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Refreshing in its "let's get down to business" approach, Grammar Workshop's focus is on teaching how to use grammar "tools" (i.e. rules) in writing. The movement of every lesson is to equip the student to write effective (and grammatically correct) sentences. Accordingly, each grade level covers basic sentence construction, parts of speech, and mechanics (capitalization, punctuation, and spelling). Each course has six units divided into 4-12 lessons, with a total of 51 lessons. Each unit concludes with a review, a proofreading exercise, and a short writing assignment.
Student Worktexts are consumable with an accent color. Lessons are straight-forward providing instruction, several practice exercises including editing practice, and ending with sentence composition. These exercises are the gem of the course (in my opinion), and often include sentence combining – a personal favorite of mine for its effectiveness in strengthening sentence construction skills.
Teacher Editions provide three components: lesson plans, schedules, and student pages with answers. Introductory information shows the CCSS correlations plus a 30-week pacing chart. The daily lessons are brief, clear, concise and include suggestions for ELL learners. Answers to all exercises from the Student Book are provided, including the unit reviews. A code for the online resources is found in the teacher edition.
Online Resources are primarily for the students and include printable additional practice worksheets, self-checking quizzes, interactive activities (i.e. games, etc), an interactive proofreading practice, and some printable resources – proofreading checklist, test-taking strategies, and a writing rubric. The website for these resources is easy to navigate.
Test Booklets are available for this course and provide Unit Tests, Mastery Tests for every 2 units, and a Final Mastery Test. The Answer Key is found in the Online Resources.
This course is a solid choice for the grammar component of English and especially if your goal is to provide a foundation for writing/composition. The focus is on sentence construction skills and the grammar rules that govern them. Diagramming is not included. Student book – 240 pgs, pb. The Teacher Book is 240 pages, plus 48 teacher pages, pb. ~ Janice