Just talking with a neighbor girl and she was telling me

[Gamom3]

that they do not cover grammar in school!!!

She said they use to, but stopped. She was saying how horrible she was at it, so she didn't do anything in class!

She is the same age as my youngest son..12

She had told me about 2yrs ago about what they did in a language arts class.. they stacked oreo's...I asked what she learned from it and she said, "how to stack oreo's"!

She also said they had an egg rolling contest in the same class as well.

I just looked at her funny and she said that her teachers are weird!

 

 

I have heard a few things similar to what she told me from other people!

I am so glad my kids are home studying with me and not at the school they would be attending if they were in ps!

[Karen sn]

No grammar, no penmanship.....and you can pretty much kiss the 3 R's goodbye here in Florida. It's all about the FCAT scores here.

[shalom22]

Just another great reason to homeschool.

[K&Rs Mom]

It's all about the FCAT scores here.

 

Here it's the MEAP. If it's not the 3-R's, what does the test cover? :001_huh:

 

It's amazing they get any test-prep time in between all the field trips, assemblies and oreo-stacking....

[Ashleen]

Grammar? Who the heck needs it? Kids today need to learn to stack Oreos so they can grow up to be...um...well, who cares? Anything's more important than that old fuddy-duddy grammar nonsense.:glare:

[NicksMama-Zack's Mama Too]

and the only grammar instruction I got was in 3rd grade. Mrs. Janney was probably close to 70 and she had us diagramming sentences on the blackboard.

 

I always got good grades in English because I was a very creative writer.

 

R&S3 introduced me to real grammar and I've been learning along with my kids.

[Plaid Dad]

The only real grammar instruction I had outside of my French and German classes was from one junior high English teacher. She'd gone to Catholic schools herself and taught us diagramming. Other than that, we got nothing but a little mechanics and usage.

[Tracey in TX]

Yikes, that isn't good IMO. There is a belief that grammar shouldn't be studied until late elementary school. I have a good home school friend who didn't teach her children until 7th (??) grade. It's not a belief I follow, so my kiddos get it daily. fwiw, our local ps begins teaching it 2nd semester kindergarten.

[Aubrey]

I have an ENGLISH degree & didn't get any grammar in COLLEGE--oh, except for the class called "Adv Grammar & Comp"--in which we were told on the first day that there's no such thing as "grammar." Apparently "grammar" is based on opinion, culture, etc, & so doesn't really exist.

 

The rest of the course was going to be on how to write a resume. Seriously. The WHOLE semester. I dropped.

[DB in NJ]

I have an ENGLISH degree & didn't get any grammar in COLLEGE--oh, except for the class called "Adv Grammar & Comp"--in which we were told on the first day that there's no such thing as "grammar." Apparently "grammar" is based on opinion, culture, etc, & so doesn't really exist.

 

The rest of the course was going to be on how to write a resume. Seriously. The WHOLE semester. I dropped.

 

I'm stunned. I went to 12 years of Catholic school (including my 4 years at an all-girls Catholic high school) in Philly. We had grammar every year, including high school.

[Caroline]

My kids who go to Ga public schools have had at least some grammar every year. My oldest has been diagramming sentences for two years. He has never stacked Oreos in school, but he did roll an egg in Family and Consumer Science class. They didn't use that egg in the salad.

[kalanamak]

Grammar? Who the heck needs it?

 

Although I intend to teach it, I never had any that I can recall. I learned to write from learning to speak, and I learned that at our nightly, formal sit-down dinners where we had "conversation" (and knew the difference between a soup spoon and a cream soup spoon).

[Amy in Orlando]

No grammar, no penmanship.....and you can pretty much kiss the 3 R's goodbye here in Florida. It's all about the FCAT scores here.

 

:iagree: Yep.

[angela in ohio]

Here it's the MEAP. If it's not the 3-R's, what does the test cover? :001_huh:

 

 

The MEAP tests reading, writing, language arts, mathematics, science, and history.

[Melissa in Australia]

I had a whole language education, and didn't learn any grammar at school, apart from punctuation.

when I started homeschooling, I had to look up in the dictionary what a noun and verb was. well, haven't I come a long way now. I am now up to r&s 7 and learning more grammar than I thought could possibly exist!

[Soph the vet]

I just want to "give it up" for Mr. Goad, my 7th grade English teacher. It was in his class that I remember diagramming everything. I also had a great English teacher in 5th grade, Mrs. Ruskin but she overemphasized Haikus and limericks, IMO.

I am using R&S as well and relearning grammar, I actually enjoy it this time!

[Quiver0f10]

What exactly is "whole language" as far as teaching english? I don't really remember having much english in school either and I am learning more now teaching my kids using R&S than I ever did in school.

[klmama]

I had parts of speech and mechanics instruction in elementary school, but it didn't stick. In junior high, I had some instruction, but the teacher spent most of the time telling jokes, so I didn't get it. Finally, in 10th grade, I took a grammar class from the "meanest" teacher in the district. She was strict. She made us work hard. We diagrammed sentences and memorized grammatical terms by making note cards with 100+ terms defined, with examples. She tested us weekly. I finally got it. When I took a rhetoric class with her as a senior, a significant part of our grades was determined by how well we followed the grammar rules in our writing. I am very grateful for what she taught, and I look forward to relearning what I've forgotten as my dc cover it!

[fivetails]

They don't cover much of it here in elementary - when we took dd11 out at the end of grade 5 last year, she didn't know what a "verb" or "noun" was.

 

I don't actually remember doing it in elementary either, come to think of it... though, I *do* remember my grade six Language Arts teacher and if anyone would have taught it, it would have been her. What I remember most about her though is that she'd have a fit if any girls in her class had makeup on, she read us The Hobbit out loud, hated us using the word "nice" in our writing, and I got in trouble for telling her she was half a a century old when she turned 50 that year - my father told me to say it, I didn't really know what it meant. ;)

[Rhonda in TX]

I remember I just could not get what a verb was. Then it all clicked in 7th grade. I remember memorizing prepositions and being verbs (I can still recite them, so it must have been regularly reinforced). I know we did some diagramming at some point, but I don't remember how much.

 

I don't know how much grammar the schools teach in my area, but I know they used to 30 years ago.

[elegantlion]

I remember very vividly getting into a "discussion" with my high school teacher, the class was vocabulary or something like that. We had to do grammar that I had never been taught. I asked how I was supposed to know something I had learned, that we didn't get that training in junior high. She basically told me it was my fault and made me feel like a moron. So maybe I was right and we never learned it. I hated that class. :glare:

 

ETA: This was in the early 80's