How To Teach Grammar (the easy way)!
Ok, so I’m being completely upfront and honest here…I don’t remember really learning grammar. I know I did have to learn something about it but obviously it didn’t stick with me because other than remembering what a noun, pronoun and verb were very foggily, that was it! So, how’s a mama to teach something she doesn’t know? Enter….IEW to the rescue to help you know how to teach grammar! Hurray! No, seriously, it’s awesome!
Why teach grammar?
First off, why in the world would you want to teach grammar? According to a great deal of information out there, grammar has fallen out of favor with the “educational experts”. But guess what? So has the ability to read and comprehend and write well! In fact if you read my last sentence you might realize it’s missing some key components😬 But its my blog post so I have liberty to do that, hehe.
Anyway, the sad truth is we are becoming more illiterate not less in our current educational system. And yes, my kids are homeschooled so I have the prime opportunity to prevent that from happening with my family!
So, my basic reason to teach grammar is to help my children become discerning readers and excellent writers (obviously more goes into that than just grammar but it’s a part of a bigger picture).
How I teach grammar…
In the beginning I thought perhaps I could just teach it as we went along but unfortunately that didn’t work. This was most likely due to the fact that I hadn’t learned grammar correctly or didn’t remember it and it was completely unrelated to what we were studying. It just seemed random and useless.
Want to learn How to Teach the Art of Language?
When I accidentally found IEW I ran across their course called “Fix It Grammar” and I have to tell you, it’s amazing!
My son is 10 and would far rather be building forts and fighting battles than learning grammar but he IS learning it and learning it very rapidly thanks to this program! In less than 30 minutes a day my son is becoming proficient in grammar!
How does Fix It Grammar work?
This program is quite ingenious in how simple yet effective it is. The whole set includes the student and teacher books with digital copies of the workbook. I love the ability to reprint or use with my other children! The teacher’s manual is a must for me on this because it gives all the answers! The student book has work for 4 days a week laid out in it. Each day has a sentence to work through.
In the sentence your child learns to mark nouns, articles, pronouns, verbs, who-which clauses and more! (This is where we’re at right now). Of course proper punctuation is practiced with each sentence. At the top of each week’s lessons are reminders of everything you need to mark.
There is a bolded word in each sentence that your child can look up in a dictionary and write the word and meaning in their notebook. They are then to copy the corrected sentence in their notebook. This is fantastic for copywork!
We use this program in a number of ways. First it gives my son reading practice aloud and often has unknown words for him to learn. Secondly, he will will complete the day’s work by himself and this builds his independent work ability. Thirdly, we do the work aloud (which he enjoys the most). When we do this we complete more then one day’s work at a time. Its great practice to be able to label the words in a sentence just by hearing them read!
I suppose you could just make up your own program but quite frankly I don’t have the time and patience to do that with this subject. And the best part there’s minimal work on the parent’s part and there’s no useless or excessive work on the child’s part! How can you go wrong with that?
Just like everything else I’ve tried from IEW I’m so incredibly pleased with this program 🙂 !!! I really do encourage you to check this program out, especially if you want your child to actually learn and remember grammar! Psst… did I mention I’m actually learning it?
Disclaimer: I use affiliate links of products I love and personally use or recommend! I’m not going to tell you I love something if I don’t!