I ordered GUM from the homeschool supercenter and received an answer key. I am just curious if anyone else that uses it found that having Zaner Bloser's teacher's guide was beneficial or necessary?
Generally speaking, I've found very few TG's useful, except the answer guides. The exception are the ones that have extensive book lists in them to supplement the lessons, especially in historical fiction. Edited to say: This is mostly due to my teaching style. Others find the TG's very helpful. When I was in the classroom, I taught children that were both physically and mentally challenged. So 99% of what was in the books didn't apply to my situation. I learned then to use the textbook more as a spine and to go off on my own to meet the unique needs of my students. This has carried over into my homeschool, and my kids seem to do well with it (fortunately!).
I really like teacher's guides and find them very useful in scheduling, testing, and assessments. I hope that someone who has used this text could tell me if they got the teacher's guide as well and if it was beneficial to them or whether they got by fine with the answer key. Have you used the Zaner Bloser GUM series? I am really just wanting to find out about it in particular.
No, I haven't. Is GUM handwriting, or something else? When I hear "Zaner Bloser", I usually think handwriting.
I used GUM for a short while and because I am not the greatest when it comes to grammar I actually appreciated having the teacher guide to explain things to me when I needed help explaining them to my son (fifth grade) hth
It stands for Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics. It is a small book with 50 lessons for the year. I bought it to use to supplement Learning Language Arts through Literature. We are doing the Orange and the Purple LLATL this year. GUM seems good, but it didn't have diagramming in it until the 7th grade. So I have ordered R&S English 4 to look at also. I am not sure what to do now b/c I definitely don't need 2 grammar supplements on top of LLATL.
This is very helpful. I will be doing GUM with a 4th and 5th grader next year. Did you find the lack of diagramming to be a problem?
I've used R&S both last year and this, and have been REALLY impressed. I assume you feel diagramming is important. Do you know enough about it to have your kid do it on your own? (I never diagrammed a sentence until last year with R&S, so there's no way I could have done that!)
I do think diagramming is pretty useful. I have an upcoming 5th grader and was surprised that there wasn't diagramming until 7th once I looked at the table of contents for GUM. I used Abeka until 6th and BJU for 7-9th grade in private school myself. I can still remember the amount of diagramming from BJU 7th grade. My dd's though just came out of public school last year. Public school is very different in the language arts department up until high school from what I am accustomed. We did Abeka Language 3 and Abeka Language A this year. The Language A was hard for my 4th grader b/c the public school only did little grammar worksheets here and there that went with the reading series they used. They maybe had 50 "grammar" worksheets a year and there wasn't a whole lot of explanations. It seemed to be a lot about parts of speech. I don't think they had done much at all. So Language A was a big jump for her. My dd in Language 3 has had a much better year. My 4th grader begged not to do Abeka Language B next year.
You might want to check out R&S. But don't go by the grades! I could easily put my high schooler in 5th or 6th, and it would be a good review for her.
I ordered R&S English 4 to check out. I thought I could do the diagramming sections with both girls that are in 4th and 5th grade to add on to the GUM. I am just waiting to get it in the mail to compare R&S 4 with the GUM 4th and 5th grade books I have already bought.
I LOVE GUM! I have all the TE's also. I really find them helpful. My oldest learned so much from this program. I have saved it all to use with ds5 when he gets old enough for it.
Thanks! I have been debating more and more about the TE's b/c they are $30 each from ZB, but I really like the looks of GUM. I am going to order them Friday and that will be the last thing I need for next year. Thanks again.
