Concise writing and/or grammar program for 6th grader?

[tld]

I'm looking for a writing and grammar program that is concise, adequate, and preferably not too boring.  My son (and I) do not want to spend a ton of excess time on these subjects! 

[MamaHill]

Excellence in Writing might be an option.

Grammar and writing are in bite-size chunks with short videos for most lessons.  I've only previewed it and haven't actually used it yet, but it looks streamlined and very do-able.

 

[lexi]

5 hours ago, MamaHill said:

Excellence in Writing might be an option.

Grammar and writing are in bite-size chunks with short videos for most lessons.  I've only previewed it and haven't actually used it yet, but it looks streamlined and very do-able.

 

This would be my recommendation as well. We’re going to be trying it this year. 

Another poster pointed out that it’s Essentials in Writing. It’s DVD’s with a workbook. 

It does seem very easy to use and straightforward but it does require someone to review the work and provide feedback and help with corrections. I think they have a grading service though. 

If you need something more independent then maybe an online course would be best. 

[Momto6inIN]

Analytical Grammar is concise and thorough. It covers grammar only, not composition, but it is a complete grammar program that we used very successfully for 3 years - 6th through 8th grade - for all 3 of my oldest and plan to use for my younger 2 when they are ready for it too. After completing AG they no longer needed grammar instruction and just did a few exercises a week to keep their skills sharp in high school. I wouldn't say it's exciting but it got the job done and got it done well.

[Janeway]

I really felt Winning with Writing fit this bill. Apparently, EIW and Winning With Writing are quite similar, but EIW has videos. So if you want videos, then EIW.

[tld]

I need to look at EIW again.  It's been a few years and when I looked at it originally it didn't seem like a good fit for my son.  But things change, so I need to refresh myself on what that looks like again.

Winning with Writing looks great though!  I like the layout and it's straight-forwardness and that the lessons are relatively short.  I'm being tempted....

Analytical grammer looks great on a number of fronts, and I may keep it in mind for my other kids, but I can see the layout and exercises are not for this particular child.

For the person who asked, I'm looking for something brief and concise for a number of reasons.  I've learned over 6 years of homeschooling my son that this is the best approach for keeping him positive toward learning and absent from daily emotional breakdowns.  He and I have also had lots of clashing and relational stress concerning school over the past couple years and so the more he can do independently without me, the better chance that we will be able to continue homeschooling while not destroying our relationship.

 

[tld]

I guess I was confused,  I thought EIW was IEW.  EIW looks much better for our situation though.  How long are each of the DVD sessions and about how long does the student spend daily with this curriculum?

[alisoncooks]

1 hour ago, tld said:

I guess I was confused,  I thought EIW was IEW.  EIW looks much better for our situation though.  How long are each of the DVD sessions and about how long does the student spend daily with this curriculum?

We use and like EiW.  I appreciate its straightforward and independent nature -- I'm not opposed to concise as long as it gets it done. 

The DVD portions are pretty short, probably averaging under 5 minutes. My DD spent 30-40 minutes on writing with EiW, daily. 

[Ellie]

Writing Strands. I can't think of anything more concise than that. :-)

And Easy Grammar Plus.

You could add Easy Writing. It is not a complete writing course; it provides instruction and practice in writing specific sentence construction, because sometimes children tend to write everything with sentence-verb construction. You choose which activities for your children to do based on their needs.

[Ellie]

On 7/4/2018 at 12:21 PM, tld said:

I guess I was confused,  I thought EIW was IEW.  EIW looks much better for our situation though.  How long are each of the DVD sessions and about how long does the student spend daily with this curriculum?

No, they are different.

Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW)

Essentials in Writing (EIW)

[Lori D.]

Some get 'er done combo options:
- JacKris Publishing: Growing with Grammar (108 lessons; scheduled for 3x/week) + Winning With Writing (36 lessons (1 per week) divided over 5 days)
- Spectrum: Writing (47 lessons) + Language Arts (grammar) (71 lessons)
   note:  even when stretching lessons to take 2-3 days for 1 lesson, Spectrum will not last a full year -- 1/2 to 2/3 of a year at most

Writing ideas:
- Wordsmith Apprentice -- 1 year writing program, for gr. 4-6, can be done largely solo by the student; has a fun "cub reporter" theme; covers all 4 types of writing (descriptive, narrative, expository, persuasive); very gentle -- even doing it just 3-4x/week, you'll likely finish before the end of the year
- Cover Story -- 1 year writing program, for gr. 6-8, can be done largely solo by the student; includes 3x/week DVD instruction; good fit for a student who likes a bit of creativity

Grammar ideas:
- JUNIOR Analytical Grammar -- might be worth a look, as the pages are less busy than the regular Analytical Grammar, and it would give your DS a year to get used to the AG style for then moving in to doing the regular Analytical Grammar for 7th grade... just a thought!
- Easy Grammar might work for you, BUT... Both DSs here very quickly figured out the repetitive pattern of the worksheets, and instead of learning anything and actually applying it to their writing, they just spit back the pattern -- so not a good fit for some students
- Fix It Grammar -- probably more visually overwhelming that what you are needing for this particular student, BUT, you might consider breaking each page in to 2 days, and cover half the page with a blank piece of paper to reduce feeling overwhelmed; also, by starting with the first or second level (The Nose, or Robin Hood), your DS will probably have some familiarity with some of the concepts which will make it go more smoothly; why I suggest this one is that the grammar is shown in context of a story that is added on to day by day, which makes it more interesting
- Cozy Grammar: Basic -- series of videos -- this might be too scattered in approach for your learner, BUT, if video instruction esp. clicks for him, this might be a possibility

[egao_gakari]

I'm not sure it'll work for your purposes, but the Killgallon books Sentence Composing For Middle School, Paragraphs for Middle School, and Grammar for Middle School are certainly concise, or able to be made concise relatively easily. I used the Sentence Composing with DD11 and Grammar with DS13 this past year. Neither of them enjoyed the experience much, but they liked that it was easy to "scale up or down" (by doing more or fewer questions/problems per session).

Sentence Composing "Practices" (each "Activity" is divided into 2-3 "Practices") took my DD11 about 1 hour each to complete, but that would be for 5-10 sentences that you would imitate, combine, shrink down, expand, etc. So if I could tell she wouldn't handle doing 60 minutes of writing that day, I could easily tell her to do half the setences today, half tomorrow. She's definitely a stronger writer for having used it, even though it was pretty dry stuff.

Grammar is a bit different--each section has 6 "practices" related to using the specific type of clause or phrase (participial, gerund, infinitive, etc.) that is being taught in the section. Practice 1, 2, and 3 of each section are really simple and DS13 could complete all of them in 20-30 minutes. Practice 4 and 5 are midlength and it would take him 30-40 minutes to complete both of those. Practice 6 is always a creative writing exercise, so that took him the longest. I can't say that he'd be able to identify a past participle if it punched him in the nose, but he can now recognize when a sentence "just doesn't look right" and he can correct it. So I'm satisfied and I'd recommend the course. Killgallon definitely takes a very different approach than most writing programs I've seen--very little purely original content, mostly imitation of other authors' writing.