This curriculum was specifically written for Homeschool students K through 7. Materials for each grade level are sold in a kit package. A kit contains everything needed to teach one child for an entire school year. Each kit contains a Teacher's Manual, a Student Workbook and a Audio CD. Bible-related activities, writing assignments, and sentences with a religious tone are found in many levels of the Shurley English Homeschool curriculum. They are optional and are intended as bonus activities. Additional Student Workbooks and Introductory CDs are available. Teacher's Manuals are not sold separately from the kit. Kit prices are $70.00.
Website: Shurley English
(13 Reviews)
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Contributor Reviews
Reviews are solely the opinions of the contributor.
Cons: Wordy at times; tedious especially in the beginning
Grades Used: 2-5
This is a very thorough grammar curriculum. I have used Shurley English with my daughter 2nd-5th grade and plan to continue through 7th. It certainly requires an investment of time, especially in the beginning, much like Saxon Math. But like Saxon Math, your child will learn the fundamentals of grammar better than most children today. I have learned to skim quickly through the wordy/repetitive parts.
Cons: Students need to have a good English foundation in the beginning of the study.
Grades Used: First Grade
My homeschool umbrella Academy uses Shurley Grammar program for 1st grade English. I have to say the program is hard to follow in the beginning. However, after 8 months following up this is a great program for my 1st grader. My 1st grader is able to recognize sentence structure and classify each word in the sentence. Shurley does help improving writing and grammar.
I do have some advise for parents who consider this program. I do not use Shirley for Reading program. Before Shurley studying, my kid finished 2nd grade English in BJU press homeschool. Actually, Shurley is a great add-on to her 3rd grade English program. If you only use Shurley for 1st grade English study, you may put a great effort in teaching in the beginning and you will have a great result in the end. All your efforts will pay off and it is worthy.
Cons: Difficult to follow, pointless memorization that does not transfer
Grades Used: 2nd
We used Shurley’s English for 2nd grade. I do not like it at all. The jingles are cute. The memorization, especially for capitalization rules seems pointless to me. I don’t care if my child knows which rule is which just as long as she knows the rule. This program does not make them better writers or students. It doesn’t transfer to their writing. I can see it being ok for homeschool but extremely difficult in a school setting...especially for kids who have never had it. It’s difficult to jump in.
Cons: Does not flow easily; too wordy; too restrictive.
Grades Used: 5
This program is hard to read and digest. It is not organized in a manner that flows. I especially don't like that the teacher is expected to read it like a "storybook, word for word". If someone needs such a restricted script, he/she shouldn't be trying to teach. I am not using it as my primary curriculum, but my child's homeschool group uses it and I don't want him to feel left out.
Cons: Repetitious, but thorough and easy to follow
Grades Used: 1 - 8
We have used Shirley English from Grade 1 through 8. It is a repetitive program, but VERY solid and thorough! It covers grammar, vocabulary, English sentence diagramming (newer method, faster & less tedious), syn & antonyms, noun & verb agreement, Subjective, Objective, and Possessive Cases; How to write a paragraph, essay, two and three-point paper, business letter and other types of correspondence and writing poems; correct use of quotations, and much more. This is a complete English program with writing lessons and vocabulary. Even includes learning the States and capital! I'd recommend Shurley English to those who need an easy lesson plan to follow, or those who can modify the daily plan to fit an accelerated student or a student with special needs. Your child will definitely learn English and be able to apply the correct form to their own writing. This program will help your child do well with college writing and on Standardized tests.
Cons: repetitive
Grades Used: 1-7
Shurley has worked great for my kids. They hated the repetition but it worked just like Saxon Math! When my oldest quit it and tried something else for 5th and 6th grade, he struggled and didn't apply all he needed to. A mistake I didn't make with my middle son. However, my oldest still remembers the "jingles" after 4 years! Shurley is great for elementary through 7th and my kids have always scored well on testing and have learned to write well. I do recommend after Shurley to get into Abeka or Rod and Staff to help with diagramming and a few other things that Shurley did not cover. I think it is a great program and I liked that it was offered in early elementary grades. I did skip over year 5 and went from year 4 to 6 because there is not much new material that is learned. So my kids finished it after 6th grade completing the series. I believe that this program is great for a new homeschooler or for those who never learned good grammar themselves the directions are step by step and you can't go wrong!
