Saxon Grammar and Writing Review
Our family has homeschooled our children since the beginning, when my oldest daughter begged me to teach her to read the day after her 4th birthday. We're now on year 12 of our homeschool journey, with 4 children, and it's been a real adventure. We've tried many programs thus far, and have abandoned many as well. For some strange reason, we've had the hardest time finding an English Language Arts curriculum that works well for our learning style. We had high hopes for one program after another: Seton (the gold-standard for Catholic homeschooling), IEW, EIW, Wordsmith, Easy Grammar... They all started well and ended badly. The first level of Fix-It Grammar was manageable, but by the second level, I felt like my kids were just trying to memorize a gimmicky, unnecessarily-complicated technique, and not actually learning or retaining anything. Same thing for the rest of the IEW program. EIW was extremely dry and my kids would shed tears when it was time to do writing or literature for the day. Easy Grammar wasn't so bad, but it was too repetitive and I felt like my kids were missing a lot of important instruction.
But today, I'll be introducing you to an oft'-overlooked ELA resource: Saxon Grammar and Writing. Saxon is a name that can strike terror in the hearts of homeschooling moms. Or it's the name of a beloved friend that means rigor and thoroughness. Either way, most people think about the math program when they think of Saxon, and they either love it or hate it. And each camp of thinkers have very valid reasons. But I would encourage you take an honest look at the Grammar and Writing program, rather than dismiss it out of hand because of it's name. After hours and hours of research (and almost buying a different program altogether), I made the plunge and ordered three different levels of Saxon. We've now been using it for a few months and I feel ready to share our experience. Allow me to take you on a tour.
First of all, the numbers of the levels do not really correspond to grade level. The first level available is Level 3; however, not all 3rd graders will be ready to start this program. It really depends on reading ability, as this program assumes proficiency in reading. Personally, I skipped Level 3 because I wasn't too keen on the scripted "meeting" dialogue that starts each lesson. This format is unique to Level 3, and I felt like it was better suited to a classroom than a homeschool. Different people may feel differently, though, and the information contained in the text is highly valuable. For example, the first lesson in Level 3 teaches the Latin prefix anim-, meaning "breath."
I chose to start my 4th-grader on Level 4, my 7th-grader on Level 5, and my 10th- and 11th-graders are both using Level 8. All the levels have the same basic format, so let's go through them now!
To start off, the Teacher Guide contains the schedule for the year, all of the lesson answers, extra practice for students who need more review, and tests (the only part of the books we photocopy). The schedule is incredibly easy to follow, and I've marked mine with a sticky tab for easy reference.
At the beginning of each lesson, there is a dictation and/or journaling exercise. These exercises don't directly correspond to the lesson number, so you don't necessarily have to follow a strict schedule with it. Dictation is done by the student independently copying the exercise once or twice every day, paying attention to capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. On Friday, the parent/teacher reads the exercise out loud, and the student must replicate the paragraph without looking. Journaling is done every day as well, with the student writing a minimum of three sentences per topic. We have done a few of these exercises, and will do them more frequently as they build confidence with their writing.
Level 4 dictation teaches interesting animal facts throughout the year:
Level 8 dictation covers many topics like literature, poetry, letter-writing, history, etc.:
Level 8 journaling topics are thought-provoking for older students:
After the daily dictation practice and journaling, the student turns to the lesson for the day. All the levels start out with some new vocabulary words. They're often similar in spelling or meaning with distinct differences, or antonyms. Then in the typical Saxon method, the lesson gets started by introducing a new topic or expanding on a previous topic.
Level 4:
After thoroughly explaining the lesson and giving lots of examples with answers, the student has several practice questions pertaining directly to the day's lesson. Finally, the lesson ends with a spiral review of all topics and information covered thus far. I really like this method of re-visiting older topics for reinforcement. The repetition makes the subject matter become easy over time, and new topics are gradually introduced at a gentle pace. Nothing, so far, has been too difficult for any of my kids, and they don't feel overwhelmed at all.
Just a note: while the textbooks claim to be "consumable," it has worked better for us to write answers in a spiral notebook. This way, we can reuse the textbooks for younger kids, and my two girls can share one copy of Level 8. We do this with most of our other curriculum, too. I gave my kids the instruction to "write the least amount possible to answer the question." It's working well and their answers line up perfectly with the teacher's answer key, making it very easy to grade.
