English and Grammar have always come fairly easily to my daughters. They have other subjects that tend to bring great frustration (math, anyone?), but reading, writing, and most all of the areas that fit under the umbrella of English are subjects that they usually breeze through. Even with that being the case, every school year, I take a look at our program and see where there may be any gaps that we need to fill. When the opportunity to review GrammarPlanet , I was happy to add it to our studies.
GrammarPlanet is an online program for anyone 10 years and older, who would like to improve their English skills. Whether you are a homeschooler, public schooler, or adult, this program can be used by anyone. Even better, you can use it for free (the free version does include advertising, although nothing offensive). If you find that the program works for your family, you van choose to go with the paid version of the program, which contains no ads.
Using the program:
It's very easy to get going. Once you have your accounts in place, you'll log in and get started. The dashboard will display the units to be completed, and where your student is in their progress. There is a button that says "Continue progress", and you'll click on that to either begin, or move on to the next lesson. The units begin with a short video lesson, about five minutes or so. There are notes that accompany each lesson, and a handy pdf is accessible right on the video box, so you can quickly print them out and follow along with the lesson. The teacher reads through them for the lesson, and they are very handy as your student is completing their practice sentences, so don't skip the printing!
Everything is straightforward and detailed in the instructions and video, making it easy to follow along.
A sample of the printable notes.
She (the teacher), goes through the lesson slowly and carefully, stopping every couple of minutes for a quick quiz. I think that this is great to make sure that students are paying attention! Even though the videos are short, kids often check out and miss the material. My 14 year old does that occasionally. This keeps them on their toes, lol.
After the video, there are practice sentences where students will click on the words to mark the nouns, proper nouns, etc.. The program will immediately check the answers and let you know which answers were correct or incorrect. GrammarPlanet presents the number of sentences according to how well the student scores on each unit. So, if a student gets all of the answers correct, there are fewer questions, and if there are more incorrect answers, there will be more questions to practice. The least amount that students will complete is ten questions, and the most will be twenty five questions. If five or more questions are wrong, the student will get locked out of the program, and the parent will be notified through email. The parent will be able to go to their parent account and unlock it again so the student can move on, or the progress can be reset so the unit can be retaken. Good accountability!
After completing all of the required material in a unit, there is a test. The parent will get a notification (again through email) of the student's grade, and then you can move on to the next unit.
You'll click on the words that you want to label.
The red are the words marked incorrect. This photo is fuzzy, but you should be able to read the notes at the bottom. I like that they are encouraging, and if you can read this one, it says that the two words are incorrect, but feature things that haven't been covered in the teaching this far.
This one made me laugh- "Oh, so close!"
A test sample. This was the results page.
On to the next unit!
The suggested schedule for working through the program is three days a week, at no more than fifteen minutes at a time. There philosophy is small bites for better retention, and I agree. This is a thorough program, and the less is more idea is perfect for my family.
Through our review period, I've changed my mind a couple of times. We've been homeschooling for ten years now, and all of our main grammar curriculum has been a physical textbook. It took a bit of getting used to clicking on a word, rather than using our favorite pencil and workbook method. Also, because the number of questions increases when answers are incorrect, it felt, at first, that a lesson took a long while to get completed. HOWEVER, at approximately fifteen minutes a day, three days a week, with frequent mini quizzes, I can say that I really like this program A LOT. I'm enjoying going through the material for myself to refresh my skills. Honestly, I'm feeling a little self conscious as I write this review, as I'm wondering about the grammatical errors that I may have, lol. I'm going to continue using this with both of my daughters, to supplement their other English curriculum.
GrammarPlanet is a solid program that I happily recommend, and seeing that it's available for FREE, you have nothing to lose by giving it a go!
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