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teachingmom
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Virginia Bluebells
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| Posted: June 01 2005 at 11:28am | IP Logged
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juliecinci wrote:
If it helps at all, my son Noah (17 - 18 in two weeks) took the ACT recently. The grammar portion of that test is simply recognizing proper usage by choosing the correct a, b, c, or d that has the right word to fill in th emissing word.
Example: _________ and ______ are going to the store.
a) Sharon and me, b) Sharon and I, c) Me and Sharon, d)I and Sharon
A kid with a strong sense of correct syntax should do fine.
My son, who did grammar soongs in fifth, Winston Grammar in 7th and two weeks of Winston Advanced in 9th got in the 96% percentile on the grammar section of the ACT.
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Now that is really encouraging, Julie! Thanks for posting your own experience.
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~Irene (Mom to 6 girls, ages 7-19)
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TracyQ
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| Posted: June 01 2005 at 12:18pm | IP Logged
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Julie,
Our son will be preparing for the SAT beginning next year. This gives me much hope! Thanks! 
Tracy
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Blessings and Peace,
Tracy Q.
wife of Marty for 20 years, mom of 3 wonderful children (1 homeschool graduate, 1 12th grader, and a 9th grader),
 homeschooling in 15th year in Buffalo, NY
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ALmom
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| Posted: June 01 2005 at 1:51pm | IP Logged
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We found Easy Grammar Plus OK to use (workbooky but covered the basics) but I'm glad I just ordered the TM and not the workbook for the students as I found Easy Grammar Plus more useful as a reference for me - things were organized in such a way that it was easy to look up.
One thing we did with our oldest that was kind of fun was that we got the Whole Book of Diagrams and had our daughter put the diagrams into prose and then go back and put her prose back into diagrams. This solidifies parts of speech very well and is a very useful tool in analyzing literature when you have trouble comprehending a long passage. She ended up in a nice conversation with the author and actually helped her proofread. My favorite thing was how beautiful the diagrams were - all taken from real stuff like the Bible, Shakespeare, etc.
We have done a lot of different things and not all of it CM or even close. I am trying to get back more into CM. However, one thing that does seem to make sense to me from experience watching different music teachers work with our children is that you cannot overload with too many things at once. The teacher that tries to tell our dd everything she is doing wrong with her Cello all at once, even interrupting her to reposition hands tends to succeed in discouraging and confusing her. The teacher that tells our other dd what she is doing well, and then points out a few areas needing improvement achieves much more without discouragement. When those areas are corrected, she points out a few more (and as the child is older, she can point out more at once - usually a list in writing so our dd doesn't have to try and remember too much at once) and eventually the piece is perfected without hating the piece or the instrument.
Perhaps a reference book for you with stepping back and assessing which areas would bring about the most improvement most quickly for your child would allow you to keep on going as you have been and still get "grammar" in. I am trying to do this with my 11yo son who has a lot of vision issues, so we focus on capital letters at the beginning of a sentence and punctuation at the end. We noted vast improvement with this. Workbooks involve going through a lot of different grammar rules and build on a philosophy of repetition. This sometimes backfires as the child gets good at doing the workbooks but doesn't transfer skills to real work. We have found workbooks sometimes helpful for addressing a particular focus - ie capitalization and doing some exercises in there for that to sort of show the rule and then let them know you'd like to see them use this in their writing. Putting the workbook aside until you are ready to tackle the next area.
Another approach we have used has been editing. With lots of children, we certainly have a potential for a bunch of proofreaders where we could actually serve each other in a real way. I hope to do more of this now - at the moment we have some editing workbooks which didn't go over real well other than to point out the need to pay attention to detail.
Hope some ideas from all our years of experimentation on our poor oldest will help you. We are being very blessed by looking at all the different posts and trying to stay out of panic mode (that is what got us in trouble in the first place!)
Janet
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JennGM
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| Posted: June 02 2005 at 7:18am | IP Logged
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I'm not teaching grammar yet, but I had to chime in here.
