Killgallon sentence composing

[lewelma]

I am interested in Killgallon for my soon to be 11yo. He is not a fast writer (at all) because he works so hard to make his sentences beautiful. So I do think he will appreciate the program.

 

I have been looking at the middle school program and it seems to be a lot of practice in "chunking" which I think my son probably knows and just needs to review. Also, I noticed a lot of "please copy these sentences" and then divide them into chunks, and there was a LOT of copying. Do kids do this? or do you do those sections orally?

 

My question is whether the high school book, done at a slow pace, is reasonable for an 11 year old to do.

 

Thoughts?

 

ruth in NZ

[usetoschool]

I am interested in Killgallon for my soon to be 11yo. He is not a fast writer (at all) because he works so hard to make his sentences beautiful. So I do think he will appreciate the program.

 

I have been looking at the middle school program and it seems to be a lot of practice in "chunking" which I think my son probably knows and just needs to review. Also, I noticed a lot of "please copy these sentences" and then divide them into chunks, and there was a LOT of copying. Do kids do this? or do you do those sections orally?

 

I am not sure which book you are looking at specifically but we are in the middle of the Elementary Sentence Composing book with a 12 yo boy right now and there really isn't that much to each lesson as far as writing. We do the lesson part orally and then there are usually 2-4 sentences to compose and sometimes an additional 2-4 that you come up with on your own. We don't copy the model sentence, just write out the imitation. The chunking part is a physical assignment for the first 3 or so lessons, then it just becomes a mental exercise as they are hearing the parts to the sentence that need to match up.

 

My question is whether the high school book, done at a slow pace, is reasonable for an 11 year old to do.

 

I would start with the elementary book - it advances pretty quickly. There is a lot more to it than chunk and copy.

 

Thoughts?

 

ruth in NZ

 

HTH

[TKDmom]

I'm doing the Elementary level book with my almost 10yo dd. I just copy the sentences out for her to chunk. It seemed like too much copying to me, and I didn't want her to get so bogged down in the copying that she missed the point of the lesson.

[lewelma]

Thanks for this.

 

I had not even considered at the elementary book -- I will go take a look. My son has been working with IEW for a number of years so he is used to dealing with adverbial and adjectival clauses and has started to add in appositives on his own. So I assumed that he would be ready for the middle grades book.

 

ruth

[Crimson Wife]

FWIW, I feel that Story Grammar for Elementary and Grammar for Middle School are actually fairly similar in terms of challenge level. The main difference is that the quotes in the latter come from books aimed at a more mature audience. SG quotes mostly from fairy tales and books aimed at the 8-12 y.o. age group. G4MS includes quotes from Stephen King and Michael Crichton and other books that I wouldn't let my child read until he/she's a teen. The sentences included in the Kilgallon book themselves are fine, but my DD knows that she needs to ask my permission before picking up the full novel at the library or off our bookshelf at home.

 

G4MS also includes periodic paragraph writing exercises not in SG.

 

I haven't seen the high school Kilgallon book yet so I don't know how that compares with the earlier levels.

[Mom-ninja.]

Killgallon was not well received by my son. He prefers WWE and fairly recently we got into using Sentence Island. He thought the exercises were boring and too repetitive. Oddly I would have thought he felt that way about WWE, but for some reason he doesn't. Maybe he likes the stories in WWE. I don't know. He loves Sentence Island, but I don't feel comfortable that it is enough writing practice so I still use WWE (I alternate the two).

 

I personally like it, but my son complained heavily. I don't always let him make these sorts of calls, but it's not worth it if he ends up hating writing.

 

This was my ds. He hated Sentence Composing so much it caused tears.

 

We use WWE and I'm toying with the idea of Sentence Island.

[Capt_Uhura]

WE're about 3/4 through SC for Elementary school w/ a 5th grade boy. I think it has really helped his writing. I see more varied sentence structure. It has reinforced grammar vocabulary. We can read the Hobbit and discuss why a particular paragraph sounded so beautiful b/c of the varied sentence structure using appositives, adjective clauses, strong adj, etc.

 

capt Uhura

[Deniseibase]

Sorry to hijack your thread a little, but I see there is both Sentence Composing and Story Grammar books for all levels. What's the difference between the two? Do you use both of these at the same time, or does one follow the other? If one follows the other, which one comes first? Or do you even need both or are they redundant? Thanks!

[Crimson Wife]

Killgallon was not well received by my son. He prefers WWE and fairly recently we got into using Sentence Island. He thought the exercises were boring and too repetitive. Oddly I would have thought he felt that way about WWE, but for some reason he doesn't. Maybe he likes the stories in WWE. I don't know. He loves Sentence Island, but I don't feel comfortable that it is enough writing practice so I still use WWE (I alternate the two).

 

I personally like it, but my son complained heavily. I don't always let him make these sorts of calls, but it's not worth it if he ends up hating writing.

 

And my DD was the opposite. She *HATED* WWE with a passion but loves Kilgallon. I think it's because she can be much more creative with her Kilgallon assignments than with the copywork/dictation/summarizing exercises in WWE.

[Matryoshka]

Sorry to hijack your thread a little, but I see there is both Sentence Composing and Story Grammar books for all levels. What's the difference between the two? Do you use both of these at the same time, or does one follow the other? If one follows the other, which one comes first? Or do you even need both or are they redundant? Thanks!

 

The "Sentence Composing" series came out before the "Grammar" series. In some ways they're very similar - they both use the Sentence Composing method, and sentences from popular/classic fiction.

 

At the Elementary level, the Sentence Composing book names the grammar devices used, and the Story Grammar doesn't. But then at the Middle School level, it switches - the Sentence Composing book has no grammar names, and the Grammar book does.

 

You could use both books at each level, one after the other if you wanted to a book a year and needed another book at that level. I think I agree with Crimson that if you did that, do the SC book at that level first, then the Grammar book.

 

I've decided that since I use a lot of other LA materials, I'm going to do just one book at each level and stretch them out (there are even pacing suggestions to stretch out the books over 2-3 years at the beginning of each book). After buying both series (ouch, $$) and comparing them, I decided to go with the Grammar series.

[Deniseibase]

Matroyshka, thanks, that's what I needed to know!