Do you have a kid who struggles to understand grammar? Does teaching grammar intimidate you? Are you looking for a way to make teaching grammar simple and fun? If you can relate to any of those, than Easy Grammar might be for you.
What is it?
Easy Grammar is a curriculum for 1st-12th graders.
According to their website, “Author Dr. Wanda Phillips has made learning grammar easy and enjoyable while ensuring that students achieve mastery. Concepts are presented with the most basic skill first, and skills build for ease in understanding. Parents and teachers love the ideas and strategies that promote mastery. It truly is ‘Easy to Teach . . . Easy to Learn . . . Easy to Remember!'”
How it works:
Easy Grammar varies a bit based on which grade level you are using, however the overall concept is the same. The curriculum is sold as a teacher workbook which includes the instructions for teaching each lesson, reproducible student worksheets, and the answer key. There is also an optional student edition for those not wanting to make photo copies. While they do have an assessment to determine which book to start with, the author recommends most people start with the book corresponding to your child’s grade level. There is a lot of overlap in each book, as each book briefly covers all of the concepts in the previous books before adding new concepts. This is great for those switching to this program at an older age.
How we used it:
We used Easy Grammar for the first time last year. Both of my kids, ages 9 and 11, used Easy Grammar – Grade 3. My older child had previously received a lot of grammar instruction (private school through 3rd grade plus a year of Essentials In Writing), but he had still been struggling to grasp the basics. When I pre-tested my kids using the Easy Grammar pre-test, their scores ranged from 55-65%. To be fair, I don’t know that I would have scored much better. It was a challenging test.
Easy Grammar isn’t broken out into lessons, so we did about 3-4 pages/day. It took us somewhere around 15-20 minutes daily. At the beginning of the year, I worked through the lessons with my kids. The author intends for you to teach them each new concept by first explaining the topic and then walking through examples with them. We did some of this at first, but as the year went on my kids became more and more independent. The curriculum is easy to understand and really builds upon itself, so my kids needed very little of my help by the end.
We also used Daily Grams, which is by the same author, and my kids really enjoyed it. Daily Grams focuses on capitalization and punctuation with some grammar review thrown in. It is a wonderful supplement to Easy Grammar, and one that my kids will continue using. Daily Grams is offered for grades 3-7.
What I loved:
- The method is unique.
Easy Grammar teaches students to first recognize prepositions. Then it asks them to delete the prepositional phrases. Once the prepositional phrase is eliminated from the sentence, the remaining parts are easier to identify.
- It works.
My previously grammar confused kid actually understood grammar by the end of this book. He scored a 94% on his post-test. My 9 year old also scored over 90%.
- My kids LOVED it!
My kids actually enjoyed Easy Grammar, and they never complained about doing their work. Not only that, but my son actually asked if he could do Easy Grammar again. I had planned on teaching grammar every other year, and I offered for him to take this coming year off. He was insistent that we keep going with grammar. After emailing the author for advice on placement, he will be jumping ahead to Easy Grammar Plus (the junior high book) this coming school year. He’s looking forward to it.
What could use improvement:
- PDF Version doesn’t print well.
I bought the PDF version of this curriculum to save money. That was a huge mistake. The Teacher’s Guide has the teaching pages mixed in with the student pages. They don’t provide two separate files. The book is 480 pages, so I wanted to print it double sided to save paper. In order to do this, I went through all 480 pages with a PDF editor and tried to pull out the teacher pages. It was a mess. Save yourself the headache and buy a teacher edition for you and a student edition for each child.
- No lesson plan available.
There are no clear instructions on how to spread this curriculum out over a typical school year. The chapters are all different lengths, and no schedule is provided. It felt a bit overwhelming at first. My best suggestion is to divide the total number of student pages by the total number of days you intend to have school. For most books it looks like 2-3 student pages per day would allow kids to finish a level in a typical 34-36 week school year.
My Conclusion:
I recommend Easy Grammar to everyone who asks me for curriculum suggestions. When a curriculum can get my kids to request more grammar instruction, it should be shouted from the rooftops. It is currently one of our favorite curriculum.
If you would like to see what grammar concepts each book covers you can view their scope & sequence chart.