R&S vs Grammar for the WTM

[3girls4me]

I was wondering if anyone can tell me their thoughts on Rod and Staff grammar vs Grammar for the WTM for 8th grade. Which do you prefer? What are the pros and cons of each in comparison to one another in your opinion?

Edited February 26, 2018 by 3girls4me

[abrightmom]

:lurk5:

 

 

 

[cintinative]

I have never used R&S but here are a few things I can comment on based on our experience with Grammar for the WTM:

 

• It is teacher intensive. This is not an independent curriculum.
• This is a scripted curriculum similar to FLL. If you hated FLL, you probably will hate this.
• You need to keep in mind that this is the first edition for this curriculum and it has four books: the teacher text, student workbook, answer key, and book of rules.  So there are errors. They are trying to get the errata posted, but if fixing errors in your brand new books will drive you crazy, I would choose something else.

 

[KAM]

I haven't used R&S either but two of mine (9th & 7th grade) are using Grammar for the WTM this year. It is definitely teacher intensive. I probably spend at least 20 minutes a day per kid doing the "discussion" part of it and another 10 correcting their work and going over mistakes. I had originally hoped to teach my boys together but they work at different speeds and it just wasn't possible. I really like the way it is set up, but my boys find it tedious. I'm not sure they'd find any grammar fun though. I will probably try something they can do more on there own for next year. 

[3girls4me]

Thanks! So helpful!!

[redsquirrel]

I've used both. I used R&S with my older boy 5-8 and with my younger boy 5-6. As soon as WTM came out I jumped ship.

 

In my experience both are teacher intensive. But I taught R&S and I know many just hand it off. That didn't work with my kids. First of all, there is the oral review at the beginning of each R&S lesson and we always did that. Second, its SUPER religious and I had to do a fair amount of editing on the fly. There is also an enormous amount of work assigned, well more than seems reasonable, and we love grammar. We often ended up doing a lot of it orally. I couldn't see any reason to make my kid write all of that out. So we did it orally and I would change the sentences to make them secular. So I would just keep the basic sentences but I would change all the God references to Doctor Who or Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. It made the whole thing a bit more tolerable. I also didn't use the writing assignments because we have always used Writing with Skill for our writing. TBH, I wasn't particularly impressed with the writing instruction in R&S, but that's a separate discussion.

 

I find the lessons in WTM are shorter than the ones in R&S and the exercises are more independent. It's totally secular and I don't have to do any editing. It comes with a workbook for my student to write in and he likes that better. There is also more review. The teacher's book provides more support. All in all, I am very glad we switched and my kid is very clear that he likes it better. He finds the student book easier to read and its more inviting.

[3girls4me]

I've used both. I used R&S with my older boy 5-8 and with my younger boy 5-6. As soon as WTM came out I jumped ship.

 

In my experience both are teacher intensive. But I taught R&S and I know many just hand it off. That didn't work with my kids. First of all, there is the oral review at the beginning of each R&S lesson and we always did that. Second, its SUPER religious and I had to do a fair amount of editing on the fly. There is also an enormous amount of work assigned, well more than seems reasonable, and we love grammar. We often ended up doing a lot of it orally. I couldn't see any reason to make my kid write all of that out. So we did it orally and I would change the sentences to make them secular. So I would just keep the basic sentences but I would change all the God references to Doctor Who or Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. It made the whole thing a bit more tolerable. I also didn't use the writing assignments because we have always used Writing with Skill for our writing. TBH, I wasn't particularly impressed with the writing instruction in R&S, but that's a separate discussion.

 

I find the lessons in WTM are shorter than the ones in R&S and the exercises are more independent. It's totally secular and I don't have to do any editing. It comes with a workbook for my student to write in and he likes that better. There is also more review. The teacher's book provides more support. All in all, I am very glad we switched and my kid is very clear that he likes it better. He finds the student book easier to read and its more inviting.

Thanks! Great information.

 

I'm heading to a convention this weekend and I really hope Rainbow Resource center has some copies for me to look at. I do so much better holding the product in my hands vs online samples!