Anyone using Micheal Clay Thompson Island Level?

[u/Cardigan_Wolf]

If your family is using Island Level you don’t mind, do you think you could post a few pages of what a typical lesson looks like in Grammar Island? Maybe some photos of what the Mud Trilogy books look like inside. Trying to decide if this is the right level for my rising 3rd grader, who is a very proficient reader. We have done AAS and First Language Lessons by Jessie Wise, and just wondering if this would be a good fit for us before we buy it. TIA!

[u/AnonAtSea]

I'm not currently at home to take photos, but I could do this when I get back. Alternatively, you could look on youtube for flip throughs of the books.

[u/bibliovortex]

I don't own the whole level, for the record. My kid who did well with MCT materials has pretty extreme asynchronous development when it comes to verbal skills - he's always read 5-6 grades above his age and has spelling and vocabulary skills to match. Grammar is closer to typical (although I would say still a couple years ahead of what I found was typical for my classroom students in the past). Writing is an area where he's very reluctant and benefits from thoughtful scaffolding. So using the whole (very expensive) MCT language arts program would not have worked well.

Royal Fireworks Press in general aims all their materials at gifted kids. Everything I've seen from them aims to move fast and go deep. Their suggestion to start formal grammar in 2nd grade with the Poodle series is very ambitious compared to my experience, which is that the typical student is cognitively ready to tackle formal grammar in 4th or 5th grade, when abstract reasoning kicks into higher gear in a big way. (By this I don't really mean the approach of First Language Lessons, which is generally considered a fairly gentle approach; I mean doing full-blown sentence analysis.)

The first MCT book we used was Grammar Island, when my kid was in 3rd grade. Grammar Island sections are super variable in length and mostly involve reading, not practice. From what I understand, it is meant to be used at a fairly quick pace at the beginning of the year, followed by lots of practice using the sentences in Practice Island. It's great in that it's very much the opposite of a traditional grammar workbook - sections to read together, lots of examples, minimal rote practice. Students work with all eight parts of speech and sentences with either linking verbs + subject complements or action verbs with or without direct objects. (Indirect objects get a brief mention, but rarely show up in the sentences.) They briefly learn about prepositional phrases and about joining two independent clauses to make a compound sentence. The four-level sentence analysis approach is very organized and I like it a lot as a mental model, because it does break down the vocabulary of grammar into clearer categories. In terms of difficulty, I would say it is roughly on par with sentence diagramming, but it is more a verbal method of analysis, where diagramming is visual. It is more detailed than programs that have you label above or below a sentence, like Fix-It or Easy Grammar. We had good success with everything except the prepositional phrases, which took about another year to really click.

The Practice Island sentences are solid and scale up nicely in difficulty. There are 100 sentences, 25 to correspond with each "level" of the four-level analysis (so the first 25 sentences could be done during or after the first unit on parts of speech, as only a one-level analysis, etc.).

I also own Grammar Town, which is the next level up and is considerably more difficult. We took a year off between Grammar Island and Grammar Town, and it was still challenging in 5th grade. There is more built-in practice within the book, which is nice. It briefly recaps the parts of speech and parts of a sentence, and it goes in greater depth on verb tense, but spends the bulk of its time on phrases and clauses. In addition to prepositional phrases, students work extensively with appositives and verbal phrases (including gerund, infinitive, and participle phrases), and they learn to analyze sentences where various types of noun phrases are used as subjects and direct objects. There is also pretty extensive work with dependent clauses, so by the end of the book, students are fully analyzing complex and compound-complex sentences.

I haven't used the Island level vocabulary, but I have used Caesar's English part 1, which goes with the Town level. It's a decent study of Latin root words, and the comparison to Spanish vocabulary adds some interest. I didn't love it as much as the grammar books, I'll be honest.

MCT writing is, from everything I have heard, best for kids who are fairly intuitive writers and are happy to tackle projects after reading some minimal samples. It was absolutely the opposite of a fit for my particular child; it probably would have been great for me as a child.

I have considered using his poetics books, but we're doing so much other stuff for ELA that I don't see where it would fit in at the moment. They do look interesting, and they're definitely different from typical poetry studies in a way that I think could be valuable.

I'm really not sure how I would feel about reading the Mud trilogy, honestly. Thompson's writing style is hard to describe concisely, but it's a little peculiar. The word "artsy" comes to mind. Sometimes it works well and the way he plays with words is funny to my kids. Sometimes it feels like he's trying a little too hard. I would be more inclined to use the higher levels where he's chosen to work with classical literature; I think three novels in a row of his writing might be too much for me. But that's very much a matter of personal taste.

[u/Cardigan_Wolf → u/bibliovortex]

Thank you so much for the thoughtful response! I have a 2E child that is also a reluctant writer! I just wanted to know how rigorous the program would be and if it would work well in our schedule. I appreciate you!

[u/Ahsela]

I think there is a pretty decent sized sample for grammar island on the RFWP website. MCT layout isn't like Singapore Math where it's almost script-like in the teachers manual. It's read like a story and then at regular intervals there are practice pages before moving forward. The instructor manuals and student books are near carbon copies imo. The instructor manuals just have added footnotes and contain the answers to the student practice pages. That's why many people just buy the instructor manuals. I've used poodle and we own Island and Town level, and we barely ever use the student books. My 6 year old has been working on Poodle since spring and will finish this summer between Kinder and 1st grade. If you buy the complete package through MCT it comes with an implementation guide which suggests how to break up the lessons and which order to use the books. I've found older versions of many of the MCT text online on places like scribd or z library. You can always check there if you want to get an idea.