Growing With Grammar (GWG) and retention debate (x-post)

[wehave8]

If you have experience with GWG for the long haul, do you think the bad reviews about little/no retention could be because it was not used more than 1 (or 2) years?


Pam

[EKS]

Ok--so I only used GWG (grade 3) for one year, but my take on the poor retention thing is that it is too easy to use simple pattern recognition to do the exercises.

[SparklyUnicorn]

My only experience with it is now.  I am using level 8 with my 6th grader.  Grammar comes naturally to him and we have used a ton of things.  I just want to have something to review a bit to keep on top of the skills.  I think where it is weak is that the examples are so simplistic, I wonder how that would translate to more robust writing. 

[ErikaElle]

Following.... I'm using FLL & GWG (both level 1) with my 2nd grader.

I bought GWG for him to complete a daily exercise since we haven't gotten to any written activities yet in FLL.

[Clemsondana]

I used it for several years. For my kid who likes to learn and generally retains things, it was great. It was relatively painless and quick but got the job done. This kid also struggled with having to write a lot, so a format where he could mostly circle or underline was perfect.

 

For my kid who is smart but tries to get through school with as little thought as possible, they were able to do a good bit of pattern recognition and didn't retain as much as I would have preferred.

 

When we switched, we went in the complete opposite direction and are using the MCT program. My happy learner has flown through the beginning years and can do the sentence analysis about as fast as he can read the words. As good as MCT is, I'm thinking that his earlier practice with GWG helped. For my more reluctant learner, we've had to start at the beginning and go slowly. But, as we complete the Grammar Island book, there are still days when this kid will insist that they don't know what a verb is, so I'm not quite willing to blame it on GWG. :-) One thing that I do appreciate is that GWG did a painless good job with the basics of punctuation.