Rod and Staff English

[michaeljenn]

Just curious.... How many exercises do you assign for the child to do?  I mean actually sit down and write out the answers?   We did most of R&S 2 and 4 orally last year, but I am thinking it may be time to assign more "written" work.  Advice? Opinions?

 

 

[Ellie]

Just curious.... How many exercises do you assign for the child to do?  I mean actually sit down and write out the answers?   We did most of R&S 2 and 4 orally last year, but I am thinking it may be time to assign more "written" work.  Advice? Opinions?

 

I would assign pretty much everything for dc 8 or 9yo and older.

[momacacia]

10yo only does the Written Exercises and sometimes Review exercises. We don't do the oral or classroom exercises, but my goal is that it be as independent as possible for her. I've also been known to have her xerox a page of exercises and mark it up. However, she does plenty of other writing (and handwriting) in summer science and school-year composition.

[mom2hunangirls]

For 5 & 6 mine had to do the odds for written and review (sometimes I would change to 1-8 if I thought those looked better).  If there was a worksheet I would sub the worksheet for review.  There were a few harder chapters that she had to do all.

[Shay]

We did R&S 5 this past year, and we almost always did all components (Class, Written, Review). A few times, we tried to skip Class, but then he would make errors on Written. Some lessons (usually the ones with correct usage, which were *easier* for ds, such as "teach vs learn" ) we would go through quickly and skip.

 

On occasional lessons, usually long diagramming ones, I'd let him do even or odds only. If he missed anything, not only did he have to correct it, but had to do the "even" next to it. That was a motivator :)

[SilverMoon]

When we're doing written work I go over the oral/class time with them first, which generally gives me a great idea of how much more review they could use. I only ever did odds when there was a monster pile of problems and they already knew it pretty well (not terribly common).

 

When we're doing it all orally we do ever problem in every set, unless they've demonstrated they can do it blindfolded with one arm tied behind their back. Diagrams go on a whiteboard.

 

We never skipped the review sections regardless of how easy they seemed.

 

(I'll have book 3 and 6-7 running this fall. They'll be done nearly all orally. Yes, I know, that's skipping part of the lesson. My teens did them orally for years and their retention was fabulous. That and we prefer a more interesting writing program anyway.)

[PeachyDoodle]

Grammar comes easily for dd, so I pick and choose based on how well she understands the concepts. Usually she reads the lesson for herself and then does some of the practice exercises (whatever I've assigned). Often we do the review exercises as well, but not always (we skip stuff she knows cold, like capitalization).

 

We rarely do the oral exercises, unless she needs additional instruction on the topic. Then we go over them together. Sometimes we do them at the end of the unit as a review and so I can assess what she needs to work on.

 

We usually skip the writing lessons since we use an outside writing program. We also skip the "non-grammar" lessons, like how to use the phone, since we cover those kinds of things in other contexts.

 

[FYI, we have done books 3 and 4 and will start 5 in the fall.]

[Mommy22alyns]

I do buy the worksheets, and when the lesson has one, I assign that.  Otherwise, I pick and choose daily based on what I think they need to work on and what I think they've got.  I usually assign the diagramming, much to their chagrin. :D

 

I've done 2-6 so far.

[yvonne]

I do buy the worksheets, and when the lesson has one, I assign that.  Otherwise, I pick and choose daily based on what I think they need to work on and what I think they've got.  I usually assign the diagramming, much to their chagrin. :D

 

I've done 2-6 so far.

 

:iagree:  

 

We've done R&S 2-7. Same process for each lesson......

 

- Oral Review in the Teacher's Manual

- Read the lesson together

- Class Practice orally

- Written Exercises orally, except they write out all diagramming exercises and the occasional exercise that would be better written than oral.

- Worksheet - written

 

I was worried about retention when we started, but all three children have a fantastic grasp of grammar. Couldn't have worked out any better. R&S was something that got done every day, without dreading it. Writing out all those exercises would have been overkill/busy work for my kids.

 

ETA:  Seconding Acacia's comment about whiteboards..... My daughter found diagramming more agreeable when done on a whiteboard, so she did most diagramming that way. I still had her do some in her notebook because she did like to look back and see how much progress she'd made.

 

Also, because we did so much orally, we did every part of every exercise, except for some of the composition lessons when we used other writing programs.

[michaeljenn]

Thank you!!

 

I think we will do what Yvonne does...  I will require all worksheets to be done.  If there is a concept that my dc are not getting then I will require more exercises.  We have done most diagraming together, or on a white board.  After each sentence, we usually went over it right then and did corrections if needed.   My 10yo especially loves doing it orally... and we have a good time doing it, as there are some sentences in R&S that just make us laugh.  :)

[Mrs Twain]

I have my kids do about half of the written exercises, but for some sections I have them do all or none depending on what I think they need most.  If you want your kids to learn it well, I think they need to do a fair amount of written exercises.

[againstthegrain]

DS7 is on R&S 3. He does enough written work I can see his mastery of it on paper as we are using Rod & Staff's test booklet for English as well this year. It can mean 5 problems from the text, it could mean 10. I have a couple on the whiteboard for him to complete for most lessons. Sometimes the review is done orally, sometimes we do it written - just depends on the topic and how he did with the concept that is being reviewed.

[Goldilocks]

I tried that for 5th with my oldest. I was not able to keep up with checking the work and figuring out where to put it and how he should keep track of his assignments... These would all be good things to learn at that age, but at the time I couldn't handle it with younger kids around. It was just faster to do it orally or on a whiteboard.

[Reefgazer]

We do almost all of them. I do only assign odd numbers in "review and practice" when the kids have the idea down pat, though.