R&S English

[CLBMom]

I am considering using this with my ds who will be in 6th next year. He is currently in private school. I have heard that starting in 6th grade the English becomes more advanced. Has anyone found this to be true? English isn't his strongest subject he currently has a 75 average in it.:glare:. I am new to this and am finding all the options overwhelming. I don't want to get the 6th grade level and it be too much for him. Also has anyone used their spelling? He used to do wonderful in spelling but has a 65 in that at the moment. Are y'all getting an idea of why we are hsing next year? I also have a dd who is currently in 2 she makes straight As. He did too at that level.Not sure what is going on with him. It seems something just isn't clicking this year. Ok sorry for rambling. Any comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated . :)

[Changed]

I know next to nothing compared to the others here, but when I pulled my dd from school in 6th grade (this year) I used R&S 5. We have been able to skim through some chapters, but I'm very glad we started where we did because it builds up with sentence diagramming (which she knew nothing about).

 

Hth

[Old Dominion Heather]

R&S would be difficult for a kid to jump into at grade level, especially if grammar wasn't one of his stronger subjects. It is also very dry and humorless, but gets the job done. I'd consider R&S 4 or 5 if you really want to use it, otherwise, I would suggest a year in First Language Lessons either level 3 or 4.

 

R&S Spelling is somewhat easy in comparison. I've only ever looked at it, never used it. It was much easier than the same level of Spelling Workout, IMO.

[smdgl]

I really like R&S English, but I agree that I think it might be difficult to jump into at grade level. They offer free sample lessons if you call them.

[Hedgehog]

From the Rod and Staff Books website:

 

Do you have placement tests?

Rod and Staff Publishers does not provide any placement testing. However, we do offer assessment tests prepared by an independent testing company. When properly applied, your child's scores in these tests will indicate the grade level at which he should be working.

 

As a general rule, your results from the assessment test should be adequate to place your child in the appropriate grade in Rod and Staff's curriculum. A child who is average or above should be able to work at the same level compared with most other curricula.

 

One exception is the English curriculum, which covers grammar and composition. If your child has basic knowledge in these areas, they will probably do fine in grades 2 through 5. From the feedback we've received, grades 6 and above don't provide as much review of the basics, and are more advanced than average. (While Rod and Staff only publishes the English series through 10th grade, it is equivalent to completing a high school grammar course.) For students switching in the upper grades, especially those weak in grammar, we usually recommend that they drop back a grade or two, sometimes back to the 5th grade text, which is a good foundation for the rest of the series. If you feel confident they are up to grade level then start there and see if they can manage it. If you find it too advanced, you can always save it for later while you drop back to an earlier grade.

 

If your child has not been doing well in school, we recommend that you back off a grade or two. Don't try to push a child beyond their level of understanding. You will be far better off to work from a level where your child has a solid footing in the area he is studying. Then you can make real progress.

[SilverMoon]

I would start him in 5. It ought to baby step enough to get him caught up, and if it's too easy just use the chapter reviews as daily lessons until you find out where he is. :) IMO a capable 5th or 6th grader that reads well, with no previous grammar exposure, can begin with the 5 book. I see no reason to go back further than that.

 

Also, Rod and Staff makes an excellent spelling course, Spelling by Sound and Structure. There are no bells and whistles, but it's very effective. They make the child work with the rules and actually apply them; these books aren't about memorizing an arbitrary list of words.

[Lostinabook]

I would get 6. Dd is doing 6 right now & ds is doing 4 & a lot of the time they're doing very similar things. Dd's is at a bit higher level, but it's still not a huge leap. If she were having problems I'd just slow down & take a couple of days on any problem lessons.

