Rod and Staff English placement help - please :)

[HappyAtHome]

Hello everyone
We are looking at coming back to HOD (I'm excited!) and I am wondering how to place my 7th grader for Res to Ref for English? She is a good writer, and generally has a decent grasp of grammar/punctuation in her writing, but will have not much of an idea what a verb/adverb/conjunction, etc, is. She uses them fine in her writing, but doesn't know their names, if that makes sense. When I have looked at the Gr 5 level book for R&S, it looked way beyond her grammar level, but she is actually a strong student, and not behind in any areas. Where should I place her? Gr 4 English? Seems silly for a Gr 7'er! Thanks! Nicole

[HappyAtHome]

Also… is the R&S English book *only* used for grammar? And if so, could another grammar book or course be switched for R&S? Or are there other assignments other than grammar that are scheduled from the R&S?

[LynnH]

First to answer your second question Rod and Staff Grammar also has various types of writing assignments that are scheduled including things like outlining, note taking and other types of writing. You can use a different grammar, but Carrie schedules the writing programs assuming that dc are getting the writing lessons in Rod and Staff so your dd might miss out on some of things she needs to learn. Keep in mind that by the end of 8th grade Carrie only has the dc completing Rod and Staff 6 and then only Rod and Staff 8 by the end of high school. I am not sure where I would place your dd. If level 5 looks way above her then I would do level 4. It is more important that she grasp the concepts because as you go up in levles the difficulty seems to jump quite a bit. Even if she only gets through level 7 by the end of high school she would have way more grammar than most students.

[HappyAtHome]

Thankyou, LynnH! That is really helpful. I think I will look at the samples again, and so will hopefully be able to see where she would place. I do think that Gr 4 might suit her more than Gr 5. We are in Australia, and we don't do nearly the same amount of grammar here as Americans do, so being at a lower level will suit us fine, I think.