Rod & Staff or Shurley English for 5th grade??

[Mogster]

We will be finishing up FLL 4 this year and I cannot make a decision on which grammar curriculum to use for 5th grade. We will continue to use IEW for our writing. Any suggestions? Pros/cons of either curriculum??

[ereks mom]

I admit that I have never used Shurley, but I've seen it and I wasn't impressed with it nearly as much as I was impressed with R&S.

[PeterPan]

When we did R&S, my dd became a grammar-hater, even telling SWB so at a convention, ack! I think it's just her personality and reaction to the materials, not a statement that everyone will hate them. In any case, we switched to Shurley, and she is happy as a lark. I use the practice booklets that have the sentences ready to parse. Takes us just a few minutes, then we diagram one of the sentences together on the whiteboard. It's so pain-free, highly effective, and her understanding of grammar is becoming intuitive, so that she's having no trouble at all with the grammar in Homer. As someone who did a lot of grammar in college, I like the Q&A flows of Shurley. I think they lead to better understanding of the concepts, rather than just memorizing a def and looking for things.

 

One distinction to consider is that some people who use R&S are having them write out the sentences in the exercises as a writing exercise. We do lots of writing other ways, so I didn't need that. If that's something you're looking for, R&S is conducive to it. If you don't want to do that, R&S has an inexpensive ($2.50) workbook to accompany each level so there wouldn't be as much writing.

 

I know R&S is thorough and highly regarded. For us,the shorter sessions, more interesting sentences (downright hilarious), and interactive process of Shurley have made it a winner for my little grammar-hating social bug. She has very good retention when we take breaks and solid understanding of the process, making me happy. It's just a win-win. Oh, and VP recommends it. :)

 

If you go for Shurley, you can skip levels (2,4,6,7 or 3,5,7).

[Beach Mom]

My experience:

 

My DD has done 4 years of Shurley and this year switched to R&S 6. I will likely follow a similar path with my boys (one is now in Shurley 2 so I am currently using one level of each progam). Here are my pros and cons, but as you know one person's pros for a curriculum are another person's cons, it just depends on the family!

 

I have found both to be rigorous curriculums and am really a fan of both.

 

Shurley

Pros - It works for my kids. They really get to know their parts of speech, the sentence flow is taught in a question/answer format that helps them identify the parts of speech regardless of order in the sentence - for example The red fox ran across the yard. Who ran across the yard?, fox, subject noun. What is being said about fox?, fox ran, verb. What kind of fox, red, adjective.....etc. I think this flow helps them better understand the parts of speech and what they do. My second grader can find prepositional phrases and objects of prepositions easily now just part way through Shurley 2.

There are jingles for each part of speech that help them memorize subject pronouns and other things and a CD with the jingles is an easy review.

There are some vocabulary words in each chapter so you sneak some vocab in with grammar. It may be fine for some kids but there wasn't enough use of the words for my DD to have the definitions down by the end of the chapter so we supplement with a vocab program. If you are using IEW for writing, the writing exercises in Shurley can be skipped, they are not strong in the writing component, but some of them are fun supplements. The workbook and practice guide minimizes the amount of writing needed to complete the lessons and are both inexpensive time savers. My 2nd grader spends about 15-20 mins daily. It is his 2nd year in Shurley and he can pick apart a sentence with ease. The sentences are engaging and interesting.

 

Cons - Highly repetitive, as another poster stated you can skip levels. The setup of the books gets a little getting used to. All the jingles and rules are in the front and you do some flipping back and forth during the lessons. This made it hard for me to get the hang of teaching it, but once you get it not a big deal. Does not teach sentence diagramming (important to some, not to others, I have found with my DD that once we switched to R&S she picked up the diagramming very easily because her Shurley background made it easy to find the parts of speech).

 

Overall I have been a fan, and the material was very effective, but by the time DD got to 5th we needed a change. So this year we switched to R&S 6, here are my thoughts on that so far;

 

Pros - lessons are thorough, writing component is stronger than Shurley (for my little guys we are using WWE so the writing component of Shurley wasn't an issue for us), very clear teacher's manual tells you what to review each day, clearly explains concepts, there is a workbook which is used as a supplement but often we use the workbook as our exercises so she doesn't have to write so many sentences every day.

 

Cons - Way too much material each day, I pare down the exercised by half or more which requires some prep on my part. In each lesson there is class practice, written practice, oral review and often written review which is just too much for one student, maybe more beneficial if teaching in a classroom. The material is a little dry but not too bad especially if you don't do all of it.

 

My DD has been very happy with R&S and doesn't mind grammar now at all. I think she just needed a change in approach after 4 years of Shurley. Shurley has given her a very strong foundation to build on and is doing the same for middle guy.

 

I hope some of my rambling helps you in some way. Good luck with your decision, they are both good programs.

[hmschooling]

I vote for R&S! It's very rigorous! Since there are so many sentences and such, you can just do them partly orally. Say, work the first two in each exercise yourself on the markerboard, have the child work the next couple with you, then have him do 2-4 per exercise on his own. You don't have to do ALL the sentences in ALL the exercises. Plus if my dd really grasped something quickly, we might combine or skip some lessons so we could move on. Many people also say to start a level behind your child's grade. I know you don't want to move ahead at all since it gets very difficult rather quickly. So your 4th grader could start in 3rd or 4th and still be on track either way.

 

My daughter actually ENJOYS R&S grammar...it's just a short lesson, open and go, and even though she liked the songs from Shurley, R&S is her pick and has been from the get go.

[74Heaven]

Here's our grammar route:

 

A Beka, gr 1-4 - very traditional, thorough (esp gr 1-3 are gentle, usually just a page a day). (10-20min a day, followed by spelling, printing/cursive)

 

Shurley, gr 5-7 (we use Shurley Lev 4 first, skip 5 and then Lev 6,7)

(I find Shurley 4 & 5 redundant.) (30+ min a day) (Spelling 15-20min/day)

 

R&S, in grades 8-9: We use R&S Level 7 over 2 years alongside IEW or another good writing program, alternating weeks (1 week R&S/1 week IEW) or some similar breakdown. In high school, grammar lessens considerably - and we concentrate on writing. (Mine also take Latin for 5-6 years incl 2-3 years in high school - which works well for Engl grammar review as well.) (45-60+ min a day)

 

Best of all worlds? So far (3 girls) we do very well in English and Lang Arts. Shurley is one of my all-time favorite homeschool curriculums.

 

Lisaj, teaching 5

[PeterPan]

Do you need R&S 7 after SG 7? How do they compare as far as coverage? Are you doing the R&S7 to get the diagramming, or does it cover some things SG7 didn't cover?