Tell me what I should use Shurley Grammar, or not

[Cadam]

I know nothing about this program but my Latin Program is keyed to it so....


Tell me about it. The good, the bad and the ugly. What is the format and where can I get a sample? Teacher intensive, student driven, something in between?

Previously I have used FLL and then R&S 4 for grammar.

[Karenciavo]

My favorite source for Shurley products is Finders Keepers (http://www.finders-keepers.net/index.php?id=shurley), I believe they have samples there. It is teacher intensive, but scripted and easy to use. We went through Shurley 3, 5, & 6 in 2 years (we skip the writing) and learned a lot, I just recommend that people work on grammar definitions apart from Shurley as well, some kids can really sing those grammar songs, but when you ask them point blank, "What's an adverb?" they can't answer without singing the song. We did the chants and kept grammar notebooks ala Classical Writing using Harvey's. If you decide to get it I highly recommend getting the practice booklets so you don't have to write out the sentences.

BTW, you really don't need to use Shurley with LFC. The parsing in LFC is unique to that program, it's just similar to Shurley.

Karen

[kRenee]

I've use Shurley 4,5 and 6. If you use it as written it is teacher intensive. There are scripted lessons for every day of the week. Friday is always a writing lesson.

As with any grammar program there is tons of review each year. The first year I did most of the exercises. The second and third year we did/are just doing the sentence classifying with quick reviews of all the other grammar concepts. I love the classifying of sentences. So, I think you can spend 1/2 hour every day or you can spend 15 min once a week. I've done both.

We went to Shurley 4 from R&S 3 and it was a perfect transition.
I don't know where you can see a sample

[Tiffani]

I've used Shurley off and on for several years. There are things about the program that I realllllly like and things I don't.

I would start w/ www.finders-keepers.net (http://www.finders-keepers.net) There you will find tons of info on Shurley.

Yes, it's teacher intensive....atleast at first until you "get the hang of it". Personally I only use it as a refresher course and even then I don't use it for a whole year. It gets real old.

I like the question/answer flow and the jingles. I've never used the writing (we use IEW).

I don't like the redundancy....i.e., when your student is correcting sentences for commas or capitalization (etc...) he not only has to find the mistakes, but also has to put the number of the rule that applies in each situation. (That got old).

Sorry so short...hopefully the website will help and/or someone else will reply.

Tiffani

[keithfamily5]

We used Shurley for the first time this year. Both of my girls love it. We didn't do any writing last year. At the beginning of this year my then 10 yr old was complaining about having to journal. She is now writing 5 paragraph essays - and enjoys it. My now 8 year old is writing 3 point expository paragraphs and begs for extra writing assignments. This is huge, since we didn't get much writing in last year. They both love the grammar. It does require the parent, but like Karen said it is very easy to use. I leave the kids to finish their exercises and vocab on their own. I have even had them label their sentences on their own and reviewed them before we start the scripted lesson. All in all they have really enjoyed Shurley and learned alot this year. I give it two thumbs up. It has worked well for our family.

Hope that helps,

Patty

[Sue in St Pete]

We used Shurley 5 in 5th grade. My husband had used LLATL for 3 years prior to Shurley, but we both felt that our son needed something more rigorous.

Pros:
• Great job of teaching how to label the parts of speech in a sentence
• Question and answer flow great tool for learning parts of speech
• Jingles on CD helped to learn and reinforce parts of speech
• Good retention of parts of speech

Cons:
• Scripted teacher’s material is very wordy
• Writing instruction is inferior
• Vocabulary work useless (looking up words in a dictionary, writing down the definition and using the word in a sentence). Zero retention.
• Subsequent levels are very repetitive

Overall, I was very happy with it. My son did very well and has retained a lot of what he learned with it. However, because of the repetitive nature of subsequent levels, we are using Analytical Grammar for junior high.

[Kisa in CA]

I have lots of friends who use Shurley and like it. However, one friend who has taught for 3o years did not care for it. Mostly she was not impressed with the grammar understanding of the kids who were taught using it. She highly recommends Rod and Staff. She's a grammar queen (I'm not kidding, a college level grammar wonder woman who answers all my questions for me). So, I'm going with her suggestion. I've never used it. HTH!

