GrammarPlanet ~ A New TOS Review!!

Do you struggle with Grammar? Do your children? Wouldn't you like to know exactly what to do with those dangling participles or be able to help your child understand proper diagramming? Then you are going to love the online grammar program we have been using over the last several weeks called GrammarPlanet! It's the latest Crew Review.

GrammarPlanet is an all inclusive language arts program designed to build mastery of the English language geared for anyone ages 10 and above. (Even your grandma!) And it's FREE! Erin Karl took the reigns of this company when her mother Robin passed away a few years ago. It was a dream of Miss Robin to create an online grammar education program that would be affordable to everyone. Erin along with the help of Mr. Jerry Bailey have worked very hard to birth this company which is based on the teachings and reasonings of Robin Karl's Analytical Grammar  -- a book-based grammar program that has been used by homeschoolers for years.  They all want to reach everyone and help them to understand HOW our language really works ... it is a mystery to many.

Now, I mentioned that the program is free and you may think HOW? Well, it is paid by advertising, but nothing that is inappropriate. However, some may not want the ads or it may be distracting to some students (young or old). Well then you can purchase an ad-free version for just $39. Both versions allow you to have access to the program for as long as you need or want.

Currently the program has 13 units ready with a promise of 60 for the complete program. Every unit builds on the previous one so they can not be done out of order. That would disrupt the proven teaching method. The first unit begins with common nouns and progress to proper nouns, adjectives (including those fun little articles), then pronouns and so on. It will truly cover EVERYTHING you need in English. The student will learn to parse sentences using a specific process order to insure you are correctly identifying the varying parts of speech in the sentences. What is parsing? Well that is when you find the different parts of speech and label them.  You'll see many examples below. Your student will begin diagramming by Unit 6.

Some of the unit topics

The program is designed to allow the student to progress at their own pace. So if they know nouns and proper nouns really well they will have less practice sentences before heading to the test. Once they pass they will move on to the next unit. If the student is struggling to recognize the many adjectives, there will be more practice sentences before the test is administered. On the top left you will see the unit and practice numbers. You can stop at any section. The creators wants the student to only do the program for about 15 minutes a day. That way you are really internalizing the information and the process steps and becoming a master of the English language.

When you first login you will set up your family/parent account and then create one student account for each child using the program. The parent account can be used to see an overview of the entire family and when you click on each student you can see the grade for each of their units as well as their overall grade.

Also from the dashboard you can see how your student answered each question once you click on that student's account. If they miss too many questions, they will be locked out and you will need to unlock and reset that unit.

When you begin in Unit 1 you will first watch a video lesson. There are coordinating notes for each lesson that should be printed out so that your student can quickly look at them while they are working to make sure they do not miss any of the information or the process steps which are located on the bottom of every note page.

During the video lesson it will pause and have a pop quiz question or two. Those were fun! Just like I remember pop quizzes ... you never know when they will appear!  Once they complete the video they are ready to start the practice. If you want to break it down you can go over the notes and have the video lesson on Monday and then start the practice section on Tuesday. The video portion is between 5 to 10 minutes each.

Watch the video lesson. See that orange button on the bottom left. That will bring up the notes again if needed.

And the notes appear as they are being taught in the video lesson.

As I noted earlier you can also break up the practice section into 10 to 15 minutes segments and stretch a unit out over the week or work on it every other day. And depending on whether the child is understanding the material or struggling will determine how long the practice sentences will last. My eldest did the first few units all in 15 minutes time. She had also been using Analytical Grammar and had already covered the first several units so that made a bit of difference. The object is not to go FAST, but to become a MASTER of the English language.

Practice question with ads.

 Within the practice sentences your student will read the sentence and then look for the coordinating items they were taught during the video portion and within the notes. My two girls are teens now (how did that happen??) but my son is not yet 10 and has not had a ton of Grammar instruction. He also has some struggles with reading, so I generally sat next to him to be sure he was reading the sentences properly. If you aren't reading the sentences properly you will struggle to find the correct parts of the sentence. In the first unit we were just dealing with nouns. My son loved this lesson because he really understood what a noun is. Once you find a noun, you will click on it and then a pop up box with your choices will come up and then all you have to do is click the one that fits your word.

Practice question BEFORE it is graded.

Pop-up with choices

Later lessons will have more choices within the pop up and you will have to be sure to click the right one. You can click the word again if you've made a mistake and change it as long as you have not hit submit. During the practice session your child will get immediate answers to all the questions. The correct words will be highlighted in green and the wrong ones in red. There is one exception, which is if you pick a word and you haven't been taught the 'rule' for that word yet. It will turn up red, but it will not be marked against you.

Encouragement even when you get some wrong.

Rule is above the question

My younger daughter (who has also struggled with reading) has really enjoyed this part of the program. She likes to know she's doing well and not wait until the end. We are going slowly through this with both her and her brother since they do have some struggles with reading. It would be a great addition if the sentences could be read aloud. They could even be highlighted as they were read so the student could read along.

Not just parsing sentences.

Once the practice section has been completed you can either stop for the day (you can also break the practice section up into smaller intervals) or continue onto the test. The tests are not timed and they seem to be only about 5 - 6 questions, most of which are sentence parsing. The student can not move on until they receive a passing grade. 

Tests are in this light brown color.

Graded instantly!

Praise given instantly.

If they do not they will be "locked out", which I mentioned above that the teacher will have to reset that unit. But if they do get locked out you will know where your child is struggling. Maybe they did not read the notes thoroughly. Maybe they were going too quickly through the sentences trying to finish. This will allow you to look at the dashboard and see exactly where they need help and be able to focus where they are deficient. Then they can redo the entire unit. This will help them build stronger skills and also improve their grade.

My eldest got locked out for too many mistakes. Think she was going too fast.

The only thing I wish was if I was able to take more pictures of my kiddos using the program. But if you remember, the last few weeks have been a whirlwind and we've been back and forth between SC and IN more times then I care to count. My kids were staying with their grandmother and she forgot to take any pictures as well. Only thing I can report is that they all are LOVING the program -- (me included)! I think GrammarPlanet is a wonderful online grammar program and the self-paced design is remarkable. It will certainly be helping many learn our very difficult language. And you have nothing to lose ... it's FREE!!  I will definitely be recommending this to many of my friends! You can also find GrammarPlanet on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. And as always check out other Crew members' reviews by clicking the link below!