There was a recent discussion on grammar. I mentioned all the resources I’ve used with our kids. Each have had similar, yet different paths to formal writing. They all used PLL in an informal, cozy fashion to get started McG readers have been used for reading/spelling, and extra informal grammar.
Our DS13 is doing Essentials over the summer (CC resource). It’s his second tour through it (intended to be used three years in a row). I dictate a sentence to him five days a week. We go over capitalization, punctuation, spelling, sentence purpose/pattern/structure and diagram it. Sometimes he even changes the purpose (declarative, exclamatory, interrogative, imperative). It takes only a little time each day, but covers an enormous amount of skills. This can be done with any resource. It’s made me see that he is finally equipped for prepared dictation as a better fit for spelling purposes. I can see how SW works by the way this is finally working. He was a late reader, has struggled with handwriting, but is now at a place where these skills are coming together for him. I knew they would. It’s just been a struggle not to compare to other’s appearances. His has been a long road, but he’s actually enjoying the reality that he can put words onto paper in order, usually spelled correctly. He’s been building keyboarding skills over the last two months which is also preparing him for more writing. It’s much easier than handwriting. I fully expect that over the next year he will be a fairly independent writer, right on schedule for highschool assignments. (I use IEW methods and sometimes resources because I started it with my older children and saw the results I want.)
There have been many days I thought it wouldn’t happen. We just had to keep working at it in short lessons. The resources may not have always been CM specific, but we used them in a CM fashion. I’m willing to say her methods work well over the long term for all of our children. Some earlier, some later, but all just in time. 🙂
Becca<><
