How to Plan Easy Grammar

Easy Grammar very easy to plan because it is straightforward; the student simply does the next lesson each day, x days a week. While Easy Grammar is like this, one should not leave this class unplanned. In this article, I would like to address a few planning points for Easy Grammar workbooks.

This is how I planned Easy Grammar

Making Decisions or skip ahead to what I did, then come back to this:

Look through the student worksheets to determine how many worksheets there are and then decide:

  1. If the workbook contains more worksheets than school days- Decide:How long you will use the book. (one year or two years)
    • If you are using the book for two years:
      1. Will you use the worksheets consecutively? or
      2. Will you use every other worksheet for the purpose of reserving similarly themed grammar lessons for next year?
    • If using the book for one year AND if there are more worksheets than school days:
      1. Will you assign more than one worksheet a day? I don't recommend this.
      2. Will you skip worksheets? I don't recommend this unless the student makes 100%, but the student's performance is not something you can foresee.
  2. How many days a week you will use Easy Grammar? This point is not yet an important decision; this is something that you can decide later.
What did I do?

I used the big purple book (the oldest one) for two years (5th & 6th grades), usually for 4 days a week sometimes 3, and the worksheets were scheduled consecutively. I planned the pages in order and **for the most part, I followed my lesson plans:
1. Year one, I scheduled the first half of the book.
2. Year two, I scheduled the second half of the book.
Once a week, more or less, I taught my homemade English classes such as these two: Who Needs an Illustration, Sentence Building - Activity One and Activity Two and a few other homemade classes. (I really enjoyed making up new ways to teach English.)

**Straying from the lesson plans: If I believed my child needed a better understanding a particular grammatical element—now, rather than later, then of course I strayed from the lesson plans. When I was satisfied with the results, we picked up where we left off. As homeschoolers, we have the liberty to do this. While I am on the topic of straying from lesson plans, I would like to point out that breaking from a plan to fill a gap is (another) reason that we should not slot a plan for every school day. I had better results when I planned no more than 32 weeks of our 36 week school year.

Planner Type:

Use a Subject Planner: Quarter planners and semester planners would both work. I used a quarter planner for its larger boxes. You can find those types of planners here: Term & Subject Homeschool Planners

Planning Style:

I planned Easy Grammar based on series planning, in other words, I entered an Easy Grammar lesson plan in every box. (This is the normal way to use a subject planner.) Other than the school year, I added no dates or days to the planner. Lesson Series for an entire book is briefly explained here: Using the Quarter Planner along with an example.

Make the Lesson Plan Series:

Succinct Lesson Plans (a schedule of daily work)
  • Create a legend (keys) such as WS=Worksheet; T=Teach
  • When scheduling the daily work in the planner, pair the keys with the page numbers, for example: WS: 1 to indicate page 1 from the workbook.
  • Note the book's name on the planner. (This example only uses Easy Grammar.)
  • In each box of the subject planner, write the page number(s) for each day's work.
  • Teaching Days: If the lesson is associated with a new concept that you will teach, highlight the cell and note the topic. This IS very helpful.

Example of Succinct Lesson Plans for Easy Grammar

Please Note: This example is based on the old purple book starting somewhere in the middle of the teacher's book.

Class Schedule

Name: Jane Austen                                           Class: Grammar (4X a week)

Key A B C D E
1 T:343 Adverbs 
WS: 345
100%
WS: 347

100%
WS: 349

100%
WS: 351

100%
WS: 353
2 T:354-355 Adverbs -Good or Well?
WS: 357
WS: 359 WS: 361 T:363 Adverbs- Where?
WS: 365
WS: 367
3 WS: 369 T:371 Adverbs- When?
WS: 373
WS: 375 WS: 377 T:379 Adverbs- To What Extent?
WS: 381

Etcetera

Add to the bottom of your planner this information:

Legend:
T = Teacher Page (This is a day to teach the lesson, I recommend highlighting all teaching days.)
WS = worksheet page
Materials: Easy Grammar Plus (list the books used)

What are Reference Keys Reference Key: The lesson planner example shown above is "Alpha Keyed". You can read more about that at Lesson Planner Coordinates and Reference Keys.

Tips

  1. On the planner page, take note of how many times a week this class will be done.
  2. Highlight all teaching days. Highlighting the teaching days is for your benefit. At a glance, you can see which days you should be prepared to teach an Easy Grammar lesson.
  3. Write the grammar THEME when noting the teaching days. This is useful if you want to orchestrate the theme with other parts of English class. For instance, if you use Copy Work and Dictation, the grammatical themes from Easy Grammar could be reinforced by having the child to look for recently studied elements of grammar such as the particular types of adverbs mentioned in the sample lesson plan illustrated in the table above.
  4. Optional: After filling in a lesson planner, make at least one additional copy of the lesson plan. With the additional copy, teach your child to check his schedule and to mark off lessons as they are completed. (Or use the Checklist to acquaint your children with being organized and getting things done.)
  5. Check your child's work as soon as possible. When possible, check the Easy Grammar worksheet immediately after the child finishes.
  6. Give feedback as soon as possible.
  7. Note the score in your planner.

Note: If you must make a weekly plan of all subjects for records, use your subject planners each week to fill in the up-coming week in a weekly planner. [See Example of this: Transfer Plans from Subject Form to Weekly Form] Just like it is with all school planning, do what best suits you and gets the job done.

Donna Young
July 28, 2007, Updated August 13, 2015

Purchasing Easy Grammar

Below I am expressing my opinion about buying books, feel free to ignore me or take my advice.

Do You Need the Teacher's Book?

Yes, my experience is that the teacher's book is useful and it saves time.

Buying the Student's Workbook

The student's workbook is a good deal and will save you time. I recommend buying a workbook for the children who are using the books over copying pages from the teacher's book. If you choose not to take my recommendation, then please, before making copies, make certain that it is not forbidden, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, and sometimes permission is limited. Make certain that you do not break copyright laws.

Note: I'm not familiar with the test booklet because they did not exist when we used Easy Grammar.

More Resources for Easy Grammar

Because I like Easy Grammar, I have made printable preposition lists and printable preposition bingo. The lists may be printed from this page. Preposition bingo is printed from other pages and links are provided below.

Printable Easy Grammar Preposition Lists
pdf fileList of Prepositions for Grade 3
pdf fileList of Prepositions for Grade 4
pdf fileList of Prepositions for Grade 5
pdf fileList of Prepositions for Grade 6 and Easy Grammar Plus

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