The Critical Thinking Editor In Chief Level 2 School Workbook

We've used a few lessons and exercises in this book and I'm about ready to toss it. I mainly bought it for review to give my kids practice on the editing. We really don't need the teaching parts so I'm mainly commenting on the exercises. Though, I will mention that I don't feel like the teaching is sufficient if this is your primary education tool. It is sufficient for supplementation or review though.First, if you are not strong in grammar, this is not a good book for you. There is not necessarily one right answer to every part, so you will have to use your judgment to determine if your child's answer is grammatically correct. In this way, it's not an "open and go" curriculum. The book's answers are only one correct option of many for each sentence the child is correcting.Second, it can be very difficult to determine what the book is looking for when correcting a sentence. For example, in the middle of one story about a kid and his grades you'll find the following:"Provided should my grades improve?"We stared at it for a while wondering how the sentence was supposed to be corrected. The correct answer was to change "provided" to "why". This sentence did not make sense at all in the context of the sentence before or after it. It would have been out of place. I'm baffled as to how the student is supposed to figure that out.Third, some of their corrections just do not make sense. Consider this example from a story:"Once a day of making maple syrup, you will be very tired in order you will have had a lot of fun!"This was corrected to:"AFTER a day of making maple syrup, you will be very tired BECAUSE you will have had a lot of fun!"This is grammatically correct but very awkward in my opinion. You're going to be tired from the work but probably not from the fun. So a "because" there did not make sense to my son. He felt like a "BUT you will have had a lot of fun!" made way more sense and I agree.Finally, each exercise has a checklist for what types of corrections need to be made and how many of each need to be made. But we found ourselves correcting other text beyond this because the text was confusing or just poorly written. For example, in the section on prepositions, one of the lessons taught to be sure not to add extra prepositions (avoid unnecessary words). Yet, in the story it said"....based on letter grades nor pay each of us students an hourly wage..."In this sentence, "of us" is an unnecessary preposition but it was not among the corrections for the story. It should just read "pay each student".I bought this used so I'm not too worried about it but I am disappointed. I was planning on using this for the final month of school for my kids to reinforce principles they learned throughout the year. But, I'm frustrated enough with it to change our course. I'd hoped we would get 2-3 exercises done a day in about 30 minutes but it is taking way longer as we agonize over each story for the reasons mentioned above.

I bought this for my homeschooled daughter and she loves it! I was not expecting the additional grammar lessons included in the book so that was a big plus! She is picking up on spelling, punctuation, subject/verb agreement that she was not getting before. Another added bonus is that she is able to pick out the mistakes in written compositions instead of just fill in the blank, circle the correct answer, or workbook type grammar instruction. This is a great bonus to any curriculum. I don't think I would use it exclusively for grammar, but paired with wordly wise and a solid writing program, I think this is great!An added caveat - there are references to the earth being created millions/billions of years ago. This might be a disappointment to the creationist homeschoolers out there.

Workbook was exactly what I expected from the texts, but it doesn't include a guide to editing symbols like I think it should have so my kid can learn to use the right ones. It is easy to use so I don't have to do any supervision except to check that my child has started it and finished it on a day to day basis. Level 2 is a good match for her age (6th grade) and ability (good at this already).

My 5th grader really enjoyed this for English class. Helped her become more confident in her grammar by reading and noticing grammar errors in writing from others. Lots and lots of examples. So useful. Recommend!

This is a good workbook. I like that it tells you how many errors the student is looking for. My complaint would be that the binding makes it difficult to use the latter half of the book.

easy to use. my kid loves it. short but to the point lessons. easy to follow. love this series. good practice.

This book is excellent! I use it with my 8th graders who have poor editing skills. Each page tells you exactly how many editing marks need to be made, with is very helpful to apprehensive editors. It is broken down by skill, which is great for differentiation in the classroom.

Love this addition to our already great English Grammar program. It is easy to just give him a page or two to edit and then we go over grammar rules together to cover the concepts. He is learning lots with this. Great item!