Rod and Staff, really 15 min???

[joyfulhomeschooler]

I was just reading through the time allotments for how long subjects in Bigger should take. Everything looked good except for english. 15 mintues, really??? It takes us 30min to an hour daily. My child is understanding everything and loves english so I know it isn't a matter of him being placed too high. We are doing R&S 4. Am I missing something? I think we take a little longer on math most days too but not enough to make a huge difference.

[countrymom]

It is recommended to do a large portion of the Rod and Staff orally. Here is a quote and a link to the thread that contains the quote (it is a ways down) by Julie.

The writing instruction in R & S English is so solid. Considering R & S English is advanced, and HOD has an overall goal for dc to complete R & S English 6 by the end of Grade 8, with R & S English 7 and 8 being spread out over high school, I think doing R & S English 3 with your fourth grader could work well. Though your child is probably ready for portions of R & S English 4 after doing Abeka 3, the writing portions (and any other areas possibly not touched upon in Abeka 3 - such as how to do sentence diagramming R & S English style) in R & S English 3 probably make it worthy of doing. One other option would be to look through R & S English 3 and have your child do whatever you felt was necessary before beginning R & S English 4 - but sometimes, this is too much guesswork and more of a hassle than just doing 3 and being sure your bases are covered. I hope something here can help as you make your decision! We have loved R & S English for many years here, and I truly feel it is a very solid English program. HOD does suggest doing 2/3 of it orally or on markerboard, reserving just 1 section or so for the student to write. We have enjoyed this and found it to be an excellent way to teach English in a time conscious, thorough way. HTH!

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12554&p=90603&hilit ... lly#p90603
Hope that helps!

[LynnH]

Yep we do just one section written and the rest orally so it really does only take 15 minutes a day unless he has to write a paragraph or some other writing assignment that can take a little longer, but never more than 30 minutes.

[Mom2Monkeys]

Same here. We do as much as possible orally and a small part of each section written. Unless it happens to be just listing words for answer like "telling sentence" "asking sentence" "predicate" etc. Then we do it all orally. we are in level 5 now and still never takes more than 15m except for long writing assignments. Then usually 30m tops unless she wants to get super creative or take it a step farther, then she will start back after other stuff and take longer.

[chillin'inandover]

Wow that your dc is doing R & S 4 at 9 yo. My ds who is 10 and in 5th grade is doing R & S 4. Perhaps it is too advanced for the 9 yo in Bigger. I had my ds do R & S 2 at that level. If you have until 8th grade to get to level 6 you will have about 5 years to go through 3 levels (4, 5, and 6) of R & S. Perhaps take longer to finish level 4 doing it 2 times a week or just 1/2 a lesson each day. In Preparing R & S is done 4x/week and in CTC and RTR R & S is done 2 times per week. Level 4 is quite a full grammar lesson and 60 minutes is too long to sustain attention to grammar or any subject at 9 yo-IMO. Tammy

[pjdobro]

I would say that it might be a bit more than 15 minutes when doing level 4. The time allotment in Bigger is assuming level 2. With HOD 2/3 of the lesson is done orally with only 1/3 or less written. This year we're using level 5. We probably take 10-15 minutes doing the oral portions and orally doing some of the written part then it takes 5 to 10 minutes for my dc to do the part they actually write. So between 15-25 minutes and on the average probably 20 minutes. I would think level 4 would be similar or less than this. It really shouldn't ever be more than 30 minutes. Are you doing only 1 lesson each day?

[8arrows]

Rod and Staff has always taken my children longer than the alloted time. You have company!

[joyfulhomeschooler]

I think it may be that we are doing too much of it written. I've been having him do so much of the written assignments because it then frees me up to work with my 7yo. I've been sending him to his room to work at his desk for the written portion. So there could be some dawdling as well. I think we may try and do more of it orally tomorrow an see how that goes. We are doing one lesson 4x's a week. I really don't think it is too hard for him. He seems to be grasping it all and says english is one of his favorite subjects. R&S is such a great program. My husband says our son knows more than us in grammar and he's in 4th grade lol So I am not complaining, just wondering why it was taking us so much longer than others. Glad to know I am not alone though

[pjdobro]

It's wonderful that your ds is loving R&S grammar. I know mine do too, but if I had them do all of the writing that is in the guide they probably wouldn't like it near as much. It sounds like you have some ideas of how to shorten it up a bit though it going longer doesn't sound like it's too much of a problem.

As an example of what I usually do in a lesson, the other day there were 3 written sections. The first one was combining sentences, the next two were diagramming. The first diagramming exercise had 8 sentences and was diagramming compound sentences. The second had 10 sentences and was diagramming sentences with compound predicates and subjects. We did the first section orally, then the other 2 sections I had my ds diagram the evens and my dd diagram the odds. I thought 9 sentences diagrammed was enough especially since we had just done a bunch of examples on the whiteboard in the oral section of the lesson. Typically I don't require much over 10 sentences to be written at this level. Last year, I probably didn't make it even quite that much.

I'm sure everyone does things a bit differently, but I thought I would share what I usually do in case that might help. I think your husband is right about how much the dc know about grammar. I sometimes ask my dc when I can't remember which to use, lie or lay. They remember it all so much better than I do!

[mom23]

I do everything that I can orally; that means that some days we don't have anything at all to write out. I'll even have her tell me correct spellings or punctuation corrections outloud occasionally. We only write out things that I need to see on paper to be sure she understands it. We also use a whiteboard sometimes instead of paper. My dd really does not enjoy grammar, though, so I'm trying to streamline things as much as possible, just to make sure she's grasping things.

[my3sons]

R & S English 4 takes us an average of 20 minutes. We do the 5 oral review questions only from the TG's lesson notes, then read it all aloud, orally/or markerboard do all but 1 section or so, and save 1 section to be written in composition notebook. We clip along. It takes more like 25 minutes on writing skill focused days. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

[John'smom]

For level 3 we are done in 15 min. Level 4's lessons are much longer in length IMHO and we go over 15 min most days, but not a lot. I do follow HOD's guidelines about orally and written work too.

[daybreaking]

We're doing R&S 4 with my 4th grader. It takes us about 15 minutes to do the oral review questions, read through the lesson and do about 1/2-2/3 of the written work orally. It then takes my ds another 15-25 minutes to do the rest of the written work. On days that focus on writing, it takes him longer. Thankfully, my ds enjoys English and has recently developed a love for writing and often begs to do more!

[TrueGRIT]

We are doing Bigger and R&S 2. I just timed my child a couple times. One day it took 1 hour and 15 minutes to do the 1 small section I had for written!
15 minutes was 'play around' time, so it took 1 hour! We do try to follow the the 2/3rds oral and 1/2rd written, but it is still taking so long.
Last week just to catch up I had him orally dictate to me what to write and I did all of the writing. We did 2 lessons in just over 15 minutes!
The biggest reason I wanted to play catch-up is because he knows most of this in his head - he just can't seem to get it on paper.
Knowing this we may try for 20-25 minutes then stop wherever we are in the lesson.

Maybe this is much the same for your son - he knows and enjoys it, but just has a hard time writing it!
I doubt I have helped you, but at least I can let you know you are not alone on this.

Mikki

[raceNzanesmom]

We're using Bigger and R&S 2. It takes us 15 minutes or less most days. However, we do a lot of it orally or on the whiteboard. My oldest used levels 6-8 and it usually took him around 30-45 minutes.