Yes, Hake Publishing are one and the same as the people who publish Saxon Math. They’re breaching out to expand their wonderful curriculum line and have created a new line: Hake/Saxon Grammar and Writing 3 (there are other levels as well). For this particular review, we received level 3 which was great since I really like to start off with the first level of things usually.
We received a really thick Consumable Textbook. A thinner Writing Workbook. An equally thick Teacher Guide, complete with Answer Keys and Tests inside.
The Teacher’s Guide begins by laying out the program’s expectations. It suggests not to skip lessons and to set them up in a daily routine. Writing lessons are suggested to be included on test days with this program.
Grammar and Writing 3 provides Core Knowledge content so if you’re not a fan of Common Core than this program may not be for you. However, I found it really easy to use and easy for the kids to use too. To me, that’s what’s important for some curriculum, especially in Grammar and Writing.
The Teacher’s Guide lays out every part of the lesson for you, including what to say and when. There are specific guidelines to follow and all you need to do is read it out to your student and follow along. Easy and simple learning at home.
The Consumable Text is the student’s lesson workbook. This is where the good stuff is found, like what a sentence is and all those important details that go along with Grammar and Writing. The lesson begins with teaching about a part of Grammar, like verbs and then provides questions to answer about what the student is learning. There are also sentences and diagramming included in the lessons as appropriate when the student works through. No answers are included in the student text.
The Writing workbook is short and sweet. There’s a sheet for each lesson but the work isn’t too hard. It helps encourage sentence and short story writing for your student. As mentioned above, writing is recommended for test days as well.
This curriculum was perfect for us. I used it with Laycie who is still learning about Grammar and Writing. She really picked up on it well. The lessons were not too long for her and it was easy for her to understand as we worked through, which is great since she struggles with learning due to her ADHD and Epilepsy.
This was also a good review for Emmalee, who I also had look over the materials. She’s great at Grammar but I wanted to see what she thought of the program as a independent learner. She found it easy to follow and could even work through on her own at her advanced age. The program would work well for a student who is unschooled or uses delayed academics.
The program can be used in a formal educational setting as well and that’s what it’s designed to do, really. But for us, we prefer materials that are less structured and allow my students to learn at their own pace, which this does as well. It’s a very adaptable program.
If you’ve used Saxon Math, and I know many homeschoolers do, then you will love Hake/Saxon Grammar and Writing 3. You can view a scope and sequence on their website, and as I mentioned before, there are many levels of the program now available for purchase. The books are all softbound with paperback covers. They are consumable so you can remove pages for the student to complete, but you would need one workbook per student. Since I require my students to use notebook paper instead of writing in the textbooks, one copy worked well for us but it’s encouraged that each student have their own copy of the text for lessons separately.
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