Can I drop Rod and Staff and just do MCT Island for the kiddos?

[wonderfilled]

Three of my boys (grades 2, 4, and 6) are half way through the year with R&S English (on the appropriate grade level). I recently ordered MCT Grammar Island, MOH, Building Language, Sentence island (well, I haven't ordered this but plan to) and Practice Island. I have read through a large section of the books and love them. When I ordered them I was just thinking of doing them as a supplement, but now I am wondering if we can quit R&S. We have been doing Grammar Island for a few weeks and it is going well.

 

Will we be missing something important if we drop R&S? None of my boys are great at the parts of speech so maybe just focusing on the parts of speech via Grammar Island and Practice Island would be okay for the rest of the year.

 

Right now I am not sure what we will be doing next year. We might do Growing with Grammar since I would like to do something open and go.

 

Oh, and if it makes any difference we are doing Heart of Dakota.

[3Blessings]

I really love MCT, but since you are asking . . . I wouldn't use it alone. I use FLL for grammar (though I'l probably be switching to R&S for Ds next school year). I see MCT as icing on the cake. It's fun.

 

On the other hand, you could try it for a bit and if it doesn't seem to be enough, start R&S again.

[boscopup]

The grade 2 and 4 boys could stop and just do the next R&S grade level next year without finishing their current books. I don't think I'd stop the 6th grader though, especially if you're only doing Island level.

[Susan in KY]

I used MCT with Killgallon and Emma Serl and loved, loved, LOVED the results. Schedule looked like this:

 

Grade 2 Primary Language Lessons, year one

Grade 3 PLL, year 2

Grade 4, Intermediate Language Lessons, year one, MCT Island

Grade 5, ILL, year 2, MCT Town, Killgallon

Grade 6, ILL, year 3, MCT Voyage, Killgallon, dabbled a bit in Writing with Skill.

 

I didn't use all the components of either Island or Voyage. This year I am outsourcing Language Arts (only because I convinced my friend who is teaching it to use Killgallon's middle school level.) Next year, I intend to use MCT's middle school package and finish Writing with Skill.

 

I have no idea if that will help you, but I have kids who are decent writers after following this plan.

[StephanieZ]

Yes, you can drop R&S. I did R&S for years and liked it fine.

 

But, MCT is 10000000 times better. My youngest has done it solely, and I don't observe any deficits due to her lack of R&S in the earlier years (as her sibs had).

 

You can always swap back to R&S if desired later. But we're sticking with MCT. :)

[wonderfilled]

Yes, you can drop R&S. I did R&S for years and liked it fine.

 

But, MCT is 10000000 times better. My youngest has done it solely, and I don't observe any deficits due to her lack of R&S in the earlier years (as her sibs had).

 

You can always swap back to R&S if desired later. But we're sticking with MCT. :)

 

 

 

This is what I wanted to hear. :001_smile: :blushing:

 

Just kidding. I appreciate all the advice.

 

I was just looking through the rest of R&S English 2 and I noticed that they cover things like paragraphs, alphabetical order, dictionary use, homophones, synonyms, and opposites. So even if I dropped it for my 2nd grader, how would I make sure that these get covered? That is why I'm hesitating to drop R&S. I didn't even look at the 4th and 6th grade books.

[boscopup]

I was just looking through the rest of R&S English 2 and I noticed that they cover things like paragraphs, alphabetical order, dictionary use, homophones, synonyms, and opposites. So even if I dropped it for my 2nd grader, how would I make sure that these get covered? That is why I'm hesitating to drop R&S. I didn't even look at the 4th and 6th grade books.

 

 

That's why most people use MCT as a supplement or they supplement MCT with something else to cover those topics. Some of them may be covered by your spelling program. Paragraphs can be covered by one of those paragraph workbooks.

 

If you come back to R&S or any other traditional grammar program later, those things will be taught again if you're still in the elementary levels. That's why I suggested dropping it for the 2nd and 4th grader and possibly picking it back up next year at grade level (so drop book 2, and start it again in book 3... same with books 4 and 5). But the 6th grader is beyond elementary grammar, and he really should be beyond the material in MCT Island level if he's been doing R&S 6. MCT Island level is more like 3rd-4th grade. I would pick a higher MCT level for the 6th grader and continue with R&S 6 until you're sure you want to switch fully away from R&S, since if MCT isn't a good fit and you try to go back to R&S, you may not be able to just jump into the grade 7 book (from what I hear... I've only used through book 4).

[wonderfilled]

 

That's why most people use MCT as a supplement or they supplement MCT with something else to cover those topics. Some of them may be covered by your spelling program. Paragraphs can be covered by one of those paragraph workbooks.

 

If you come back to R&S or any other traditional grammar program later, those things will be taught again if you're still in the elementary levels. That's why I suggested dropping it for the 2nd and 4th grader and possibly picking it back up next year at grade level (so drop book 2, and start it again in book 3... same with books 4 and 5). But the 6th grader is beyond elementary grammar, and he really should be beyond the material in MCT Island level if he's been doing R&S 6. MCT Island level is more like 3rd-4th grade. I would pick a higher MCT level for the 6th grader and continue with R&S 6 until you're sure you want to switch fully away from R&S, since if MCT isn't a good fit and you try to go back to R&S, you may not be able to just jump into the grade 7 book (from what I hear... I've only used through book 4).

 

 

I hear you.

 

I can see how not covering those things for the rest of the year for the younger two doesn't matter in the long run, if we pick up with R&S or another grammar program next year. We do use the dictionary in other subjects so that is covered.

[FairProspects]

I was just looking through the rest of R&S English 2 and I noticed that they cover things like paragraphs, alphabetical order, dictionary use, homophones, synonyms, and opposites. So even if I dropped it for my 2nd grader, how would I make sure that these get covered? That is why I'm hesitating to drop R&S. I didn't even look at the 4th and 6th grade books.

 

These are covered in lots of different programs though, and some of us just teach them on the fly too. I don't use MCT as our only writing instruction, and our other resources cover paragraphs. Alphabetical order and homonyms are covered thoroughly by AAS here. Synonyms, antonyms, and dictionary use are just those skills that I've taught as we go about life and researching various projects or having discussions. It will be ok. :)

[StephanieZ]

 

 

 

This is what I wanted to hear. :001_smile: :blushing:

 

Just kidding. I appreciate all the advice.

 

I was just looking through the rest of R&S English 2 and I noticed that they cover things like paragraphs, alphabetical order, dictionary use, homophones, synonyms, and opposites. So even if I dropped it for my 2nd grader, how would I make sure that these get covered? That is why I'm hesitating to drop R&S. I didn't even look at the 4th and 6th grade books.

 

 

We use Spelling Workout for spelling, and all those things are covered in it.

 

Really, truly, if you use all the components of MCT, it really does cover everything that matters, other than handwriting and spelling, I suppose. I think people who think it needs to be supplemented haven't used it for long or haven't used all the components. I have read many posts about all these minutiae grammar things that supposedly aren't covered in MCT, but having been through five of the levels so far, I assure you that it does indeed cover more grammatical minutiae than anyone could possibly need.

 

Once your child is in, say seventh or eighth grade and has been through several MCT levels, you can always decide to do some other program for a semester if you believe there are gaps, but I doubt it will happen in grammar.