Questions about Hake 5, Jr. Analytical Grammar, and diagramming

[Forget-Me-Not]

I ordered both of these to peruse. I'm pretty sure I'm leaning towards Hake, but I had some questions about both.

 

1. How do the Grammar Mechanics fit in with JAG? The TM said to use Mechanics *after* finishing JAG? So would I devote half a year to each? One year to each?

 

2. I ordered the Hake "home school package". It would appear that the Student Workbook is ONLY for the writing portion of the program. Is that correct? I'm considering sending the package back and ordering just the text (and letting my son write in it) and the answer key/test book because I plan to continue with WWE next year. Am I missing anything?

 

Neither seems to have as much diagramming as I'd like him to do. Does anyone have suggestions for a "supplemental" diagramming resource? I'm not confident enough in my own diagramming skills to just do it myself, but if I had a book or website to guide me, I think I could pull some sentences out of his reading every week to have him diagram.

Thanks in advance!

[TarynB]

We're using Hake 5 this year. The student workbook contains the entirety of the writing lessons (no writing lessons in the student textbook), plus at the back of the workbook there are some "extra practice" sheets related to selected grammar lessons from the main textbook. We've never needed or used the extra practice pages, due to the highly spiral nature of the textbook material, but those pages are there if you want them. I can't remember right now, but I think around 20 of the 112 grammar lessons have these related extra grammar practice pages in the workbook. So, you're right, if you only want to use the grammar portion, and not the writing portion, you probably don't need the workbook. However, depending on where you bought your package and how much you paid, it probably isn't worth it to send it back at this point. When I bought ours, I think the package price including the workbook was around $4 more than buying the teacher packet and student textbook separately, so the workbook only added a few bucks to the total package price for me. FWIW, I also let my DS write in the student textbook - I can't imagine making him write it all on another piece of paper. Plus the pages (thin newsprint paper) just aren't durable enough for me to think passing down this book to a younger sibling would work very well.

 

Hake 5's diagramming is a gentle intro. After it gets going, there are usually a couple of sentences to diagram in every lesson. I think that's plenty for now. However, I haven’t used it yet, but I picked up the Grammar & Diagramming Sentences Straight Forward book recently and I like the looks of it. We might use it starting in 6th grade.

 

Sorry, I don’t have anything useful to add re: JAG.

[Forget-Me-Not]

Thanks, that helps a ton! I hadn't even considered the cost of sending the package back vs keeping it--you're probably right that it's not even worth the bother. Thanks for the book rec too--that looks like exactly what I was looking for :)