Compass Classroom Grammar for Writers

[RubyPenn]

Has anyone used this?  I can't find many reviews on it and am thinking about it for my 9th grader.  We've been using Fix It Grammar with no problems, but I'm wondering if this might be a nice switch for high school.

[ByGrace3]

I would love to know as well, I am considering this and the grammar course with Mr. D for my rising 10th grader who struggles with grammar. 

[RubyPenn]

1 hour ago, ByGrace3 said:

I would love to know as well, I am considering this and the grammar course with Mr. D for my rising 10th grader who struggles with grammar. 

Well I bought it.  My son liked the samples well enough so I hope it's a success next year.

[ByGrace3]

@RubyPenn Did you end up using this? How was it? We haven't done much for grammar this year and I am looking at this again for next year to go through with 2 of my kids together. 

[RubyPenn]

Yes, we are using it.  It's pretty good.  It's streamlined and clear.  The only thing I don't like is the answer key.  There's a lot of explanation in the answer key and I only want the right answers!

[forty-two]

I bought it when it first came out, and I really like it.  Through my ineptitude (at grammar itself and at picking grammar programs), I'd ruined grammar study for my oldest, but this program overcame her ingrained skepticism (she loves to write, which helped).  (When I first proposed it to her, she was cautiously in favor, but wanted to read something the program author had written in order to see if he was worth learning from, lol.  Our library had his Wilderking trilogy and she liked it so much she asked for the trilogy for her birthday; it is a good trilogy.)  It also is the first program that enabled *me* to finally grok grammar, to understand what is actually going on instead of just pattern-matching.  In general, I've found that analyzing writing from the perspective of *using it to write* (e.g. literary analysis from the perspective of *how I, as a writer, can do these kinds of things, and when/where/why I'd want to use them*) has been the most effective way for me to really wrap my mind around it, and it's been true likewise here. 

FWIW, I rather like the detailed answer key, because it helps to have an explanation when we aren't sure what it going on (or when I can intuitively get the answer but can't explain it to my stymied kid).  Also, I found that my middle schooler got a lot out of the videos, but the exercises were too much for her (as a total grammar newbie), even when we were doing them together - aka, ime not really kidding about being a high school program.  But it's been a good level for my high schooler.  Overall, this is probably my favorite grammar program, narrowly edging out Killgallon's Sentence Composing approach. I do really like Killgallon, but I found that we needed to complement it with more formal understanding to make it more than just pattern matching, and this was the first program that really made sense of the higher-level concepts for me.  It also was immediately applicable to complicated, "real world" sentences, and one of my oldest's frustrations with grammar study was the huge disconnect between beginning grammar study sentences - too easy - and the too-hard real world sentences; we never got far enough to get even close to bridging the gap before GfW.  This gave us shared vocabulary/concepts to apply to discussing her writing across the board right away (and I do think that for the grammar to stick, lots of those discussions need to happen).  In general I think one of the reasons grammar study doesn't stick/doesn't get applied in students' actual writing is because the application step isn't explicitly taught and practiced; as well, I don't think GfW has enough practice itself to make it stick (which is just observation, not criticism - I think there's enough practice to grasp the concepts and be able to start using them in one's own writing, which is what I want from it).

[ScoutTN]

@forty-two Thanks for the detailed review.