Bridging from MCT Island to Town: Killgallon, maybe?

[Rivka]

My 2nd grader is burning through MCT Island level at a rapid pace. She enjoys it and understands the concepts well, but I don't necessarily want to speed ahead and have her in Town level before she even turns 8.

 

I'd also like to spend more time strengthening her mastery of sentence writing. She understands the grammatical rules, and her narrations and dictations are coming along beautifully (we're at the end of WWE 2), but she hates the part in AAS where she has to compose her own sentences.

 

Is Killgallon what we want? If so, which part - Sentence Composing for Elementary School, Story Grammar, both? Or would you recommend something else entirely?

[timetoteach]

:bigear::bigear::bigear:

 

On a side note, what has made the last exercise in AAS more exciting for my DD is to see if she can make a sentence with all or most of the five spelling words. My DD and i then compare our sentences...some end up being rather silly.

[Rivka]

Any ideas? Killgallon looks interesting, but I also don't really get how it works.

[....]

Any ideas? Killgallon looks interesting, but I also don't really get how it works.

 

I probably shouldn't post this, but we could not stand Killgallon. I tried to use it last summer with my 4th grader and 5th grader. It was just a really bad fit for my kids' learning styles.

 

As far as teaching sentences and paragraphs, I don't use a curriculum for that. I do have Write Source 2000 as a guide for what's next (and it has writing guidelines and samples).

 

Have you tried doing a search online? There are tons of online elementary school websites/resources out there. That's how we started with paragraph-writing. I started looking around online and there were printable writing prompts, worksheets on topic sentences, etc. That actually helped a lot!

 

Also, you could always continue following TWTM for writing. If the copy work/dictation is working, I wouldn't change anything!

[matilda]

I like Killgallon a lot, but I don't think it is what you are looking for. Sentence Composing is all about modeling sentences using example phrases and not about creating original sentences.

 

I am in a similar situation with Island, and I recently decided to add in IEW to see if that would help us with more writing. I have not been doing it long enough to recommend or not recommend that approach yet.

[abbeyej]

Honestly, I think the elementary levels of Killgallon will serve you better *after* the Town level of MCT. I would wait and use Killgallon around 4th or 5th grade. I do like it as an alternative approach to reinforce more traditional grammar, but I'm not sure it's what you want right at this moment... Why not just work through the Island level Practice book while also spending a little time each day composing more of her own sentences?

[Alte Veste Academy]

I also have a 2nd grade DD who loves MCTLA. She also loves Crafting Power Sentences (and, of course, there are endless possibilities for extension with this basic concept). No More "I'm Done!" has been a huge hit here, as part of our writing workshop. I just ordered Show Me a Story to bridge her love of writing and crafts. With her, the more creative the better.

[Crimson Wife]

Kilgallon I think may be difficult if the child has not yet done Grammar Town because MCT doesn't introduce the more advanced phrases and clauses in GI. My oldest did Story Grammar prior to GT but in retrospect I should've done it the other way around (I didn't because I was anti-MCT at the time based on an underwhelming preview of the 3 grammar books in isolation without any of the other components). She did Kilgallon Grammar for Middle School after completing "town" and it was so much easier because she had a much better grasp on the grammatical concepts.

 

She actually preferred the sentence composing of Kilgallon to the open-ended writing assignments in MCT. With Kilgallon, she could be creative without getting too overwhelmed with figuring out what to write because the structure of the sentences were given.

 

I'm planning to take my DS through Grammar Town after he finishes Sentence Island and then do Sentence Composing for Elementary School. He'll wait on the rest of "town" until he's ready for the writing part.