Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind Core Instructor Text: A Complete Course for Young Writers, Aspiring Rhetoricians, and Anyone Else Who Needs to Understand how English Works

We homeschool. We used First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind in grades 1 thru 4. Thank the heavens this came out! I have no idea why but my boys, who are no schoolwork lovers, choose this over any other English option. My 5th grader tried Rod and Staff and other workbooks and was thrilled when I stumbled upon this. I myself am learning too!

Excellent Course. Clear instructions.

The material covered is amazing, but it was far too advanced for my 5th grader. The problem is that the level below was too easy, so we are left without a level to use with this company. I stopped using it mid year, but we might come back to it in a few years.

I love Bauer's program and just did grades 1-4 with my son. This is grades 5-8. Because grades 5-8 repeat the same information for four years, Bauer has us use this book for four years in a row along with workbooks and workbook keys that change each year. TOTAL NIGHTMARE. Dear Susan, I am a busy homeschooling mom. Please make me a friendly text like you did for the first four years. I want a workbook that says 5th, then 6th, then 7th, then 8th. I want pages I can tear out. I want the classical readings in fifth grade to be easier than the ones in eight grade. I one ONE instructor text with my key right there. I want you to assume that I am using your grammar program AND your writing program AND your history program and not make information repetitive. I want your grammar program grade 5 to be aware of what the children are learning about in history in grade 5.Also, there is too much repetition across the board in your program for my child. I wish your programs were 90 lessons instead of 180 and had an extra 90 at the end for kids who need more repetition.

This course is RIGOROUS. In my book, that is almost always a great reason to use curriculum, and it's something I've never shied away from.However, the course jumps so far and so fast from First Language Lessons 1-4 that we have been SLOGGING through it for 20 weeks in the purple book with very little progress. We did FLL 1-4 for four years and were so excited to see this course coming out because we wanted to use it for my twin 5th graders and 6th grader, all of whom had thoroughly enjoyed the FLL series. I eagerly anticipated a seamless transition from FLL into the more advanced grammar and being able to get all we needed in an additional four years of study. Sadly, I have come to a point that I simply can't pick up this book and try to push through it for one more day.My kids are gifted in language arts and we've not had problems with any of the classical curriculum we've tried thus far. I've told myself to keep giving it a chance, to see if we were just going over a couple of rough spots that would smooth out with practice. Being nearly two-thirds of the way through the book, though, my kids are still struggling every single day.I think I've narrowed down what the main reasons for this struggle are. I hope these help others who might be considering this purchase for their kids.1) The target audience is set much too low. I thought we could start directly after finishing FLL, but that is far from the case. The grammar instruction is thorough but is so advanced that I would wait at least a couple of years past 5th grade, especially if you have students who did well and flew through FLL, potentially leaving them at a younger age than the average 5th grade student (my 5th graders are 9 and 6th grader is 10).2) The idea of taking four years and repeating the concepts with review in subsequent levels is initially what piqued my interest with this book. What a great idea! The material doesn't necessarily get harder, it just is repeated with a variety of literature and science selections so that the student gets really grounded in the necessary instruction. However, this is a large order to fill. If the authors of this grammar curriculum intend for the four levels to be a complete grammar education and even a high school student won't need anything beyond this (and I believe it is the intention) then there are a lot of very advanced concepts that have to fit into one level in order to only repeat concepts rather than build one level upon the next for four levels as FLL did. I like the idea that at any point during the four levels you can add a student into the instruction so you are only doing one level with all students at the same time even if they are a couple of years apart, but again, this only works if the students are all advanced enough in the first place.3) Another selling point for this curriculum is found directly on the WTM site. Instruction is "mostly drawn from real literature, from novels, from histories, from biographies, from science books. We really encourage the student to take the rules they’re learning and then look at how they operate in real literature." This is an excellent idea in that taking real, living books to teach grammar seems like a good way to tie everything in. In practice, however, it has been quite challenging. We are in Week 20, currently diagramming sentences from Pride and Prejudice. I watch my kids' eyes glaze over as the teacher dialogue presents huge concepts like "compound-complex sentences" and how to diagram them. Rather than create sentences that are examples for concepts taught (as we did in FLL), most of the sentences are taken from other source texts and do not always fit well with the lesson. It has gotten very confusing.4) The concepts presented are not reviewed enough WITHIN the level. Yes, I know that ultimately students will have four full years of working through/repeating concepts and getting familiar with them. But when advanced things like gerunds and infinitives are taught (to say nothing of just memorizing the terms, which is a new concept at this stage) for a few lessons in one week and then students are expected to retain that as they continue to diagram and learn new concepts in the coming weeks, it's unsurprising that my kids have gotten to the point where they despise grammar and are tearful and resistant every day when I pull the books out.In summary, I am sad that we will now be back to the drawing board for grammar instruction for these interim years. I might pull the purple level back out in 7th or 8th grade, but the teacher-driven dialogue is best used for other advanced topics like propositional logic at that stage so grammar will likely be something I have the students do independently at that stage.I give three stars because I think you probably could use this with success with a much more advanced student, the limited review and advanced literature selections notwithstanding. The book is well-done and the teacher dialogues make it open-and-go in a similar way to FLL. If you liked that aspect of FLL, you will appreciate that about this course. Be prepared to take at least 30 minutes per day for a lesson, and closer to 45 if your students are younger and have the glazed-over look that means they aren't retaining anything and will need you to repeat everything.

I agree with others that this is far too difficult for a 5th grader. I was so excited to get this for my 10 year old but by lesson 4, I knew this was too much information at once. For example in lesson 4, they introduce proper adjectives, hyphenated proper adjectives, compound adjectives, attributive position and predicative position. That is A LOT of information in one sitting. Then the activities are minimal at best. Each day so far moves on to a new topic. So no reinforcement of previous concepts is applied. Just a constant barrage of new information and too much of it in one sitting. For example Lesson 5 will move on to pronouns, antecedent of pronouns, personal pronouns, and gender of nouns(masculine, feminine and neuter). Nothing from lesson 4 is reinforced in lesson 5. I could see this intensive grammar for an 8th grader maybe but definitely NOT 5th grade.

Excellent book, I recommend it!

I liked this book on grammar. The first time I can say that without sarcasm. Not dull, and easily understandable. Sometimes the traditional ways are best....

Love this book. It’s brilliant, easy to use, and has great content.

Great