Struggling with Kilgallon

[plain jane]

I am working through Sentence Composing for Elementary with my dd9 and she is just not getting it.  Some of the sentences she can do but a good portion of them she is really struggling with, both with the unscrambling as well as the imitation.  In fact, some of her imitations have been...  really out there.  :huh:

 

So... what now?  Do I stop the program for a while?  Is there something I should be working through first with her?  My oldest really enjoyed this program and it really helped her with her writing.  However she (my oldest) is the more intuitive type and seemed to internalize things more easily.

 

My 9yo's writing really falls flat sometimes and I had hoped that Kilgallon could help remedy this.

 

What can I do to help her get more out of this program?  

 

[Roadrunner]

Does she really grasp the grammar? With imitations, maybe you can ask her to replace parts of given sentences instead of rewriting entire passages. There is no harm in waiting another year either.

[ChrissySC]

The only reason that Killgallon worked so well in our lessons is because we were using R&S.  I believe that the grammar should come first.  If they, the student, can diagram well, then you can gain benefit instead of aggravation from the Killgallon workbooks. 

 

We moved from R&S 5 to Journey Through Grammarland with Elementary Diagramming to change things up, but the focus is on the parts of speech and  to the mastery of identification.  My history is for reference.  What are you using for the POS? diagramming?  Sentence development and structure before the parts is like trying to make a chicken from a chicken without mapping the DNA!  :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Clear Creek]

I tried it with my oldest when she was in 4th grade, and it was way over her head.  I pulled it back out this year (6th grade), and it is working very well.  She really needed R&S 5 as a basis in order for it to make sense to her.  When she looks at a sentence to imitate, she can see the different sentence parts (adverbial phrase, participial phrase, etc.) and see the pattern to imitate.  I think less intuitive writers will probably get more out of it if you hold off for a year or two, just until they have covered the different parts of the sentence in their grammar.

[Lizzie in Ma]

I first read this as "struggling with Klingon" and I was thinking, "who doesn't". ;)

[Momling]

I would make a table in Microsoft word that has a basic sentence with one word per cell in the top row. Ask her to imitate parts (then later all ) of it underneath.

For example... "I saw a dog in the front yard." Then underneath she could change I to We to make "We saw a dog in the front yard." Then change another word like saw--> heard to make "We heard a dog in the front yard." Then change 'a' to another determiner like "that" to "We heard that dog in the front yard." Eventually coming up with something like "we heard that cat under our ugly sofa."

Anyway.. If you do a sentence each day that she manipulates, she should figure out eventually how sentence imitation works. As you continue, make more and more complicated sentences.

[PinkyandtheBrains.]

I first read this as "struggling with Klingon" and I was thinking, "who doesn't". ;)

I think that every time I see the thread title, glad I'm not alone!