[SilverMoon]

I am considering using this with my ds who will be in 6th next year. He is currently in private school. I have heard that starting in 6th grade the English becomes more advanced. Has anyone found this to be true? English isn't his strongest subject he currently has a 75 average in it.:glare:. I am new to this and am finding all the options overwhelming. I don't want to get the 6th grade level and it be too much for him. Also has anyone used their spelling? He used to do wonderful in spelling but has a 65 in that at the moment. Are y'all getting an idea of why we are hsing next year? I also have a dd who is currently in 2 she makes straight As. He did too at that level.Not sure what is going on with him. It seems something just isn't clicking this year. Ok sorry for rambling. Any comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated . :)

 

I can add an anecdotal story to this. A local family we know from scouts just pulled their sixth grader out of PS, but couldn't afford curricula for the first month or so. There were many issues leading to that decision, not just academics. I loaned them our R&S English 5 set (as well as a couple other books we weren't using). I spoke to his mother last night to see how it was going. She was gobsmacked at how much of it he didn't know, but said he's learning it easily with that book.

[masterpiece]

I pulled my kids out of ps for 6th and 4th and started them with R&S right at their grade levels. They both did ok, though not great, even though they had no background in grammar studies; they're continuing on in the series and I'm planning on using 8th and 6th for them next year.

 

I love grammar and understand it well, so it's quite easy for me to help them, but they definitely don't love it nor is it easy for them. I'm sure if I had started them at a lower level they, especially the older one, would have a better time at it. And certainly, if this weren't a strong subject for me it would have been too much.

 

HTH.

[Finnella]

When I started homeschooling my DS last year, he was in 6th grade. I tried R&S 6, and it was a disaster. We're doing R&S 5 this year, and it's going much better. Having seen both texts, I can attest that there is a big jump between 5 and 6.

 

So, I'd start with 5. It will most likely avoid frustration.

[karensk]

I used R&S-5 for ds, who had had a light grammar background and is generally strong in academics, at the beginning of his 5th grade year. We worked slowly through it, but the first several weeks' worth of lessons were quite challenging for him...finding the subject, the predicate, the sentence skeleton, etc. I felt that those sections were more for students who had already learned those things in R&S-4; it felt a bit confusing to him for the first month or two, I think. But it got better. Plus, I learned to do most of the lessons orally. He finished the book near the end of his 6th grade year, which was totally fine with me.

 

FLL-3 and FLL-4 are accelerated IMO, delivering a lot of content in a more kid-friendly way. The grammar lessons in FLL-3 are usually 5-15 min. per lesson, 2-3 lessons per week (we skipped all the poetry and narration lessons, doing only the grammar and a bit of copywork). The ones on FLL-4 are a bit longer...10-25 min. per lesson, 2-3 lessons per week. The entire lesson is done with the parent, so you won't need to grade any papers later and he won't have to correct anything later. You simply correct him as needed while he writes during the lesson time. I felt that FLL-3 did an excellent job of explaining the linking verb, predicate adjective, predicate nominative thing, which I had never understood before. Since FLL is scripted, it tells you in a very step-by-step manner how to guide the student in finding the verb, the subject, etc. FLL-3 & 4 didn't come out until ds was too old for them, unfortunately. But I'm very glad my daughter used these programs!

 

The numbers 3 and 4 on the books might be a problem for some older students who don't want to use something that looks like it's for 3rd/4th graders. But really, the content in FLL-3 & 4 is well beyond what most schools are teaching in the middle school grades. I haven't heard of any school where the 3rd graders memorize definitions such as "a noun is the name of a person, place, thing or idea" and "a verb is a word that does an action, shows a state of being, links two words together, or helps another verb," all the be verbs, all the helping verbs, pronouns, forty prepositions in alphabetical order, and plenty more.

 

Since your ds is in a phase where some things aren't clicking as smoothly as usual, you may want to opt for the easier levels of programs so he can have a sense of accomplishment/success at the front end.

 

HTH!

[angela in ohio]

I am considering using this with my ds who will be in 6th next year. He is currently in private school. I have heard that starting in 6th grade the English becomes more advanced. Has anyone found this to be true? English isn't his strongest subject he currently has a 75 average in it.:glare:. I am new to this and am finding all the options overwhelming. I don't want to get the 6th grade level and it be too much for him. Also has anyone used their spelling? He used to do wonderful in spelling but has a 65 in that at the moment. Are y'all getting an idea of why we are hsing next year? I also have a dd who is currently in 2 she makes straight As. He did too at that level.Not sure what is going on with him. It seems something just isn't clicking this year. Ok sorry for rambling. Any comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated . :)

 

I would guess that maybe he was taught to read using a non-phonetic method. The results tend to show up in 4th-6th grade. For spelling, you will likely need to remediate that. I would get something like Spelling Workout, which uses spelling rules, not just lists of unrelated words. I haven't looked at R&S spelling, but that is what I would be looking for.

