Stevenson Language and Semple Math

My son has used both. What would you like to know?

Semple math was the more successful of the two for him. It over teaches basic math facts and works to teach them the different ways you can add to ten. To this day, the “tens” are the only addition math facts he knows completely automatically. On the other hand, it used names like kids, teenagers, ect for ones and tens and I found it difficult as a parent. It also was difficult because he was doing math in a regular class as well and had two different sets of terminology.

I have heard that Stevenson Language can work well with kids with good visual memory but it was a complete failure for him. It teaches long vowels first which is difficult because he was mainstreamed for most subjects and that is not how texts are constructed. The stories were nonsense ones which he abs. hated. He is a concrete kind of kid and stories about the goat goes down the road and Would Gail feed the eel a weed made him crazy. It also taught the child to look at the vowels first which is problematic a child with tracking problems, like mine. It taught using minemics (sp) which was only one more layer of memory for my memory impaired kid.

I also know that when the new resource teacher took over at his school this year she got a lot of grief for not using Stevenson. I, obviously, was very supportive. She told me at one point that if Stevenson was so good, why can’t any of these kids read. Mine was the only one in resource room who could and that was because we had taught him ourselves using PG.

Beth

Beth,

Do you like PG? Did you teach it yourself or have your child tutored? I just ordered it, and am planning to use it with my son this summer.

I also ordered the Stevenson grammar - it came today. I started flipping through it - and I think I understand prepositional phrases for the first time in my life! lol And my grammar has always been excellent - because of modeling, not because I understood it!

Lil

We took our son to Orlando for a PG intensive and have continued to work with
him over the last two years. He had a PG trained teacher this year. It is a very sound method, parent friendly, and effective for most kids. My son has pretty complex issues and even with PG, he still is not reading at grade level.

I wouldn’t let that discourage you, however. My son reads at first semester third grade level and that is a major accomplishment with his multiple difficulties. We have, however, decided to hire a Lindamood Bell tutor for the summer. I am hoping that she can help fill in the gaps that still seem to be there.

Beth