An example of my 4th grader's completed lesson (his cursive is really good, but he rushes with print and it can be a bit sloppy):
Notice number 25 in the notebook. It's a basic diagramming exercise that simply splits the subject and predicate with a straight line. It was taught in one of the first lessons, and even now, on lesson 20, he is still only splitting the subject and predicate. My oldest used Seton English in her earlier grades, and while we liked it to an extent, the diagramming got very complicated very quickly. We dropped it like a hot potato and avoided diagramming since then. But somehow, with Saxon, we're not afraid of it anymore. The repetition makes it easy! Even Level 8 introduces diagramming at a gentle pace and none of my kids have been confused or overwhelmed so far.
Moving on to the test and writing portion of the curriculum, each child has their own copy of the workbook. This is the only book I let them write in, because writing all of the exercises in a separate notebook would be too cumbersome. Fortunately, the workbooks are the least expensive portion of the program, so buying a new one for each child every year isn't so bad. Writing lessons start after grammar lesson 10, then every five lessons after that. Just follow the schedule in the teacher book. I went through the textbooks and put sticky notes where the tests and writing lessons take place. My kids are go-getters and often start their daily work without telling me what subject they're doing. I'm afraid that if I didn't have these reminders for them, they'd gladly go through all the grammar lessons without bothering to wait for the tests and writing lessons. This works for us:
The test comes first, followed by writing. I copy the tests for them (they're in the Teacher's book) because that's what we do with our Saxon math tests, too. I try really hard to follow copyright laws, but it only makes sense to copy the tests, in my opinion:
After some of the lessons, there's a fun exercise to do. These are basically Mad Libs, and I call out the prompts while they write in a notebook. Then they read back the story with the words they chose. The kids enjoy these!
For the Writing book, all of the levels start by introducing the sentence. It jumps right in by giving examples of sentences that are too "wordy," a common feature of children's writing, followed by an explanation of how to write the information in a better way. They learn to put sentences in a logical order, recognize the topic sentence of a paragraph, and eliminate unnecessary information.
One of the things I especially like is the inclusion of interesting, relevant facts throughout the program. Level 4 seems to focus on animals, while upper levels include history, geography, literature, etc...
It's time for me to brag just a bit. To be completely honest, my kids are not strong writers. They have hated writing with a passion I didn't know could exist. Previous lessons with other programs resulted in my literally telling them what to write, word-for-word. It's bad. None of my children have managed to put together a 5-paragraph essay in their lives. With my oldest kids, it's been starting to worry me. Keep in mind, my kids are intelligent. They love history and science. Their reading skills are superb. Math isn't their favorite, but they're making all As. Writing, however, is a different animal, and we've all felt like absolute failures until recently.
Now, behold my 10th grader's recent accomplishment! It's a rough draft written in about 30 minutes. There are errors. Lots of errors. But guess what? I'm not worried about that, because errors are easily corrected! What's amazing is that she put pencil to paper, wrote a 5-paragraph essay that followed a logical order, and didn't stop to ask me what she was supposed to write - not one. single. time! This is an overwhelming success in my book. No longer frozen in fear and hatred, I honestly believe we can move on and grow from here.
My 11th grader had similar results with her first essay (same topic), and my younger boys have successfully written a full paragraph that makes sense. Time will tell if we stick with this program, but for the moment, it's working better than anything else we've tried in the past. My only regret is that I didn't seriously consider using Saxon Grammar before now. I'm guilty of pre-judging it, thinking it would be too much work or too complicated. Far from that, it's been surprisingly simple to use.
Another thing I'd like to add is that it could possibly simplify one's school day in other ways. Because so much attention is given to vocabulary and spelling, it wouldn't be unreasonable to eliminate other vocab and spelling books in favor of just using what Saxon offers. I'll take it a step further and say that it could potentially fill in for other subjects as well. We've all had times in our lives where things were stressful and overwhelming. Our family, too, has had to cut things down to the basics now and then to get through a particularly rough patch. If we were going through another really tough time, I would allow the information in Saxon Grammar to temporarily replace a separate history and/or science curriculum.
Level 4:
In fact, if you were having difficulty coming up with literature to assign, Saxon has you covered there, too. There are many references made throughout the text to various good books and poems. Many of these could be checked out from the library (in the case of novels) or even read online (poems). While I would not want to completely replace those other subjects with Saxon Grammar, at least not long-term, the wealth of information contained in these textbooks is impressive. After the few short months we've been using it, I believe my children are learning more, and more relevant information than they ever were with any of the other grammar and writing programs we attempted. I highly recommend checking it out!
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