlessedMom]

I am considering ordering MCT "Island" level and would love your thoughts.

 

If you ordered the "Complete Island Set" instead of the "Basic Island Set" did you find the extras that come with the complete set necessary? Helpful? Why or why not?

 

If you were purchasing it again would you still purchase the "Complete Set"?

Why or why not?

 

If you ordered just the "Basic Set" did you find yourself wishing you had ordered any of the additional materials that come in the "Complete Set"? If so what and why?

 

If you ordered the "Basic Set" did you find it adequate?

 

 

Thank you for your time.

[Lara in Colo]

MCT does not give permission to copy his stuff. So, if you have one child using the stuff, then the basic is ok, but if you have more than one, order more of the consumable workbook. There are some pages I'd like to copy in the teachers manual, but mostly I find the dictation/copy work fits in nicely with my teaching.

 

I ordered the basic so I can't say what I'm missing except the extra wrkbk (since I combined 2 children)

 

HTH

 

Lara

[scrapbabe]

I ordered basic, but will now order an extra practice island book. I've been able to use the program just fine without having a teacher and student book for everything. I'd save the money and go basic. But get enough practice islands for all your students.

 

Shalynn

[BlessedMom]

Thank you Lara and Scrapbabe for sharing your thoughts.

 

Anyone else?

[BlessedMom]

bump

[Sun]

I ordered the complete set and was a bit dismayed. The "teacher's editions" didn't really have much extra information, so I think if I were to do it again, I'd order just the basic set. It really seemed wasteful to me to have both the teacher's edition and a student edition for each. I'd much rather have a short pamphlet for the teacher's edition with notes for each page (and the teacher's edition doesn't have very many notes - many pages have none). That being said, I only have one child doing it, so the two books seemed particularly excessive. If I had more than one doing it at the same time, it might be nice (though not necessary) to have both books so each child could have his own to follow along with - but it's definitely possible for two kids to easily share. You definitely need a practice island book for each child, though.

 

For written exercises in Grammar Island, I just write sentences onto a sheet of paper and have my child work on them. You could easily do this for more than one child.

[Gooblink]

We are working from the basic set. I do have the Practice Town workbook, but we don't use it; I dictate the sentence to ds and he writes it on paper, then labels the parts of speech, parts of sentence, pharases/clauses. We are only doing one sentence a day, along with CE1 and Paragraph Town. We make flash cards as we go and spend a few minutes each day reviewing those.

 

This method works better for us than workbooks, however, it does require me to teach it. :)

[BlessedMom]

Thank you Sun and Cindy for taking the time to share your experiences with MCT.