Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum (English Grammar Skills) - TOS Review

 Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

Finding a language arts program we love has been a hard struggle for us! We've tried many different programs and curriculum over the years. When I was given the chance to review Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum (PAC) I was excited to try yet another language arts program!

I received the English Grammar Skills program for 8th graders. Silas will be entering 7th grade, but when I looked at the samples I knew it would be a good fit skill-wise for him. This program teaches your child the eight parts of speech, grammar, and writing skills and counts as one high school transcript credit (which we obviously aren't doing since he is in sixth grade).

We received five soft-cover textbooks and five soft-cover activity books along with the loose-leaf Teacher Recourse Kit. The TRK is hole-punched and ready to go into a binder. The Teacher Resource Kit contains the black line masters for the:

• Course Introduction
• What & How Student Will Learn...
• Tables of Contents for the Textbooks
• Activity Answer Keys
• Section Quizzes 
• Chapter Tests
• Quiz Answer Keys
• Chapter Test Answer Keys

There are 75 total lessons in this course with 15 section quizzes and five chapter tests. Each textbook and activity books covers 15 lessons. Each lesson begins with a short story and vocabulary words. Following the short story is the lesson to read which covers the grammar concepts being learned. There is a life principle following each lesson which is fun to read!

The activity book corresponds with the textbook. There are several pages of questions for each lesson. The first set of questions are reading comprehension questions from the short story. Next are vocabulary questions and then questions on the grammar lesson. The questions are mostly fill in the blank, multiple choice, and true and false. Silas wrote straight in the activity guide instead of using an extra notebook. We found he had plenty of room right in the workbook. I also allowed him to shorten some of the answers - writing an "s" for singular and a "p" for plural, for example.

We really enjoyed using this curriculum. It didn't take us very long each day, around 15-20 minutes, but we didn't complete an entire lesson in a day either. Silas would read the short story and vocabulary words and then answer those questions one day. Then he would read the lesson the next day and do the questions over the course of the week.  I sat with the Teacher's Resource Kit beside him. He would read the questions and then answer aloud while I checked his answer before he wrote it down. 

I plan to continue this with him next year as his grammar program. He felt like the concepts were explained well and that he had plenty of practice in the activity books. I like how it's a no-nonsense grammar program! The grammar rules are made plain enough for Silas to understand. The activity book contained many different ways of practicing the grammar so I feel like Silas was really cementing what he learned in his mind. I also like the short stories and positive messages expressed in each one. Having a few comprehension questions was nice, so I could gauge what Silas was retaining from his reading. I also appreciated the vocabulary words because it was nice to fit in a few extra each lesson!

I feel like English Grammar Skills could be successfully used in 7th and 8th grade for a complete grammar program. The full course in print is $97.95, but it's also available in a digital download for $40.96. I feel like this is a great deal for a full year's course! Check out what the other reviewers thought about this product and others by Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum by clicking the banner below.