My oldest is getting ready for 5th grade. We’ve taken a very gentle approach toward language arts and have only used CM language programs and some real simple diagramming. We’ve been working through Simply Grammar. He’s an atrocious speller but has started really enjoying reading.
Yesterday, I had him take the ACE placement test for English. I did ACE English and I loved English and consider ACE a bit advanced. I was concerned that he was going to test at a 3rd grade level. Some of the things on the test were things we had never learned.
But, ya’ll, he tested at grade level. In fact, he doesn’t have to do the beginning of their 5th grade and only needs 3 gaps filled before that. I was thrilled.
Trust the process! It works.
They tested homonyms which we’ve never officially studied. He just knew which ones looked right. Some of the verb tenses that we haven’t studied, he just knew what sounded right.