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This year, I hope my rising 4th grader will be able to complete levels 3 & 4 of the All About Reading (AAR) curriculum.  I really hope I made the right choice by choosing this curriculum for him.  We were able to complete level 2 in just a few months.  

But I haven't scheduled him to do much grammar or writing because I figured we should just focus on AAR.  In a way, I feel like we are going backwards or slowing him down.  I do plan to have him do English Grammar Practice with his 2nd grade sister from Memoria Press. It is basically editing pre-written sentences.  

I feel like he will forever be two grade levels behind, UGH.  

I have been looking at Blackbird & Co. One True Sentence, which is a grammar/sentence writing curriculum for 3rd graders. It looks simple, and I thought about buying it.  You fill in blanks first, and then you write sentences based off the model sentences. But I am not sure if that would be pointless until I am sure he has a good grasp on reading and comprehension.

 

 

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40 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

You might look at Writing Tales.  The first level is meant for grades 3-4.  It is very gentle.  There are only two levels, but if you enjoy it then something like Writing & Rhetoric or Treasured Conversations might work out for him.

Thank you!  I have looked at that before.  The sentence curriculum looks light enough. My husband just said do whatever is cheap because he needs practice reading.

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I think you are spot-on in focusing on reading and spelling first.  I also don't think kids are "behind" if they don't do grammar every year - so much can be picked up quickly once they are really ready to absorb it.  I did find for my youngest (4th grade last year, dyslexic) that not knowing parts of speech was starting to slow down some of his understanding of reading/spelling, so we added in the level 1 of Fix-it grammar for the second semester.  The new edition level 1 is very gentle. 

For writing with my youngest. we did Writing and Rhetoric books 1 and 2 orally in 4th grade, but it was really just "for fun" - I feel like we could have skipped that.  I also had him compose his own sentences and very short stories from silly writing prompts every now and then.  But this year in 5th grade will be the first year that DS10 does much of anything with writing.  We are doing an IEW book, and we'll see how it goes.  It may end up being another year of mostly me scribing as spelling is still quite the struggle, as is handwriting (he is dysgraphic as well as dyslexic).

When my oldest was a struggling speller (possible mild dyslexia - we never had her tested) we did absolutely no writing or grammar at all in 3rd grade while we remediated spelling, then in 4th grade we did only a minimal amount as we were still really remediating spelling. We did some compositions from the book "Write On!" that I scribed for her, plus we did Treasured Conversations (again, mostly with me scribing).  She didn't really start a writing program until 5th grade - She did Writing and Rhetoric books 1 and 2 in 5th, a year of Writing with Skill in 6th, and a year of IEW in 7th, before entering public school in 8th grade.   Honestly, despite the "late start" and never becoming a very awesome speller, she was able to get A's in Honors/AP public school English classes.  She is thankful to live in a era of computer spell check, and knows that having a friend look over her paper for silly errors that spell check doesn't spot.  

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1 hour ago, kirstenhill said:

I think you are spot-on in focusing on reading and spelling first.  I also don't think kids are "behind" if they don't do grammar every year - so much can be picked up quickly once they are really ready to absorb it.  I did find for my youngest (4th grade last year, dyslexic) that not knowing parts of speech was starting to slow down some of his understanding of reading/spelling, so we added in the level 1 of Fix-it grammar for the second semester.  The new edition level 1 is very gentle. 

For writing with my youngest. we did Writing and Rhetoric books 1 and 2 orally in 4th grade, but it was really just "for fun" - I feel like we could have skipped that.  I also had him compose his own sentences and very short stories from silly writing prompts every now and then.  But this year in 5th grade will be the first year that DS10 does much of anything with writing.  We are doing an IEW book, and we'll see how it goes.  It may end up being another year of mostly me scribing as spelling is still quite the struggle, as is handwriting (he is dysgraphic as well as dyslexic).

When my oldest was a struggling speller (possible mild dyslexia - we never had her tested) we did absolutely no writing or grammar at all in 3rd grade while we remediated spelling, then in 4th grade we did only a minimal amount as we were still really remediating spelling. We did some compositions from the book "Write On!" that I scribed for her, plus we did Treasured Conversations (again, mostly with me scribing).  She didn't really start a writing program until 5th grade - She did Writing and Rhetoric books 1 and 2 in 5th, a year of Writing with Skill in 6th, and a year of IEW in 7th, before entering public school in 8th grade.   Honestly, despite the "late start" and never becoming a very awesome speller, she was able to get A's in Honors/AP public school English classes.  She is thankful to live in a era of computer spell check, and knows that having a friend look over her paper for silly errors that spell check doesn't spot.  

Thank you so much for sharing your experience and for the reassurance! He’s had some grammar already, and we even tried W&R Fable last year— but it was mostly discussion. He didn’t really write. I do like how this sentence curriculum looks, but maybe can hold off. It’s be great if we could finish AAR early this year at one lesson per day, but maybe it will get more challenging. 

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In general you can choose the english program at the level of their reading. So if he's functioning at a 3rd grade level for reading, go 3rd grade and the following year do *5th*. Seriously. There is NO NEED for a whole grammar book every year. You can skip levels, do less per level, whatever you want. There's way too much repetition year to year to stress over this. It's not like math that is crazy cumulative with little margin for skipping.

That seems a little rough to have his school work match his younger sister's. I think I'd find a different editing book for him, if that's what you want. I've got some McGraw Hill grammar books I'm using with ds this year. I can't remember how low they went but the made them available free online for covid. I've also used some other free grammar workbooks I found online. Maybe start googling around, seeing what you can find. The McGraw Hill has a whole chapter/unit on editing, so that's why I was thinking of it for you. I'm cherry picking chapters to target skills. You could do that, picking select chapters to do in one level and then doing ONLY the editing from the other level. And I really don't think it matters if you pick 3 or 4. As long as it looks like a level he can read comfortably, it will be fine.

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19 hours ago, PeterPan said:

In general you can choose the english program at the level of their reading. So if he's functioning at a 3rd grade level for reading, go 3rd grade and the following year do *5th*. Seriously. There is NO NEED for a whole grammar book every year. You can skip levels, do less per level, whatever you want. There's way too much repetition year to year to stress over this. It's not like math that is crazy cumulative with little margin for skipping.

That seems a little rough to have his school work match his younger sister's. I think I'd find a different editing book for him, if that's what you want. I've got some McGraw Hill grammar books I'm using with ds this year. I can't remember how low they went but the made them available free online for covid. I've also used some other free grammar workbooks I found online. Maybe start googling around, seeing what you can find. The McGraw Hill has a whole chapter/unit on editing, so that's why I was thinking of it for you. I'm cherry picking chapters to target skills. You could do that, picking select chapters to do in one level and then doing ONLY the editing from the other level. And I really don't think it matters if you pick 3 or 4. As long as it looks like a level he can read comfortably, it will be fine.

Thank you so much!  I haven't tried the speech to text for him yet, but maybe that would be good to help him organize thoughts and see them presented?  The editing English Grammar Practice looks quite simple and very supplemental, so I thought it would be better than nothing.  But I can check out the McGraw Hill books, too.  I feel like he needs a lot of help, but I also don't want to stunt his growth in other areas.  

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