How long are AG lessons?

There is a teaching DVD that is very basic but can save you the time if need be.

Teaching is at beginning of units so once per week.

25m for 4-5 days to do all exercises. I think it’s 4 days. You could trim that a few minutes by cutting out some of the parsing and diagramming. 10 is overkill in my opinion.

Christie, based on your experience, is this program a bit early for age 11 (new 6th grader, avid reader, diligent) or would you say this is just about right?  For so long, I have felt that “serious grammar instruction” was far off in the future for me, yet here I am with DS going into six grade!

I think I recall you taught AG at your co-op (?) so just thinking you may have had different ages in your class and may have made an observation as to whether some kids were perhaps a bit young at 10 or 11, versus those who were 12-13 in your class.

Last question would be:   How would you rate the AG curriculum – did you love it?

Angelina, last fall we had two classes – Jr. Analytical Grammar with 7 or 8 kids from 4th-5th and Analytical Grammar Season 1 with 6-7 kids from 6th-8th. We lost 1 kid from each bc the concepts weer becoming too difficult or abstract. All other kids did well and finished strong. We met on Friday afternoons for the teaching time and completed 1 page of exercises front and back that day. The rest they did at home. We did some basic writing instruction on those days, too. During the spring, we all did Jr. Analytical Grammar Mechanics and some of the Jump In Writing.

Re. suitability – it depends on the kid. I taught dd13 Jr AG when she was in 4th and all was well until we hit adverbs. She just couldn’t grasp it. We shelved it and didn’t do any grammar until this year. This year she got it with no problem. I had my 9-10 year old son in our Jr AG class, he flew through it with no difficulty. It just depends. If I had a 6th grader, I’d opt for AG and cut back on a few of the parsing/diagramming. More cost effective, but Jr AG and AG Season one cover the exact same material, so if you opt for Jr AG (shorter simpler sentences and fewer of them) you could do AG season 2 the following year.

Re. Love it? Well, I am a grammar geek, but even I don’t love it. I see it as very beneficial and it has translated into my kiddos writing. That’s great for retention. I saw the evidence of retention in the other kids writing, too. Not perfection, but improvement.

I’m still deciding if I will do a group class for AG this coming year, but I doubt it. Now that they are all started, their capable of self teaching. I’m also itching to pull Our Mother Tongue off my shelf for dd13, so we may switch gears with dd or change course. There is nothing wrong with AG and I’ve no doubt it will be effective, I’m just considering a change.

The mechanics book is not very CM in that you are seeing things incorrect and correcting them. It was simple enough and has been effective, but these things could be taught through copywork, dictation, observation. I’m doubtful that I’d use this resource again.

Just wanted to note that if you want to shorten lessons per day it’s easy to adapt. I’ve had my kids do the parsing one day and diagramming the next(rather than both the same day). It takes twice as many weeks, but you can still easily finish one season per year and it’s 15 min or less per day. Just what works for us:)