help w/grammar!!

I haven’t gotten into the details of Winston Grammar, but it is used often by forum members as a compliment to OMT. It uses manipulative cards to diagram sentences, giving a better visual and tactile experience for that style of learning, from what I gather.

You are asking for simple and that he could do on his own, so here goes. Maybe not the most CM friendly choice because it’s a workbook (with fill in the blank style format), but it SURE does fit the bill on short lessons…and just have to say I haven’t seen anything as simple and self-teaching as Growing With Grammar. I’ve tried R&S, Daily Grams and Easy Grammar. These books are just put to shame in comparison to the ease of GWG. Might be worth you checking out. There are many books out that that call themselves “self teaching” but this one REALLY is. And, includes diagramming. And yes, YOU don’t have to teach the diagramming! For your 7th grader with little grammar experience, I’d probably start a year or two back and have him do it daily. He’d catch up to grade level in no time and starting a year or two back would be easy at the beginning, build his confidence, etc. HTH, it really has been a perfect for us. Angie

You are welcome! I was just looking up at your post, Marmiemama, and it reminded me of the CM element of not using incorrect sentences or other grammar examples to teach the student. Thanks for reminding me of another topic near and dear to me. I might guess that this teaching strategy (the don’t-use-incorrect-examples strategy) is why so many of the mainstream grammar programs are not considered by many CMers. And for the most part, I agree with it, and don’t love seeing incorrect usage in workbooks as a teaching tool. GWG does not appear to use this tactic, but rather, short segments and tons of repetition on each grammar element instead. (now please no one quote me on this, because we’re not all the way through all levels yet)

Having said all this, I must tell you that I have also come to accept that there are going to be occasions where, in grammar, we may need to put “teach the child, not the curriculum” above the CM advice on incorrect sentence usage for teaching/no workbooks. Particularly in cases where you legally have to teach grammar from grade 3+ and PLL, ILL, etc. are not jazzing your child, or just take too much explanation.

But getting back to incorrect sentence usage — I’ve run into a couple of examples with my second son where it just didn’t “click” until he saw it “wrong”. I had to talk and explain and talk some more to explain a certain grammar component…way too much Mama talking for this child. Suddenly when I simply showed the concept to him from older grammar workbook that I happened to have from my pre-CM days – a book that does in fact use the “show it the wrong way” approach – he GOT IT within seconds. Would he have gotten it regardless? Probably. But it reminded me of “teach the child not the curriculum” and made me realize that sometimes this may even mean you consider a grammar program that is outside the “CM friendly list” that most of us choose from and perhaps even the workbook format. (gasp from the forum!!)

So to petitemom – if using OMT or others on the regular CM friendly list is not working easily and well for your 7th grader, my suggestion would be to try something completely different, and something takes the onus off of YOU to teach this material. The workbook approach may be just that and there are many to choose from. GWG is very self teaching (there are many others, too); the only point you will want to be aware of is that (IMO) GWG and all the graded grammar programs work BECAUSE of the repetition (that’s why they all start in the earlier grades), so you would definitely want to have your child go back a grade (ideally two grades back) to get that repetition. When he sees the simple format, I doubt he will mind and if you assign it daily, he’ll be caught up by high school (and it doesn’t go past high school because the program has been designed so that they’ve learned all the core material by the end of the 8th grade book…and that it’s ingrained due to all the repetition).

I can feel all the raised eyebrows every time I write the word “repetition”. Yes, that sounds like a lot of grammar and the strongly CM-minded might feel that’s a lot of wasted time that could be spent elsewhere in the younger years. True. For some students, very true! But doing this workbook approach for 5 minutes a day through elementary means there is no teaching a big grammar chunk in grade seven. So (to me) it’s just about balancing which scenario you prefer and which scenario your child will flourish within. The approach I’m now using is a lot of repetition but given that it’s also so self teaching and user friendly, there is never a fight on it and I love that I’m now free for my littles while grammar is just “handled” – easily – by my older children. When my kids are in grade seven, I personally am happy that I won’t have the “now we teach grammar” challenge, but I also recognize that this is an individual choice for each family and each child. For some children gentle grammar in middle elementary and OMT and AG at the 7th grade is the perfect strategy; for my family, we needed another angle and GWG is working well.

Well I guess everyone knows how I feel about this, LOL! I felt it was worth writing about because I really beat myself up on whether to leave the CM approach on this subject. It took a lot for me to give myself permission, and yet now that I’m “there” I’m so pleased. I truly wish I had not second-guessed myself on the fact that my instinct was telling me that my kids (and my family dynamic) needed something not-quite-CM for this subject. I hope others will be helped if they face the mind-battle.

Blessings, Angie

My 6th grader is using Daily Grams this year.   She is on day 37 and so for we have not encountered incorrect grammar that she needs to fix.  I preview to see if there is anything I need to teach her and I would cross out incorrect grammar if I came to it.  Just thought I would throw that out because I’ve read that complaint about Daily Grams before.  I’m not saying it isn’t there, but if it is it is infrequent.

Daily Grams works for us as I did way too much grammar with my girls when they were younger.  I’m simply using it to see where the “holes” are so I can teach them.

petitemom, what is (or are) his dominant learning style(s)?

We use Grammar Key and repetition really does work.  My sons are going through it, one finished the grammar part and is onto the punctuation.  It took time and I’m ok with that.  Grammar is not for everyone.  But my boys like that they can do it on their own, they get a better percentage daily as they work through them and they go at their own pace.  Now we are not a ‘grammar’ family, I think to know the basics is important but we will not be going for any major in grammar.  That said we are good and like the stead – till you get it – approach.

I would take a look at All-In-One English or Applications of Grammar.  With Applications of Grammar,  I would probably start with the 6th grade book and go from there.  Rainbow Resource carries both of these.