We just wrapped up our 7th year of homeschooling. Over the years we’ve tried a couple of different English curricula. One of them we have come to love. BJU English is now our favorite English curriculum.
BJU
Bob Jones University, also known as BJU, produces Christian curricula for homeschoolers and private schools. BJU Press Homeschool is the homeschool division. As homeschoolers, you have two choices, parent-led or distance learning, also known as DLO.
Parent-led vs DLO
Parent-led means that the parent teaches all the lessons and gives the tests. With DLO the student watches prerecorded lessons on DVDs or online. The DVD quizzes and tests are given by the parent. While DLO quizzes and tests are online. Both parent-led and DLO use the same textbooks and workbooks. We use parent-led in the elementary years and have recently switched to DLO starting in middle school.
Preschool through High School
BJU has lessons for preschoolers on through high school. Since my kids have not yet reached the high school years this review will focus on elementary English. We have used BJU English from the beginning with our youngest. Our two older kids started it around 3rd grade. That means I just finished my 5th year using BJU English.
English Layout
In Kindergarten and First Grade BJU English focuses on phonics, sentence structure, and basic grammar. Starting in Second Grade they start alternating writing and grammar. One chapter will focus on a certain aspect of grammar then the next chapter will focus on writing like letter writing and research reports.
From Second Grade on, each chapter consists of 8 lessons and a chapter review. After chapter 2 a cumulative review is added to the end of each chapter. So each chapter is about 10 lessons long. If you add a test day, it will be 11 days. Each grade has about 16 chapters for a total of 160 lessons. Making this a full-year curriculum.
Tests and answer keys are not included in the worktext. You will need to purchase them separately. In order to save a little money, I use the Chapter Review Extra Practice sheet as the test. It is included on the Teacher Edition CD. More on that in a minute.
Teacher Edition
I definitely recommend having a Teacher Edition for third grade and on. It really helps to have the explanations and answers to those tricky questions. Of course, if you are really strong in English you could get by without it.
The Teacher Edition has all the worktext answers plus tips on how to teach the lesson. There are also vocabulary words and extra practice pages. In the back of the Teacher Edition, there is a CD that contains Extra Practice sheets that you can print out. The CD also has some additional resources. I usually only use the CD for the Extra Practice sheets.
In the back of the student worktext and the Teacher Edition there is a Writing Handbook that has a thesaurus, the writing process, graphic organizers, writing models, abbreviations, and commonly misspelled words. There is also a small glossary. Everything is very useful!
Grammar
As I mentioned before, each chapter consists of 10 lessons. Each grammar lesson begins with an explanation of the new concept. It then moves on to a Guided Practice, which you can do with your student if you choose. Then there is Independent Practice, which is meant for the student to do by themselves. The lessons end with Apply and Write.
Writing
Writing lessons are laid out a little differently. Depending on what is being taught they may or may not have the Guided Practice and Independent Practice sections. Like the grammar lessons, they start out with an explanation of the concept and then provide examples of the writing. The student usually plans, drafts, revises, proofreads, and publishes their writing on subsequent days. Checklists are provided for revising and proofreading.
My kids have really loved the colorful and easy-to-understand lessons. BJU English has been a wonderful fit for our family. I feel like it gives kids a very complete study of English. I couldn’t ask for more!
Curious about our favorite math curriculum? Check out Horizons, Our Favorite Math Curriculum.
Disclaimer: The opinions in this post are strictly my own. I was not compensated for this post. I am not employed by Bob Jones University (BJU), nor is anyone in my household. We are a homeschooling family that just uses and loves BJU curricula.
I just saw that the BJU Press English 4 update (3rd ed.) deleted the friendly letter and business letter chapters. I’m considering getting edition 2 because I think it’s still relevant. What would you do?
Sorry for the delayed response. I didn’t get a notification. My youngest just finished English 4 2nd Edition, so she did the letters. I’m surprised that they took it out. I guess letter writing is a dying art, unfortunately. I always get the current editions. If letter writing is super important you could always do an extra unit study on the side. If you use BJU’s DLO then you will have to use the current edition. If you’re not using DLO and you can find all the resources go ahead and use the old edition.