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Does anyone NOT like PLL & ILL?
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I’ve been reading so much great stuff about PLL & ILL, but I am still not convinced it’s the right thing for my boys, especially my soon to be grade 6 student as I feel I would have to spend a good bit of time figuring out which lessons to skip because there’s no way to do all 300 lessons in one year, and even if I extended it to 7th grade, it would still be a lot. Has anyone tried this and not found it a good fit for their child? If so, why didn’t it work for you?
I do not like them. I own both, have tried both, and they just don’t work for me. In my opinion, they are not user friendly. Since so many people think they are wonderful, I have come to the conclusion that it is something about my personal learning/teaching style that just doesn’t work. I just felt like I had to do too much to make them accessible for us. We use the Language and Composition books by Effie Belle McFadden. They have many of the same skills, the lessons are short and gentle, and they’re just more straight forward. I’m not knocking PLL and ILL at all. They just aren’t for us.
I do have a confession to make though. My 11 year old LOVES ILL and begged me not to sell it in the hopes that we would go back to it. So I will probably just give her the book and tell her to run with it.
And I know that you already know this, but I’ll say it anyway. It’s okay to not like the things that everyone else loves. Do what works best for you and your kids and you will be fine.
How funny. My 10YO really hates ILL, but I like it.
I did order the worksheets for ILL, because my 10YO doesn’t like to write at all and the worksheets gave us some framework as to how much should be expected.
Is there anyway you can get a copy of the table of contents? That should go a long way to helping you decide how you feel and/or eliminate all the stuff you don’t need or want.
Also, the link from jawgee is the ILL in workbook type format seperated into three years of stuff (4th, 5th and 6th). It is a download which means that you could spend an hour or so and have figured out what you wanted him to do, and even have printed those assignments ready for a notebook. After that you wouldn’t even have to look at it again. 😉
Rachel told me that she had the teacher’s manual, even though it is not required, and I got one. I haven’t used it yet, but there were some fun ways to extend the lessons into “real life”.
I really do like it and our DC like it well enough. One really likes it. It is true though that if it isn’t working, whether PLL or ILL or something else, just try something else.
I HATED with a passion Learning Language Arts through Lit, and some people rave about it. It was awful for us, didn’t work at all. Of course it is not really CM at all, but we used it before I found SCM and began incorporating CM into our schooling.
I think this is the link to the workbooks someone else mentioned from another thread: http://www.intermediatelanguagelessons.com/
If you wanted to try this, it looks like it is broken into 3 books and you don’t have to buy them all, so this might be an option.
As for TOC, you can see the entire TOC at amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Intermediate-Language-Lessons-Emma-Serl/dp/0965273571#reader_0965273571
I would say your 6th grader could skip quite a few lessons, but the nice thing about ILL is you can pick and choose easily. This is what we do here too.
pslively – Do you have a hard copy of the McFadden books or do you use an eBook. I found a copy online and really like the looks of it. I want to like the PLL & ILL books, but I’m not interested in the picture study or the memorization parts. I find weeding through for the good parts tedious. I’m interested in using the McFadden books, just wondering which format you like best.
Christie
I originally downloaded the books from google books and printed out the first 100 pages of the first and second McFadden books and put them in notebooks. Once we used them a bit and I saw that I really liked them, I looked on ebay for the real books. So far, I have only found a good copy of the first one. I got a very nice copy on ebay for about $12 with shipping. I did try them on my Kindle and they were just too small. If you have a larger tablet, I think that would work out great. I just prefer the real books because I like to be able to flip through the pages as I am planning.
Be careful if you order the books from someone. I ordered some different books by accident. They had almost exactly the same title and they were by Effie Belle McFadden. They were great books on how to write stories, but they were completely different than the ones I was looking for.
Thanks, pslively. I have an iPad, but haven’t gotten good at using it for reading. Maybe we’ll give it a try with these. I appreciate the tip re. Being careful ordering books by this author.
OPTIONS
McFadden’s Series
- McFadden Language Series, Book One by Effie Belle McFadden – gr. 3 & 4
- McFadden Language Series, Book Two by Effie Belle McFadden – gr. 5 & 6
- McFadden Language Series: Grammar & Composition by Effie Belle McFadden – gr. 7 & 8
I just found another option, too.
- New Language Exercises for Primary Schools, pt. 1 by C.C. Long – gr. 1 & 2
- New Language Exercises for Primary Schools, pt. 2 by C.C. Long – gr. 3 & 4
- Lessons in English: Grammar and Composition by C.C. Long – gr. 5 & 6 (maybe, It isn’t specified and I’ve only briefly perused this one.)
I am going to use:
McFadden, book 1 (first half) with ds8 (3rd)
McFadden, book 2 (whole book) w/ dd11 (6th)
C.C. Long, pt. 1 (first half or so) w/ dd5 (K)
One more decision made. Yay!
Christie
I AM So happy to see this post! We use Simply Grammar Plus and like it but to me it’s just busy work. My boys hate writing but the McFadden books seem like such a gentle approach they might not even notice they are writing. LOL WE are totally using it, having it printed and binded this weekend. Thanks so much for sharing!
PLL did not quite work for us…it was just OK, but not great. We are trying Queen’s Language Lessons this coming year. I really like the look of it and it is CM.
I’m just curious… do you ladies like English for the Thoughtful Child? That’s what I was going to use but I didn’t see it mentioned. I’m a little bit afraid to ask this question because I’ve already purchased it. 🙂
ETA that I know it wouldn’t take the place of ILL, only PLL.
I tried Queen’s Language Lessons for the elementary child and the Very Young Vol 2 with my two boys last year. I wasn’t entirely satisfied. I thought it looked great — the books are beautiful with the colour picture studies, but they did not suit in terms of the line spacing or font for copy work for my son with dysgraphia. We ended up using something different for copy work or lined paper. We found the lessons very short and did most of them orally and sometimes 3 or 4 at a time, skipping those grammar lessons that they already had a good handle on. I found very little difference between the two — they had many lessons in common with just the slightest variance in difficulty. My 2nd grader would have had no problem completing the higher level book.
I have PLL & ILL on PDF so will be copying the first few weeks worth of lessons to try it out. It’s not quite as pretty, and is more old fashion, but it seems to be a little more rigorous and varied in the types of lessons. If it doesn’t work for us then I’ll be looking for something else I guess. But at least this time I won’t be out any money!
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