Shurley English Reviews

We purchased this program last year for our 1st and 5th graders. I liked the idea of easy jingles to help them remember grammar rules. To my disapointment, my kids hated that part.

As for me, although many of the activities are cute, the prep work involved is often extensive. It didn’t work well for me trying to teach multiple grade levels, not to mention other subjects.

I think this program is better suited to someone homeschooling only one child, who has the time to review each lesson before actually teaching it.

I just started using this curriculum for my 6th grade daughter. After reading about the jingles I knew she would like this. And I was right. She loves the jingles and they help her to remember the parts of speech. She always looks forward to diagramming the sentences. The only part she does not like is the writing assignments. It teaches how to build an essay in easy steps, but then later the writing assignments become rather long. I usually don’t require her to do all of them. The teacher’s manual is very thick and goes into very lengthy paragraphs for teaching. I usually skim thru them and hit the important spots, since my daughter already knows much of this, since grammar does a lot of repeating year to year. My daughter does not enjoy the writing assignments (she hates to write)but she loves the rest of the program.

I have loved this program. In two months of using it, my 5-year-old can classify the subject noun, verb, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, article adjectives, and object of the prepositions in any sentence I write. Each day the child classifies 3 sentences, making it simple and quick for them to learn their parts of speech. The lessons are fairly short and often use multisensory methods (listening to CD jingles, making “noun soup” and similar hands-on activities, writing in a journal, etc.)

There are a number of fun activities included (such as making paper bags with “A” on one and “AN” on the other; drawing pictures of nouns, which are then put into the appropriate bag, depending on whether the word “a” or “an” would be used with them). My daughter loved the “Sentence kingdom” story at the beginning of the program, which describes the efforts a bunch of words have to go through to go to sentence kingdom and become a sentence – creative teaching methods such as these help to reinforce abstract concepts. Musical jingles are included on a CD, to reinforce grammar concepts such as what a verb is, the 5 rules of a sentence, and what questions to ask to determine if a word is an adjective. Children also practice writing each day, and keep a writing journal. Each lesson builds on other lessons, so it could be a bit confusing to begin this program partway through; however starting from the beginning at 1st grade, I LOVE it. My daughter has flown through the concepts and has gained a tremendous knowledge of English grammar in a very short period of time.

The “con” for this program is that the teacher’s manual is a bit confusing at first, and is not easily laid out. Although everything is scripted for the teacher to say, there are no different colors or fonts to indicate what the teacher says versus what the child’s response should be, and in general the format is not particularly user-friendly. However after a few lessons parents can get past this issue once they are familiar with the program. Those starting at the beginning of 1st grade might want to condense the first few lessons on categorizing, since the program spends a long time on this concept. Another con is that it can be difficult to jump into this program part-way through, because the concepts are systematic and build on one another.

Overall, this is an excellent program which makes learning grammar easy and fun. It is a wonderful resource that teaches English concepts in a surprisingly effective way.

I think this program would be awesome if you used it from the beginning, however to pick it up at 5th grade is difficult for the teacher to learn to teach it. You kind of have to “get the hang of it” to teach it. However, my daughter LOVES the jingles and she will probably always use them to remember certain things. If you have the time and /or use it from when they are little, I think it is a wonderful program.

I felt like this program is better suited for a classroom setting with more than a couple of students. It was too scripted and time consuming for the parent who also has a preschooler and toddler in the home. My 2nd grader lost interest and it was a battle to finish each day.

The only thing we did like was the songs.

They have songs to help you remember grammar rules. They do a great job of building upon each lesson so that you don’t what you’ve learned. Every other chapter’s focus is on a writing assignment. There’s a vocabulary word for each week, but there is only one.