Puddle Jumping: Homeschool Review Crew

Review, #hsreviews, #GrammarPlanet, #grammar, #onlinelearning, grammar, online grammar program

The phrase: Sentence diagramming and labeling parts of speech... These words either spark excitement or create dread when you hear them. For us, the latter is true, so I was excited to get a chance to review a brand new Grammar Program Online from GrammarPlanet with the anticipation that it would be presented in a fresh new way, and it was.

GrammarPlannet, Review, #hsreviews, #GrammarPlanet, #grammar, #onlinelearning, grammar, online grammar program

What is GrammarPlanet?

This is a Grammar program online for students of a wide range of ages and grammar knowledge, from knowing nothing to just needing to review. I first received a basic free subscription and the first six units to eventually be upgraded to a one-year subscription that makes it ad free. As the review progressed, more units were added. I was asked to use it with at least one student for an average of three days a week.
I received log-in information for both me and my daughter, the student. This allowed me to have access to the online units where we could watch video lessons, practice, and take unit tests.

How Did We Use It?

I logged on and set up my child as a student and then we were able to proceed to the lessons, starting with Unit 1. Each unit starts with having the student print out a sheet of notes that are very important to refer to throughout the lessons. Next, there is a video that is about 5 or 6 minutes long and not long into it, it stops for the student to take a very short quiz before continuing. The teacher then explains the lesson before the student is given a chance to practice what they learned onscreen and finally take a test. If the student passes the test, they proceed to the next unit. If not, the program locks the unit and the teacher has to unlock it for them to continue.

The program is very interactive having the student use onscreen markings (or parsing) sentences with marks such as N for Noun, PN for Pronoun, ART for articles, etc. As the units build on each other, more markings are added to be used. The units progress in difficulty as you continue, eventually showing you sentence diagrams and such.

What Did We Think?

It didn't take long to finish the first 7 units that I was provided, and then jump into the additional lessons as soon as they were added. Though, I would recommend only doing one unit a day or even each week so as not to tire your student. The short video lessons are easy to follow. There was really only a couple areas of struggle for us, in that I do wish there were not as many practice questions to complete before proceeding to the tests as sentence labeling and diagramming is not a skill my child has a history of enjoying, so this step proved to be a bit tedious at times even though it was done in one of the best interactive ways I've ever seen. Besides the numerous practice questions, the only part of the program I found frustrating was that if you get too many practice questions wrong, the program locks the unit to prevent the student from continuing until the teacher unlocks it. Having said that though, I do understand why this is built into the program - To give the teacher oversight into providing more instruction where needed before the student gets too deep into it and not really absorbing the information.

Overall, the program ran without any glitches or technical issues for us at all. I ran it on a PC laptop with a Windows 10 operating system and a Chrome browser. I like the hands-on and color-coded interaction. I appreciated that the video lessons were short and to the point and that they give the student plenty of opportunities to soak it all in before the actual tests. I also liked that the physical printouts were a part of the lessons since it gives a tangible recordkeeping item as well as a handheld lesson, which is important to my daughter that she has paper or workbooks to write on.