Easy Grammar Systems, the company that inspires students to awaken the scholar within, recently won four Parent Teacher Choice Awards from HowToLearn.com, an internationally recognized organization. Their books, Easy Grammar: Grade 1, Easy Grammar: Grade 5, Daily GRAMS: Grade 5 and Easy Grammar Ultimate Series: Grade 9 were selected as gold medal winners in the best of children’s books.
“I delight in these awards!” says Easy Grammar Systems' Wanda Phillips, who wrote her first book, Easy Grammar Plus, and started her publishing company in 1986. What began as a home-based business has now grown to 27 texts that she sells out of a 10,000-square-foot building at Scottsdale Airpark.
The Parent Teacher Choice Award was the first international award for Easy Grammar and was judged by parents and teachers.
Wanda started her career as a high school English teacher.
“I was frustrated that my students came to me neither speaking nor writing well," she says.
After a move to Arizona and taking a seventh grade teaching position, Wanda soon realized the issue was that the texts were not set up for mastery learning. She began to develop her own curriculum. Easy Grammar is based on a prepositional approach where students learn a list of commonly used prepositions, then quickly learn to identify a prepositional phrase and to delete it from a sentence. This analysis allows for determining the subject and verb easily. Equally important, the process allows for application to more complex concepts.
“All students ‘glide’ to understanding using a step-by-step, escalator-style paradigm. Students are neither overwhelmed nor confused about concepts at any level,” she says.
“I used my Easy Grammar Plus text with my seventh grade English students. Upon analyzing results, I saw that all students’ scores increased greatly. One student’s learning, in fact, was incredible. Elated, I met with mom and shared that her daughter had accelerated from a 2.8 (second grade, eighth month) sixth grade score to a seventh grade score of 7.8 (seventh grade, eighth month)—in one school year. “Both her mom and I cried. The student simply said, ‘Well you taught me it,’ to which I replied, ‘But you, my friend, achieved it!’” –Wanda Phillips
AWARDS:
Easy Grammar Ultimate Series: Grade 9 – high school teaching series that requires just 10 minutes for each school day
Easy Grammar: Grade 5 – representing the unit teaching texts
Daily GRAMS: Guided – 10-Minute Daily Review Series
Who’s Who of American Women and 2,000 Intellectuals of the 21st Century