Grammar help. Need some curriculum advice.

I have tried a few grammar programs over the years. Winston Grammar is my favorite,  but we don’t start it until 5th grade.  For 6th grade my dd used Language Lessons for… for other reasons,  but she did get some grammar with that.  Language Lessons is considered grammar light by many.

For 7th grade we are repeating Winston Grammar Basic because my dd needs the review.  She only uses it once per week.

Next year she will do Winston’s Advanced level. I like Winston because they use cards for the parts of speech.  This helps with understanding and the fun factor.

I used Simply Grammar with my younger kids and it was ok. Sorry,  I don’t remember a lot about it.

Hope this helps.

I’m not familiar with that exact curriculum, but there’s no curriculum which cannot be tweaked.

Instead of something new, since you like the content, how about stretching out the week, doing about 20 min. a day?  What’s the difference between the “lesson” and the “exercises”?

<span style=”line-height: 1.5;”>For example:</span>

<span style=”line-height: 1.5;”>Monday- read lit. with an oral narration.</span>

Tues. – ask child for review of yesterday’s material orally and then do lesson(set timer to not go beyond 20 men.). Also, could this Lesson portion be done orally?

Wed.- do the exercises you mentioned. I assume is nuts and bolts grammar, so do on  paper.

Thurs. – copy work

Fri- dictation of whatever his copywork was from the day before.

<span style=”line-height: 1.5;”>Since you’re skipping dictation and poetry from that curriculum, schedule those on a different day.  Though, he should have copy work at least 3 days a week, IMO. </span>

If you like the copy work from the curriculum, then just have do it on Monday or Tuesday.

This way you’ll still get the quality of the material, while adjusting for CM timing. Slow down if needed. IMO, don’t skip fables, but use them 1x a week as reading at bedtime or during lunch.

If there’s info I need to know about this curriculum which would help you adjust it, just let me know more details.

Personally, I think 4th is too young for diagramming.

I love ELTL, although Level 3 with all of the diagramming isn’t my favorite level.  Also, I almost always put my kids in a level behind their actual grade level in ELTL.  It just feels like a better fit.  I didn’t feel the diagramming was a good fit for my son when he was in third!

Most importantly, though, when I use that curriculum my kids get each book on audio (I download a version from Librivox) and they listen to it during their free time.  Reading each chapter, particularly last year when I had three kids in two different levels, just isn’t feasible.

After that is taken off of my plate, the lessons only take about 20 minutes each day (we do it 3x/week).  We don’t do every passage for copywork, usually just the literature selection, and for level three I only had my son copy for 5 minutes per day.  That was literally his limit.

What I didn’t do, though, was cut any poetry, picture study, or fables.  For me, those things make ELTL a rich and beautiful curriculum.

I’m using ELTL 3 with my 5th grader and he complains abut the length of the lessons. Tho he complains about everything involving writing, so I don’t know. Mostly it’s just the number of components that make up each lesson I think. He keeps thinking he’s done, but there’s another/different activity still. I really like the grammar instruction. The poems and picture study I am doing, rather than as a group, simply because since it’s already planned so it gets done. Both those things were getting dropped. A lot. I have been having him narrate every fable, but I’m thinking of just reading them for fun (except the ones specified for narrating). He narrates from other stuff daily. All the alphabetizing and copia exercises we do orally. Each lesson has a copywork and a dictation passage. And I’m not sure how I like doing both. The Copywork passage does seem pretty long. The dictation passage is different, and not taken from the literature.

But my son is able to do the work, so maybe I should just continue as written? Idk. I’m not sure if this is a good amount of writing and I’ve just been letting him get away with too little?? (definitely a possibility. Lol) Do I dictate the Copywork passages instead? But then they’re so long. Maybe I should just pick one passage a day from what’s offered. If we do dictation, skip the Copywork? I could give him the Copywork on a non ELTL day. But then, one dictation sentence doesn’t seem like enough for an 11yo boy. There seems to be about six Copywork and dictation passages each week. I need to spread these over the week better I think.

He CAN do it. He’s complaining about it, but he complains about everything and it is a jump up in the amount of writing, so complaining is to be expected. It’s only been 5 weeks I think, so maybe he’s still adjusting. I do think the complaints about the length of the Copywork are lessening. 🙂

What are you concerned about them being behind in? That they don’t know specifically the 8 parts of speech? Or can’t diagram? Through observation, copying passages, written narrations there is so much practice. Learning the actual names for the parts of speech can be something learned really quickly at a later age/grade, even diagramming can be learned rather quickly. I hear waiting until 7th or even 8th grade.

I started ULW last year with my DD in 4th grade. We started near the end of the first half of the book and worked into the 2nd half of book 1. I chose this starting point based on the SW passages that she would be using for dictation. With dictation you want the student to just have a couple words per passage that are new. Then I went back through the ULW book and reviewed anything that might be new to her so that she would be “caught up” with where we started. This year she started with book 2 (5th grade). My ODS started book 1 this year in 3rd grade.

Grammar and mechanics come up all the time. I remember last year she had a ULW exercise that brought up quotations. Had the student find and make notice of them and then figure out why there were there. Because it was a direct quote. The next step was studying for the dictation. By studying and noticing the punctuation, quotations and spelling of words when she did the dictation exercise it put all those grammar skills into practice. Not exercise after exercise of “put the quotations in the correct spot”.

Every family is different. I have a friend that can not give up formal grammar, and that works for them 🙂 My thought would be to not allow the curriculum to become “drudgery” or take the fun out of writing by correcting every grammar error in a written narration. Every year I have “relaxed” a bit more, and am really seeing the benefits of CM way. My kids enjoy writing, and my daughter will write a full page narration. Is the spelling or grammar 100% correct, no! BUT she has improved so much and if I review it with her she will 9 times out of 10 notice her own errors. She will often tell me “If I read it out loud, I can hear where the comma goes” or “It makes more sense if I write it this way instead”. She does not get offended and enjoys writing and easily puts her thoughts onto paper. That is something I always struggled with, still do, I think because I am always waiting to be corrected. My DD isn’t, she writes knowing that she has room to improve, but she will get there over time 🙂

SW might seem “behind” but like other CM methods, I think that is because it doesn’t drill the information. So there are not pages of the same information repeated. It expects full attention so the student is told once, and expected to remember and continue to add to their knowledge while reviewing through the natural progression of copy work or transcription onto dictation and then written narrations later on.

Ashley,

You may want to set it aside for a bit and just focus on:

• oral narrations
• copywork
• dictation after the copywork
• reading high quality literature
• poetry
• fables, fairy tales, etc

When he does his copywork, on different days of the week, have him circle the nouns. When he does that consistently well( and can narrate to you WHAT a noun is) on his own, move on to verbs, adjectives, etc. Slowly covering the eight parts of speech. Then subject and predicate. Use the ELTL for YOUR purposes in order to teach him what each grammar concept is, but I think he could probably use a breather otherwise.

He’s still young. In 6 months to one year, his understanding and brain development will be much different and you may go back to that curriculum or find a different one. Diagramming is very important, in my view, but he doesn’t have to do it now.

Also, if you start him on Latin, especially, or even Spanish in the next couple of years, that will also improve his grammar and thinking skills, too.

The most important thing right now is that he begin to love literature and enjoy the sound of language, and the importance of using it well, IMO.

HTH