Grammar issue

My opinion is that he’s at the right age to officially begin a grammar program.

Still continue with what your doing, but bring in a curriculum that will begin incrementally and strategically teaching him grammar, punctuation, and mechanics.

What do you mean by bad grammar?

Is it missed punctuation, capitalization (mechanics) or more of poorly written (thought out) sentences?

My oldest is in 5th grade and I have to say over the course of this year her mechanics have really come along as well as her sentence structure (thought out sentences). Of course room to improve, but I have seen a lot of improvement this year, so for her I think it was maturity and time for it to naturally develop.

We are using ULW and I really like the writing rubix that are included so that my DD has more direction as to what to focus on when she is writing. She can not focus on everything at once, but having those guidelines help her as she reads through what she has written.

As far as spelling, she is not a natural speller, so I do give a bit more “grace” for spelling and encourage her to ask for assistance. I am also not a natural speller so I can really relate to that struggle.

I was also wondering what you meant by bad grammar. Oral or written? In 4th grade, it was all about how they spoke. I would correct their mistakes in speaking, and they would usually write how they spoke. If it’s punctuation, that takes time.

If you want you could teach one concept and whenever he writes something, ask him to go over it and see if he’s satisfied with how well he did that thing–like periods at the ends of sentences. I would be sure not to make him feel pressured though, or he might freeze up and not know what to write.

But I have to say that it’s totally normal to keep making the same mistakes at this age. That lasts for years. The most important thing to me is to encourage my kids to say (write) what they want to say and the mechanics will come. I have teens and adult children, and the mechanics came.

ULW is Using Language Well, our English and grammar companion to Spelling Wisdom.

I used mostly CM methods with my daughter and her spelling didn’t begin to show real improvement until 6th grade or so. Hold in there and be consistent and you will see the fruit of CM methods!

I listened to a podcast from the Mason Jar today in which the guest speaker was Sheila Carroll from Living Books Curriculum. She talked about how she did studied dictation with her daughter and I thought she had some really good ideas.

Let’s see if I can remember this correctly. She would have her daughter study and copy the same passage Mon-Thurs. On Friday, she would have her write it from dictation. Sheila would mark the end of any line that contained a spelling error and have her daughter figure out which word it was. Then she would have her daughter write the word correctly and then it went on the next week’s list of words to study. Just thought I’d share in case it might help!

I agree with the above poster that dictation does work but it takes a couple of years of consistent dictation to bear fruit.