I would do well learning grammar at your house, Janet. I loved diagramming when I was growing up -- it helped me break down and analyze the sentence visually. I loved the challenge, and to this day I visually diagram in my head. If a child's learning style is visual and spatial and analytical, this is a good approach.
Also the editing tools is terrific! Real world learning....I had to learn that in high school from Warriner's English, using editor's marks. Well, later in life I was working for a publisher and was asked to read over material and make comments...so I made corrections in the side column like I had learned and my boss wanted to know where did I learn to edit? I've used that skill many times since then!
I wanted to pass on something I used in 5th grade in grammar. We had colored pencils, and we would mark in different color the parts of speech in the sentence. All nouns would be underlined in red, with the subject double underlined. The verb would be underlined in blue. Prepositional phrases would be surrounded by yellow parenthetical marks, with the noun underlined. I think later we would use a slash to divide the subject from the predicate (simpler sentences of course). I loved looking later at the colored sentence. I don't have perfect memory of all the uses of the colors, but you get the idea. Of course, this is "workbook" type stuff, which isn't really CM...but I was a  as a child and loved this kind of stuff!
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Jennifer G. Miller
Wife to & ds1  '03 & ds2  '07
Family in Feast and Feria
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ALmom
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| Posted: June 02 2005 at 5:23pm | IP Logged
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Jean,
I love your ideas. We did what you are talking about with spelling with our 2nd dd and she is the only one that can spell well.
We posted rules and markings (double underline silent letters, a subscript # for the particular phonogram sound ie subscript 2 for the z sound of s. I never thought to do it with grammar. This might really help our dd with adverbs and adjectives right now! Anything that gets them to THINK about what they are doing and why seems to help to really learn it and that is the point after all. This was from the Writing Road to Reading Spelling Noetebook but instead of having them memorize all the stuff someone suggested that we blow up the chart and laminate it for easy reference. It worked very well for us.
I think I'll go back and look at my Warriner's and see if there is an editing chart in the back and blow it up for reference as a start. Maybe I should make 8 copies so we all have one to use and I'll be better at not scrawling all over the children's work!
Thanks for the idea!
Janet
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Karen T
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| Posted: June 05 2005 at 10:55pm | IP Logged
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Marybeth wrote:
I always used Daily Oral Language when I taught. They give you two sentences per day with mistakes in grammar, capitalization, usage, etc. The program lasted for 36 weeks.
The students would love to see if they could correct their sentences and score all the points at the end of the week. It was a great tool for reinforcement and drill. I usually just make up sentences for my niece and nephew when I watch them in the summer. I wish I had my teacher's manual still...that program was a little gem.
Just my 2 cents.
Marybeth |
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A late reply here, but just wanted to say that my ds *hated* DOL's as they called them, in public school. I'm not sure if they had done them in other grades, but he had it in 5th grade and thought they were so dumb he just refused to do them! He's very bright, and the teacher told me that whenever he did do them he didn't miss any, but most of the time he would find some excuse not to do them.
I started this past year with a book called Find the Errors (I think from Rainbow Resource) that has about 20 lessons with a very short explanation, then a page of a story or article, with lots of errors in it the student must find and correct. It's mostly punctuation, capitalization, etc. It doesn't cover things like tense agreement, use of direct vs. indirect object, etc. I found when we were studying Latin that he had very little knowledge of parts of speech, although I'm sure it was covered ad nauseum in the school. So we backed up with that and started doing Simply Grammar, which is extremely elementary, but the very short lessons worked well for us. Next year we are changing our Latin program to (I think) The Latin Road to English Grammar, so I am hoping that will provide most of what he needs. He can write decent sentences already, if he's motivated but would probably not test well on the mechanics of grammar. Don't know, didn't test him this year (Ga only requires every 3rd year testing)
Karen T
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4Real Forums : Language Arts Come Alive
Topic: Teaching grammar?
