Reply to Deal, BASIS or Latin for a engineering-minded boy who also loves humanities

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]BASIS parent here...

I feel the English instruction is very poor in the 5th grade at BASIS.  All they have done is diagram sentences and have not written one paragragh, let alone essay, in English. They are now reading Peter Pan as their 1st book and it is almost February. They also have not done any vocabulary. I had to use the music assignment to reinforce paragraph and essay structure.  [/quote]

PP (Math prof) here -- I wanted to reply separately.  DS falls into this category, as well.  Because we used the MCT language arts curriculum, we have found BASIS English to be very remedial.  With AP exams expected in 8th grade, we would prefer proper essay writing to hold greater priority.

But, to be fair, this is DC.  Many kids need remedial grammar in 5th, and there is a method to BASIS' madness.  MCT followed a similar approach, and it is a good one.  First, focus on the parts of speech, and understand how the sentence is properly constructed.  Once you do that, you can move on to proper paragraph formation.  Only then are you ready for essay construction.  Otherwise, the kids' essays would tend to look like a lot our posts on DCUM.   :wink:[/quote]

Maybe slightly OT--but almost all of what I did in 5th grade in English was diagram sentences and learn grammar.  I went to a very good parochial school in another part of the country 30 years ago.  At the time, of course, it wasn't that exciting, but it has been INVALUABLE.  I see adults who can't write a coherent or grammatical sentence, and I silently thank my fifth-grade teacher for the excellent grounding she gave me.  You can't write good paragraphs or good essays if you can't write a good sentence.  [/quote]

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