Cons: no diagramming, kinda corny, very tedious and repetitive
Grades Used: 3-7
Shurley is a great way to introduce your kiddos to English. The jingles still resonate in my head! Hopefully, theirs too. I think it is better for young grades. Because the jingles are kinda corny and it just repeats the very same thing every single year and my kids were worn out! They already got it and were ready to move on. I stuck it out thinking we'd learn new and more but not really. So I finally skipped to the end where they were learning something new. They do classify but do not diagram. I was never taught to diagram so I was satisfied with that, however now that we are doing Latin and I see the benefit of diagramming, I wish I'd have chosen Abeka or something different.
So... Overall, Shurley is great for younger grades as an intro no frills to language, but switch to Abeka or some other traditional program to learn more.
Cons: extensive prep work
Grades Used: 1, 5
We purchased this program last year for our 1st and 5th graders. I liked the idea of easy jingles to help them remember grammar rules. To my disapointment, my kids hated that part.
As for me, although many of the activities are cute, the prep work involved is often extensive. It didn't work well for me trying to teach multiple grade levels, not to mention other subjects.
I think this program is better suited to someone homeschooling only one child, who has the time to review each lesson before actually teaching it.
Cons: can be time consuming
Grades Used: 6
I just started using this curriculum for my 6th grade daughter. After reading about the jingles I knew she would like this. And I was right. She loves the jingles and they help her to remember the parts of speech. She always looks forward to diagramming the sentences. The only part she does not like is the writing assignments. It teaches how to build an essay in easy steps, but then later the writing assignments become rather long. I usually don't require her to do all of them. The teacher's manual is very thick and goes into very lengthy paragraphs for teaching. I usually skim thru them and hit the important spots, since my daughter already knows much of this, since grammar does a lot of repeating year to year. My daughter does not enjoy the writing assignments (she hates to write)but she loves the rest of the program.
Cons: teacher's manual can be a bit confusing
Grades Used: 1st
I have loved this program. In two months of using it, my 5-year-old can classify the subject noun, verb, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, article adjectives, and object of the prepositions in any sentence I write. Each day the child classifies 3 sentences, making it simple and quick for them to learn their parts of speech. The lessons are fairly short and often use multisensory methods (listening to CD jingles, making "noun soup" and similar hands-on activities, writing in a journal, etc.)
There are a number of fun activities included (such as making paper bags with "A" on one and "AN" on the other; drawing pictures of nouns, which are then put into the appropriate bag, depending on whether the word "a" or "an" would be used with them). My daughter loved the "Sentence kingdom" story at the beginning of the program, which describes the efforts a bunch of words have to go through to go to sentence kingdom and become a sentence - creative teaching methods such as these help to reinforce abstract concepts. Musical jingles are included on a CD, to reinforce grammar concepts such as what a verb is, the 5 rules of a sentence, and what questions to ask to determine if a word is an adjective. Children also practice writing each day, and keep a writing journal. Each lesson builds on other lessons, so it could be a bit confusing to begin this program partway through; however starting from the beginning at 1st grade, I LOVE it. My daughter has flown through the concepts and has gained a tremendous knowledge of English grammar in a very short period of time.
The "con" for this program is that the teacher's manual is a bit confusing at first, and is not easily laid out. Although everything is scripted for the teacher to say, there are no different colors or fonts to indicate what the teacher says versus what the child's response should be, and in general the format is not particularly user-friendly. However after a few lessons parents can get past this issue once they are familiar with the program. Those starting at the beginning of 1st grade might want to condense the first few lessons on categorizing, since the program spends a long time on this concept. Another con is that it can be difficult to jump into this program part-way through, because the concepts are systematic and build on one another.
Overall, this is an excellent program which makes learning grammar easy and fun. It is a wonderful resource that teaches English concepts in a surprisingly effective way.
Cons: time consuming for teacher
Grades Used: 5
I think this program would be awesome if you used it from the beginning, however to pick it up at 5th grade is difficult for the teacher to learn to teach it. You kind of have to "get the hang of it" to teach it. However, my daughter LOVES the jingles and she will probably always use them to remember certain things. If you have the time and /or use it from when they are little, I think it is a wonderful program.
Cons: Very time consuming
Grades Used: 2nd
I felt like this program is better suited for a classroom setting with more than a couple of students. It was too scripted and time consuming for the parent who also has a preschooler and toddler in the home. My 2nd grader lost interest and it was a battle to finish each day.
The only thing we did like was the songs.
Grades Used: 2nd, 3rd
They have songs to help you remember grammar rules. They do a great job of building upon each lesson so that you don't what you've learned. Every other chapter's focus is on a writing assignment. There's a vocabulary word for each week, but there is only one.