 

For the R&S English, you will want to put him into 5. Don't bother trying to rush through it, either; use the full year to work through it. Each time you come to a writing lesson, complete it and then assign similar writing assignments to follow-up and provide review. If he asks about the "5" on the book, tell him it is Mennonite and they label their books differently. ;) :D

 

I would also supplement some phonics instruction for your 2nd grader to avoid this problem later. The Plaid Phonics series is nice; Rainbow Resource carries them.

[CLBMom]

I would guess that maybe he was taught to read using a non-phonetic method. The results tend to show up in 4th-6th grade. For spelling, you will likely need to remediate that. I would get something like Spelling Workout, which uses spelling rules, not just lists of unrelated words. I haven't looked at R&S spelling, but that is what I would be looking for.

 

For the R&S English, you will want to put him into 5. Don't bother trying to rush through it, either; use the full year to work through it. Each time you come to a writing lesson, complete it and then assign similar writing assignments to follow-up and provide review. If he asks about the "5" on the book, tell him it is Mennonite and they label their books differently. ;) :D

 

I would also supplement some phonics instruction for your 2nd grader to avoid this problem later. The Plaid Phonics series is nice; Rainbow Resource carries them.

 

 

I actually "taught" him to read using mfw first grade and thought that was phonics but when he started 2 in a Christian school that used Abeka it became obvious he had no clue what was going on. Thank God he had a great teacher that was willing to tutor him after school and give him a crash course on phonics. That seemed to do the trick till this pass year. The boy who went 2 YEARS without missing one word on a spelling test is now lucky if he has a D. We do try so hard. Tonight we were studying for tomorrows spelling test and we were both in tears it was so frustrating. Like I said this kid always tests well on standardized tests. He can look at a list of words and pick out the misspelled one right away. He just can't take a spelling test anymore. I know I can't send him to middle school like this. I can literally see him falling through the cracks. Everyone at school thinks he is such a smart, kind,well spoken boy they don't seem to see it. They just say "Oh he's a boy and he needs to just take his time". :confused: my dd who is in 2 learned Abeka which I know is pure phonics and I would dare say she is probably only a year behind if not on level with her brother in spelling and reading. Ds10 does seem to have good reading comprehension. I will read a book before he does so we can discuss it and he does really well. It's this spelling thing which I think is a phonics issue. So where to go from here? Also what would you recommend I use for phonics for my ds4 who will be is K in the fall? I don't want this to happen to him as well. Ds10 also has issues with Math although not quite as severe. That will be a future thread. One problem at a time :tongue_smilie: Thank you all for the help.

[DianeJM]

Not every kid is going to do well with Rod & Staff, no matter how much we parents like it. You might want to give your son a gentler introduction for his first year at home, using maybe Jr. Analytical Grammar or Winston Grammar basic level (which is very hands on), and then the following year go to R&S if by that time you figure it might be right for him. Just a suggestion. Imo, grammar is one of those things that is okay learned just a bit later, and there is no shame backing up as many levels as needed to optimize learning. It's possible he might need breathing room his first year at home, so relax with him. We are not going for grades, our aim is learning.

 

Don't worry about spelling, just go at his pace, skip the pressure. Boys can be terrible spellers for some reason, but if you take the pressure off, maybe he will do better. At this point with my youngest (7th) I'm doing words lists from various spelling books, no big deal. I also use Megawords for spelling, which covers the rules well. The real test is not how they perform on a Friday test but how they spell in their writing.

 

About phonics for your little guy -- how about teaching the phonograms with a pure phonics program such as Spell to Write and Read? You don't necessarily have to do the entire program, but getting the phonogram cards and learning those would be vaulable. ABeka's "special sounds" cards are sort of like phonograms; they also work really well, and they are easier to use (imo) than SWR (although ABeka isn't completely "pure" phonics in the sense that SWR is, but that's okay I'm sure).

 

All the best to you!