Does anyone use BJU English in place of R&S?

[amck1992]

Thankyou Carrie! I appreciate your explanation of why you choose Rod & Staff. I wish my one daughter(10 yrs.) wasn't so frustrated by it. She is dyslexic and gets overwhelmed by too much writing. I only had her do about every other problem but at times that seemed too much. She can also get lost in the teaching of the lesson because she has a focusing problem. Could you please share with me how you would approach a lesson with a child who has LD's. When I 1st starting using R & S English I was convinced I would never change because I think it is a fantastic program. But, when I had some difficulty with my 1 daughter, I started to have doubts and thought the workbook approach might be more effective for her.

We've only finished 2 chapters of BJU to get a feel for it to see whether we wanted to continue with it in the fall or go back to R & S(I already have all the R&S textbooks). My girls really like the workbook approach. However, there are doubts that run in my mind. My concern is that we'll finish the year and they won't retain the material as well as in R & S. I don't want to finish this next year and doubt the decision I made.

I would really appreciate your advice. I would like to continue what I'm doing, however my fear of not knowing how well they'll retain the year keeps bothering me.

Thanks,
Ann

[Mom2Monkeys]

I'm not an expert like Carrie , but I know she and many others approach the R&S lessons a bit differently and I've taken their advice. We discuss the lesson, I do 1-2 from each section on the white board, WE do 1-2 together on the white board, then dd does 2-3 by herself from each section on paper (or sometimes just on the whiteboard). I also purchased the TM and worksheets this time for R&S 3. If there is a worksheet, then that replaces her independent writing on paper most of the time. And the TM provides the oral review in each lesson. Neither are "must haves" but they are helpful. After 3, I think the TM becomes more important b/c the grammar...well, mom needs the answers...LOL. (and the review is much more important too)

[angela&4boys]

Amy (busymomof4),

I pm'd you.

[Alison in KY]

Ladies,

I'm popping into this thread late, and while you can easily use BJU if you prefer in place of Rod and Staff I did want to mention just a bit about why we schedule Rod and Staff. With my oldest son, we used a year of BJU English and Writing, and at the time I was very excited to try it. However, upon use (in grade 4) we found that for our purposes BJU was a lot of workbook with quite a bit of writing requiring more time from me to teach it than I liked, and also more reteaching than I wanted. We bogged down in the BJU writing lessons and found them to be somewhat tedious, and we also found not nearly the carry-over from grammar into writing that we were desiring.

It was at this point that we switched to Rod and Staff, and I can't even begin to explain the difference in my son's understanding/comprehension/application of grammar since our switch to Rod and Staff. I completely balked at using (what I thought at the time) was such a teacher intensive, rigorous grammar porgram. However, I have discovered that its straight-forward, no-nonsense approach along with application to writing right within the lessons is unmatched by any grammar program that we've used in the past (which includes quite a few)!

Anyway, Rod and Staff is definitely something to consider as it is much less work than BJU, much less time consuming to teach and also does an equally good or better job of hitting the grammar concepts with application. I have honestly become a huge fan of Rod and Staff grammar, so it may be wise to take one more look at Rod and Staff before passing it by as I did.

Blessings,
Carrie

Great Carrie, now I'm even more confused . I've had a couple people recently tell me that their experience with BJU was less time consuming to teach than R and S, LOL.

So if I wasn't going to use the writing with either program (R and S or BJU) would either program be a good choice? I know I have to get my son's writing ability improved, but I'm taking the turtle mentality with him...slow and steady (but we're kinda crawling right now ).

My biggest question overall I guess would be: Do you think that with grammar retention it's just a matter of repeating it year after year no matter what the program? I know I research programs like crazy and where someone's Growing with Grammar is wonderful and their kids do great on testing,someone else is complaining that their kids didn't retain the info...ditto that for many other programs.

Alison

[my3sons]

Alison - The oral review in R & S is excellent. We take the approach Tamara described. For the first 1/2 to 2/3 of every section of R & S, we either orally discuss it, or I write the answers on a marker board. Then, Wyatt writes the last portion of each section on paper. I've found the retention to be excellent. I'd been doing R & S 2 the year before, and it doesn't have the oral review questions in the TG like R & S 3 has, so when I got to R & S 3, I forgot to do the oral review part in the teacher's guide. Once I added that in, my ds's retention became even better. I think R & S would be a great choice - it's steady, short when you do the marker board approach, and more than enough grammar for even the most rigorous of goals we may have.

In Christ,
Julie