[Cadam]

Are jingles necessary? He. hates. jingles. Auditory processing issues mean music does not so it for this kid. I really only need it to help us with what we are doing in Latin but it sounds like a program I might use one year and then not need again because it is so repetitive. maybe we will do one year of Shirley and then just use the LfC or go back to R&S which he liked.

I would love more opinions, I will keep thinking about this.

[kRenee]

I've never used the jingles. The words to the jingles are in the book if you want to read them.

[HSMom2One]

It is working well for us and is dd's favorite subject, much to my surprise. Even so, I want to encourage you to stay with R&S. If this curriculum is something your ds loves already and is doing well with, then why bother to change? LFC is similar to SG in style, but it isn't necessary to combine the two.

I hope everything works out well for you with this. :)

Blessings,
Lucinda

[WTMindy]

We used Shurley 5 in 5th grade. My husband had used LLATL for 3 years prior to Shurley, but we both felt that our son needed something more rigorous.

Pros:
• Great job of teaching how to label the parts of speech in a sentence
• Question and answer flow great tool for learning parts of speech
• Jingles on CD helped to learn and reinforce parts of speech
• Good retention of parts of speech

Cons:
• Scripted teacher’s material is very wordy
• Writing instruction is inferior
• Vocabulary work useless (looking up words in a dictionary, writing down the definition and using the word in a sentence). Zero retention.
• Subsequent levels are very repetitive

Overall, I was very happy with it. My son did very well and has retained a lot of what he learned with it. However, because of the repetitive nature of subsequent levels, we are using Analytical Grammar for junior high.

This is a very good summary. We used Shurley and I kept slowly dropping parts of it until all we were doing was the Question and Answer flow portion (and some of the jingles). Although, in my opinion, many of the jingles are too long and have too much info. For example, when my kids want to remember the helping verbs, they have to go through the whole thing to get to them. If I were to do it over again, I'd just have them memorize the helping verbs and not the jingle.

I think the Q/A flow is great, but when we went to use the next level, they start all over again and my kids were not happy about that. It seems that levels 4-6 include almost the same stuff with just a couple of new things at the end of the book. So, I finally went to Rod and Staff. I really like the diagramming in R&S.

[TCoppock]

I think the above reviews are pretty accurate but wanted to give my 2pennies. We are using Shurley and love it for the most part. The fun jingles were one of the selling points in our house though. The jingles made grammar fun and light. Last year my son was failing English in his school and now he is excelling. I do not feel that the Friday writing has helped him at all and we will be dropping this next year to start the new program from SWB. I don't know anything about LFC but I don't know if I would change my grammar program if I had already found one that worked for my DS.

[ArwenA]

We pick and choose what we do from Shurley. It's our grammar curric and is going well. The jingles and Q&A are a hit with dd9. DD9 also does LFC and we find that great too.:)

[Kathy in MD]

Are jingles necessary? He. hates. jingles. Auditory processing issues mean music does not so it for this kid. I really only need it to help us with what we are doing in Latin but it sounds like a program I might use one year and then not need again because it is so repetitive. maybe we will do one year of Shirley and then just use the LfC or go back to R&S which he liked.

I would love more opinions, I will keep thinking about this.
different, but it isn't bothering my ds. In your shoes I'd stick with R&S.

[frogpond1]

IMHO. I don't do all the writing, but occasionally I do do some of it because I use the Progymn. and I dabble a bit in modern writing just to hedge my bets. I love the parsing though, and it helps so much more than diagramming for Latin translating. I will do more diagramming again, but this year is devoted to everyone doing Shurley parsing and grammar work. It really is quite easy once you figure it all out, and you don't have to do the scripted thing. You can multi age several levels at a time too because of its repetitive nature. I love R&S, but this year of Shurley is worth its weight in gold for my Latin students. I have 21 Latin students in 3 different levels and they all were dumped into Shurley this year. No one freaks out when they have to parse their Latin anymore and the errors are way down. Yesterday we took a practice test for the National Latin Exam and I was so pleased how the parsing this year has made it much easier to approach unknown words or passages. I wouldn't do it every year, but I'm doing the happy dance now that I took my students through it.

[Kathy in MD]

then JAG and AG should be equally good because they are also into parsing and diagramming.

[frogpond1]

helps the parsing for Latin. I don't know if the other programs do that oral questioning.