I have heard of Analytical Grammar, but have never had an up close and personal glimpse of the program. That all changed with my review of a subscription to
GrammarPlanet, their
online grammar program. This program is intended for students ages 10 through adult, for learning or reviewing, and currently has 13 units, with more being added regularly until it is complete at 60 units.
When you sign up, you will be taken to a parent/teacher dashboard where you add in your students. The teacher dashboard really just shows where the students are, and allows you to see the work completed. There is no instruction or extra material covered here. I think it would be helpful (for planning and preparing ahead of time) if the teacher dashboard in the paid subscription included things like all the unit notes in a downloadable file... instead of only accessing them through the student dashboard, and maybe a little bit of explanation for the feedback pages.
After your students sign in, they are taken to their own dashboard.
For the purposes of this review, I worked through some of the program myself, and had my 11-year-old use it as well.
Each unit is locked until the previous unit is completed. Each unit includes printable notes (we just opened them up in a separate window on the computer, and usually had both windows side by side) which can be accessed by clicking the "reprint notes" button on the right side of the screen.
An instructive video is included for each unit. I had my student read the notes, and then watch the video. The video goes over the notes, with a couple of short quizzes (one or two questions) to make sure the student understands the instruction, followed by examples and a reinforcement of the process to be used when identifying the parts of speech for that Unit.
I will point out that the videos have close-captioned capabilities which I often use as another point of reinforcement (or for those who really don't like the auditory side of things, it's another walk-through of the notes with a little extra added in).
After going through the materials, the student moves on to the exercises. Each unit has 5 levels, so going through one/day would be a good pace. It is suggested that the student not spend more than 15 minutes per day on GrammarPlanet, keeping the lessons short and sweet. The exercises are essentially diagramming sentences, but they start out simply with identifying nouns, then adding in proper nouns, articles and adjectives, and so on, as shown in the outline towards the top of the review. The student gets instant feedback, showing them what they identified correctly and what they missed or misidentified.
Here is a little quirk of the program that we found somewhat confusing. In the example above the name "Father Niccolo Lorini" was properly identified using the proper noun with wings symbols --PN PN-- (when used on the first and last word, this added the PN in the middle automatically).
In the example below, I'm not quite sure why the PN symbols in the middle weren't added automatically when the --PN PN-- was used on "Father" and "Physics."
In my opinion, it would be helpful if the mistakes were clickable with an explanation, especially for those who are on the younger end of the age range, which might help clear up any confusion with things like this~ or it could be a mistake on the part of the program.
My son was also getting confused by words that can be more than one part of speech (nouns and adjectives like gold and silver for example), and explanations would have been extremely helpful to him, or reminders to ask all the questions. The way the program is set up currently is great for an older student or as a refresher, but there could be a few more "helps" added in for the 10-12 year olds.
I also found the order of terms interesting, learning all things relating to nouns before moving on to verbs. I might have preferred to have subject/verbs introduced directly after proper nouns, which would have alleviated some confusion for my son. He knows what verbs are, but not being allowed to identify them for so long made him second-guess himself on a regular basis, resulting in multiple incorrect exercises.
So... what happens when a student identifies a number of words incorrectly? First, they are given extra exercises to work a little more. If there is still an issue, an email is sent to the parent/teacher advising them that there is a problem, and the account is locked so that you can go over the material with your student again before unlocking the account. A feature here that I appreciate is the ability to click on the lessons that were a problem so you can discuss what went wrong.
In this unit I had to unlock the account a couple of times... You can see that I'm checking out "Practice 12" and that the majority of the words are correctly identified, even though there is a big red X by the practice in the list on the left... the same goes for the tests where only one word was misidentified, but there is a big red X... I think those graphics could be changed to be a bit more encouraging, maybe? I will say my mathematically inclined son took issue with the concept that "A majority of the words were incorrectly identified" when he was locked out~ he actually counted his errors and wasn't pleased when they were definitely not a majority~ a significant number perhaps would be better wording here for concrete thinkers. ;)
Occasionally my son would just speed through the lesson, which led to careless mistakes, and repeated exercises... hopefully reinforcing the concept of checking his work twice before clicking submit.
After the five lessons in each unit are completed, there is a unit test (which doesn't give immediate feedback like the lessons), and the student can move on or not, based on how well they do. In the graphics I included here, a blue background is for the practice exercises, and the yellow/mustard background is for the tests.
Suggestions and room for improvement aside, I think that this program is a good tool to help your student get a handle on the English language, as they learn when, where, why, and how words are used the way they are. You can check it out for free and see what you think yourself. For kids who absolutely hate writing, this can be a boon, and for the parents, it does the correcting for you, which can also be greatly appreciated.
When I asked my son, he says he gives GrammarPlanet a B+ (that boy!). He found the content interesting, he liked the feedback, and thought the notes were well done. In spite of some of his frustrations he felt overall the system was good, and even though it took him longer to get through some units, he feels like he is learning well.
Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty
- Company: GrammarPlanet
- Product: no-ad online subscription
- Ages: 10-99+
- Price: $39 which covers the program until they get all the way through, no time limit.
You can visit GrammarPlanet on the Analytical Grammar social media pages on
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Twitter, and
Pinterest
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Blessings~
#hsreviews #GrammarPlanet #grammar #onlinelearning
Inside this particular box, we found two pieces of deluxe art paper and a large Starry Night Cyprus Tree (Both rolled up, the stencil is green...) Washable (Yes! It comes off hands very well!) Blue, Black, and White Acrylic paint, 4 oil pastels (white, yellow, orange, and dark blue~ apparently the kit has been updated with a 5th, light blue pastel as well), low tack star sticker mask sheet, a Van Gogh texture roller, a sponge roller, instructions and a colorful information sheet. The Van Gogh roller has a protective covering on it when it arrives (as you see in my unboxing photo), but it has a nice texture to give the feel of Van Gogh's strokes. 
So, we are * almost done with this project~ There are a few steps involved, not the least of which is getting the paper and the stencil to lie flat (Paper is easy~ tape it down. The Stencil was a little more tricky, and after having it flat on the table overnight with the box and a few things stacked on top of it, we still needed to use tiny rolls of masking tape in strategic areas to get it to lie flat on the paper). I'll go over the process as we followed the included instructions. 
Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty
