Rod & Staff English HELP!

[ninipelley]

We are using Beyond w/ Rod & Staff 2. I do love the books- HOWEVER
dd is quick to learn and knows most of this stuff so we are doing orally, but also skipping through quite a bit as it seems very redundant for her (for my ds I would call it thorough).
Any suggestions to eliminate frustration? Or an alternative that is just quick teaching, then moving on?

[pjdobro]

I'm not quite sure what the ages of your children are and what grade they are in. Looking at some of your previous posts, I'm thinking that your dd is in 2nd. Is that right? I'm not for sure about your ds though. R&S is very thorough and we found book number 2 fairly repetitive after having completed the grammar lessons in Beyond. Repetition at this age is a good thing. I've been amazed at how doing a little of something everyday really cements the concept for my dc rather than trying to do a whole lot at one time. The little bites are actually a very good way for them to learn and retain that information. On the other hand, you don't her to be bored such that you lose her interest. So here are a few things that you might try. Try to jazz up the lesson a bit by putting some action into it. We do things like stand up if it's a sentence and fall down if it's a fragment. We do different expressions for exclamations, questions, or telling sentences, etc. You can do this during part of your oral lesson, then do part of the lesson on the white board. That makes it more interesting as well. My dc still love to come to the white board to write. Then to finish the lesson you can do some written work. How is your dd doing with the written portion of the work? Those are a couple of suggestions to try to make R&S2 a little more fun and hopefully break up any boredom while you are cementing all of those great concepts.

If you really feel that she knows all of the material in 2, you could consider placing her in 3. It doesn't go into as much detail on each subject since the detail is covered in 2, but it pretty much goes over all of the basic concepts. I would be very careful in jumping ahead and be really sure that she thoroughly understands these concepts though before jumping ahead. You would have to be really careful too if you are using this for both her and your ds if he is still be introduced to the concepts. If you choose to go to 3 with her, you might want to stick with just the Beyond grammar lessons with him. I would lean more toward trying to make 2 work for both of them since it is such a solid foundation for all the things to come and it would simplify your life just doing 1 lesson.

I hope I didn't misunderstand that you are using R&S2 for both your dd who is in grade 2 and a younger ds.

[my3sons]

I'm glad you are enjoying Beyond! I think it is important to require dc to write at least one section or around 1/3 of the answers to R & S English. This increases the level of difficulty of the lesson automatically. How does your dd do with writing? If she is like most dc at the typical age of doing Beyond, I am sure she could benefit from it. This writing will also help prepare her for the increased writing to come in Bigger Hearts. We are finishing R & S English 4 out right now. R & S English becomes more and more difficult. I wouldn't rush through it, and I wouldn't skip parts. You will be very glad for the foundation you've laid by giving R & S English 2 a thorough treatment. If your dd is older than the suggested age for doing Beyond, then it could be she would place better in R & S English 3. For example if she is 9 yo, and she has a very good grasp of the concepts in R & S English 2, I would place her in R & S English 3 instead. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie