As much as I love diagramming sentences and learning about where words come from, grammar scares me. Bad grammar encountered on social media makes me cringe and I’m often correcting it in my head. Then feel guilty because I’m sure I am just as guilty. More specifically, teaching grammar is not easy for me. We don’t begin intentional grammar instruction until upper elementary. Sure we talk about various parts of speech when it comes up. When helping the younger ones write their own stories or letters to grandparents it is easy to work out subject and predicate or nouns and verbs. But that is often all the farther we take it. Our oldest son has begun his grammar adventures and it is causing me no stress at all. Because I am not really doing anything. We have been using the brand-new online grammar program, GrammarPlanet. It is free, fun, and easy; the perfect way to teach grammar for this slightly phobic mama.
My son that has been using GrammarPlanet is just becoming fluent in his reading and is really ready to dig into grammar. He is 12 years old and it seems like his language arts skills are really taking off now that reading has unlocked so much. The recommended age for Grammar Planet is 10 and older. We have found this to be a good age to begin, when reading at grade level. My 10-year-old daughter is not quite at grade level and wants me to sit with her and help read some of the sentences when she gets stuck. She is grasping the new grammar topics quicker than her brother, but the reading ability gap is slowing down her progress.
Because this website is brand-new (though a long time from dreaming to developing) only 13 of the planned 60 units are available. At the pace my children are working though, this will be just fine. You have two options when signing up for the program. You can use this completely free (with ads) or pay for an ad-free subscription. When we began, we were seeing some ads – though I don’t recall them being obtrusive or distracting (we do use free ad-blocking software, so I’m sure that helps). Now that we have been switched to the paid subscription, we aren’t seeing them, obviously.
My favorite thing about this online program – besides free and easy for me, that is – my children cannot go on until they have shown mastery. In other online programs we have used, you click through enough and you can just keep going. GrammarPlanet completely locks you down if you do poorly. When we resumed work after some time off for a holiday, my son missed most of the practice questions for a unit. He had done the previous levels of the unit with 100%. He was locked in at that level and could not go on until we had spent some time. We rewatched the video and he did that level again. That was all he needed to get back on track. I love that I had the control to then unlock it for him. I knew it was simply vacation-brain. I could have had him watch the video, unlock him and let him move on. But when I received two emails – one at my parent email and one at the teacher email (I set up different ones) letting me know how he did and that he was locked until we reviewed it – I knew spending those few minutes would make a bigger impact. Hands-off learning doesn’t mean that I leave him on his own. I love how GrammarPlanet alerts when I need to step in.
When my students sign in, they click on ‘continue progress’. This brings them right where they left off. If it is at the beginning of a unit (new part of speech, etc.) they will be reminded to print the note sheet and watch the video. I try to have the note sheets printed ahead of time and in a folder kept by the computer. We have only used this on the desktop computer. Each child has their own so they can add their own notes to the printout as they watch the video. They then keep this in their own folder for reference. So far, this instruction has been enough.
The concepts and way of introducing and teaching grammar comes right from Analytical Grammar. This is the same family realizing the original vision of grammar instruction being brought to a wider audience through this online program. If you have children using the junior version of Analytical Grammar, then this will serve as good reinforcement. If your children or older, or you want to use this to brush-up your own skills, you will find this a good fit. The user interface is simple and straightforward. There is nothing childish about so it appeals to all ages. My children’s favorite aspect is the immediate feedback as they work through the level questions. The colors used and simple markings for the parts of speech make this so simple and effective.
Read about other Crew families’ experiences by clicking the image below.
