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Rote vs story based grammar materials?


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Has anyone used MCT for their child with learning disabilities?  My son is terrible with remembering "rote" things like grammar definitions and I wondered if the more story type style of grammar might be more accessible for him?  

I would love to just drop grammar but it comes up in the  Ontario Grade 10 literacy test, and I do think it helps students with writing, and understanding what they read.   MCT  looks beautiful, but that just means it appeals to me.   Grammar just seems to be one of those topics that is not sticking in his long-term memory at all.  He will seem to have it while working on a topics--- eg.. understand nouns while working on nouns, but then when the next unit is verbs, he seems to forget all the noun information.   Any ideas or suggestions?

 

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21 hours ago, NorthernBeth said:

Has anyone used MCT for their child with learning disabilities? 

I used it with my son who has dyslexia.  Before that we had used Hake/Saxon Grammar.   We used Voyage Level, and it was the first time he ever really understood grammar.  I think it was the big picture approach coupled with the practice book giving gentle practice (one sentence to analyze) every single day.  

If your son is having trouble remembering what a noun (for example) is once you've moved on to verbs, MCT should be helpful because you use everything each time you analyze a sentence.

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I love MCT grammar because of the analysis. I have one kid that analyzes things very linearly (my more dyslexic/ADHD kiddo), and one that analyzes things more eclectically. The more eclectic one has ASD, and he uses all four levels almost simultaneously--dipping in and out of each level as the picture emerges in his brain. MCT works for both, though I had to help my less linear child use the methods less linearly. My less linear son still struggles to identify prepositions sometimes, but he can use the MCT levels and reasoning to figure out prepositions by process of elimination.

I wouldn't blow off specialized SLP materials though either as it sounds like he could have a language issue.

You might also check out Winston Grammar. It's multi-sensory, and it has cue cards. I think it could be used alongside MCT, but you should preview things in case you want to customize the cue cards or change things slightly to harmonize more than one curriculum. 

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MCT worked here because it was in depth analysis, but only ONE sentence at a time, instead of a whole page of exercises, and therefore didn't turn them off. I didn't try to use the writing with the kids with more challenges (it worked great for L. but the idea of doing it with the BKs was about enough to make ME cry), but sitting on the couch together and reading the grammar books, and then doing ONE sentence on the whiteboard worked well enough that both M and C have done well on the grammar part of standardized tests, even though both struggle with writing.

 

I also used Shurley Grammar jingles because they stuck, even though I'm not thrilled with Shurley overall, we do a lot of mad libs orally, and we did a lot of editing. 

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