Monday, February 7, 2011

Easy Grammar Systems

Easy Grammar Systems

Easy to Teach...
Easy to Learn...
Easy to Remember!
Easy Grammar texts use the prepositional approach combined with effective strategies. This helps students to understand grammar, a tool for speaking and writing properly.


About the Easy Grammar Grade 5 Teacher Edition

In this specific book, students are asked to delete prepositional phrases in order to help understand other concepts.  In addition to grammar concepts, capitalization, punctuation, sentence types, phrases/clauses and friendly/business letters are included.  Ample practice worksheets are offered for each skill.

53 prepositions introduced
materials presented and reviewed throughout
contains unit reviews, unit tests, cumulative reviews, and cumulative tests
includes pre/post assessments
starreproducible worksheets (answer key on left side
and reproducible page on right)
writing section "teaches" how to write appositives, semicolon construction, and compound sentences
See "Scope and Sequence" for content.
starTests are also in the teacher edition.
starThis student test booklet saves you from having to make copies of the tests.

My Thoughts

I will be honest, when my son Alexandre approached grade 3 I knew that I had to introduce English grammar in his homeschool.  You see English is not my mother tongue – French is.   A friend of ours had mentioned to me that she was using Easy Grammar.   After checking it out, we decided that we will give it a try and when the homeschool conference came we purchased the grade 3 level for him.    And I must say that I was pleasantly surprised during that year.   I loved the way it is organized and how it makes grammar so easy to learn.

This coming September, we will enter the grade 5 world and more grammar notions will be introduced.   The first step the child goes through with these books is to memorize the prepositions.   My son, Alexandre, has an incredible memory but even he forgets some of the prepositions listed.   Once the prepositions are learned, it becomes easy for the child to identify the prepositional phrases and remove it from the sentences if needed.     The book always start with a pre-test which helps to identify the notions that has slipped the mind of the child during the summer time.    That same test can be used at the end of the year to get the final result of the child for the grade he/she was in.   I am surprised to see that the pre/post test seems to be shorter for the grade 5 book than the previous books.   That will make my son happy I guess!

The book is divided in sections: Prepositions, Verbs, Nouns, Adjectives, Adverbs, Pronouns, Sentences types, Friendly Letter, Interjections, Conjunctions, Sentences & Fragments, Capitalization, Punctuation, and Writing Sentences.   Depending of the section, you will get more sub-divisions.  For example, while looking at the Adjectives section, I can see that it will cover descriptive adjectives, limiting adjectives, proper adjectives, predicate adjectives, and degrees of adjectives. Just by looking at the table of content, I can see that we will learn quite a bit in the grade 5 year (both my son and I actually!)   Each section has a review and a test for the section as well as a cumulative review and test.   Consequently, as the student goes through the book, he/she will review all the sections that was covered so far. 

I particularly like the fact that this system teaches the student to look at the sentence as a whole, identify any prepositional phrases and remove it before identifying the verb, subject and/or direct object.  It makes the learning of the English grammar more interesting and practical at the same time.    Even me as a mom I am learning quite a bit.   I wish I had had this system of learning when I learned English – it would have made my life easier and I wouldn’t make as many errors while talking. 

The Teacher Edition includes the grammar rules to explain to the child, the exercises as well as the answers for each of the exercises.    Everything under one book.   It makes teaching so much easier I find.   

I usually gives one or two pages to do per day – sometimes more.   It depends on how the week is going and what is happening in our lives.   But generally speaking, so far we start in September and we are able to complete the level in May or early June.   The Grade 5 level contains definitively more grammar lessons than the previous ones we have done.  I am quite satisfied with how the English grammar is presented and how the lessons are easily assimilated by my oldest son.   Next year, I will also have a grade 2 child and I am debating about purchasing the Grade 2 level for him.   I find the learning for this 2nd son is different than my first born.   So at this moment I am investigating to determine if this would be a good fit for him or not.  No matter what I decide for the 2011-2012 school year for my 2nd grader, he will embark the journey to Easy Grammar eventually.   I’ve seen the results in my oldest son using this method and I know that it will work perfectly for the other kids.   

If you are considering getting some books to teach English grammar to your kids, I would suggest that you take the time to check out Easy Grammar.   From their website, you can easily check out some example of the pages of the books you are interested in.   To identify the scope and sequence of your  own child, go to  http://www.easygrammar.com/scope.html.

The Easy Grammar Grade 5 Teacher’s Edition is available for 32.95$ US.  Also available are the Easy Grammar Grade 5 Student Workbook  for 13.95$ US and the Easy Grammar Student Test Booklet for 4.95$US.   They are available directly from the website or you could see their list of stores who carry their products at http://www.easygrammar.com/store.html.

Disclaimer: Thanks to Easy Grammar Systems for sending me the above mentioned product for review purposes. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way.  All opinions expressed here are only my own.

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