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Using Language Well, Book 3, focuses the spotlight on analyzing sentences. We recommend it for grades 7 and 8, and it is available now!
Learning how to analyze sentences is an important skill for your student to have in order to continue to grow in her ability to communicate well.
When she analyzes a sentence, it helps her to understand what all goes into creating a good one, so she learns the behind-the-scenes, as it were, of good writing.
Analyzing sentences is also good practice for logical thinking. Your student will have to look at a sentence and determine what pieces are involved and how they fit together, and then she will be challenged to think about whether this is the best arrangement in order to accurately and clearly communicate the author’s idea. Once she knows how to analyze a sentence, she will have the skills to potentially catch any confusing word arrangements and correct them before she publishes something out there that everybody misunderstands.
And when a person learns how to analyze sentences using good literature, as your student will with Using Language Well, Book 3, she will be constantly exposed to the sentences of great authors. Analyzing their sentences will provide an opportunity for your student to dig deeper into the writing secrets of those great authors and learn valuable lessons that can fine tune her own writing voice.
So analyzing sentences is a valuable skill. And we have tried to simplify the process in Using Language Well, Book 3. Your student will learn to analyze sentences with a simplified marking system, not diagramming. Now, don’t get me wrong; I love to diagram sentences. But I also know that diagramming is only one method that can be used for analyzing. It works well for some students; not so well for others. Knowing how to analyze a sentence is the important thing. What tool you use to help you analyze is a personal choice.
Using Language Well, Book 3, offers a simplified marking system. If you want to add diagramming, that’s fine; we heartily recommend Analytical Grammar for that. But if you would prefer to skip the diagramming and still teach sentence analysis, take a look at Using Language Well, Book 3. Your student will learn to identify subjects, predicates, subject complements, verbals, phrases and clauses, indirect objects, and more, and see how they all fit together—without diagramming.
The lessons will cover language aspects besides sentence analysis too. As with the other books in the Using Language Well series, your student will learn a variety of English, grammar, and writing points. Book 3’s lessons include metaphors and similes, comma usage, tricky words like lay and lie, personification, and a gentle introduction to poetry analysis, among other things. All while reinforcing points that were covered in previous books of the series.
The good literature that these lessons are centered around is found in Spelling Wisdom, Book 3. Using Language Well is designed to be a companion to the Spelling Wisdom series. You will need both Spelling Wisdom, Book 3, and Using Language Well, Book 3, teacher and student to complete the lessons.
Simply follow the instructions in the Using Language Well student book lesson. It will tell your student which passage to read in Spelling Wisdom, guide her to discover more about analyzing sentences or other aspects of language, and then tell her to prepare the passage for dictation.
That final step of each lesson brings in the spelling component through prepared dictation. For students in grades 7 and 8, we recommend assigning and dictating up to one paragraph of the passage. You decide how much to use. You want to challenge but not frustrate your student.
If you complete two lessons per week, Using Language Well, Book 3, will last for two years of study. Two lessons per week seems to be a nice pace, especially when you include that studied dictation element. Scheduling two lessons per week gives you some extra days in case your student needs to study the dictation passage longer before you dictate it to her.
Simplified sentence analysis, figures of speech, studies on tricky words, comma usage, and a gentle introduction to poetry—that’s Using Language Well, Book 3.
And don’t forget about the rubrics that are included to help you evaluate your student’s written narrations from history, geography, Bible, or science. Those rubrics can be found in the teacher book, along with answers to all of the lessons.
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Will there be anymore books in this series, or is the end of grammar for students?
Thanks!
Eventually there will be five books in the Using Language Well series. Books 4 and 5 will assume that the student knows grammar and will incorporate that knowledge as part of the lessons. For example, one point that will be covered is avoiding a dangling participle in writing. The lesson will assume the student knows what a participle is or will give a very brief reminder. So grammar will be somewhat reviewed but in the context of applying what the student has learned about grammar into his writing.
Yay!! I am so excited this new level is here. We love the Using Language Well series. 😀😀😀