avazquez24 Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 After some researching I think I've finally narrowed down my LA choices for dd and ds. I am looking at either doing: 1) IEW's Phonetic Zoo, Student Writing Intensive Level A, and Fix It! Grammar, OR 2) CLE Language Arts. I'm leaning more towards IEW. I've never used any IEW products and we are currently using CLE for math. Any info I should have to help me decide between the two? LOL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OneStepAtATime Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 They are pretty different programs. This may boil down to just trying one out and seeing how they fit with your teaching style/goals and your kids functionality within the programs. I have both. I like both. I also have Trail Guides to Learning. Are you using any of the Language Arts lessons from TG? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom31257 Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 I think it depends on your needs. How confident are you in teaching language arts to your kids and evaluating their writing? How much time do you have to devote to LA each day? IEW is awesome but will take more time to do all 3 of those and be more teacher intensive than CLE. Phonetic Zoo will probably take 15 minutes a day as will Fix-It. Those two will require a little input from you but involve some independent portions. SWI-A has 15 lessons, so if you plan to use it over a year, you could do a lesson every other week and have plenty of time to spread out the assignments, I found that when I started the program with ds, I had to do a lot of hand-holding. I feel that writing is important, though, and I wanted to make sure he was understanding it. I'm a math/science girl, so IEW is perfect for me. There are checklists which make the expectations of each assignment very clear. Another nice thing is most likely your kids can do the same level of each program. CLE is thorough in grammar and includes spelling with some rules, but in my opinion, the writing instruction is weak compared to IEW. How can it not been when you compare the two programs, though? If you are confident in teaching writing to your kids at their levels, then that shouldn't be a problem. LA will be set up like math, a little instruction at the beginning and lots of review. You can have your kids working at their own level, which might be good if you find that one of your children is stronger in LA than the other. If one child is stronger than the other, then I would be hesitant to have them do the same program if you think the weaker one would become discouraged. The Phonetic Zoo could become that way because you don't move on to the next lesson until you have made a 100 on the test 2 days in a row. Will one child be upset if the other is sailing through some of the lessons and he or she remains "stuck" on some lessons longer? I hope this helps a little! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weintz8 Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 We use CLE LAs with IEW American History Writting Lessons and it's a wonderful combo! We do LAs three days a week and IEW two days a week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edeemarie Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 We also combine CLE LA and IEW Ancient History. Most of the longer writing assignments in CLE I cross out since we are using IEW to supplement writing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avazquez24 Posted September 5, 2015 Author Share Posted September 5, 2015 Thanks! To use those programs, should the students have used any IEW lessons previously? Also, would those be for a 3rd and 4th grader? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OneStepAtATime Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 Thanks! To use those programs, should the students have used any IEW lessons previously? Also, would those be for a 3rd and 4th grader? The theme books from IEW assume that the parent has access to the core program (TWSS). Some people have used them without using TWSS first or even concurrently, but if you are not comfortable teaching writing without support that may be harder. If you don't want to use the core student program with your children (SWI-A) but instead want to leap immediately into a theme book, you could get TWSS to teach you how to teach and apply it to the theme book lessons. Or you could try leaping in without the TWSS and order it later if you run into trouble. SWI-A and nearly all of the theme book writing courses could be used with a 3rd and 4th grader. Level A is for 3-5. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avazquez24 Posted September 6, 2015 Author Share Posted September 6, 2015 They are pretty different programs. This may boil down to just trying one out and seeing how they fit with your teaching style/goals and your kids functionality within the programs. I have both. I like both. I also have Trail Guides to Learning. Are you using any of the Language Arts lessons from TG? You are correct...they are both very different lol. We use CLE for math and so far it's a good fit for the kids, so that's why I was considering CLE LA. We just started the TG series a couple weeks ago, and so far I"ve been using everything in it (except for some science). I just started worrying that it wasn't enough. DD is starting 4th grade, and for writing she's done: WWE and Writing and Rhetoric (Fables). I've yet to teach her how to write an actual paragraph, how to use quotations for dialogue in writing, ect. I started to worry that I'm behind on teaching her things for writing that she should know at this age. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SparrowsNest Posted September 6, 2015 Share Posted September 6, 2015 One more vote for CLE LA/IEW writing combo! This has been a big hit here with my 3rd grader. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OneStepAtATime Posted September 6, 2015 Share Posted September 6, 2015 You are correct...they are both very different lol. We use CLE for math and so far it's a good fit for the kids, so that's why I was considering CLE LA. We just started the TG series a couple weeks ago, and so far I"ve been using everything in it (except for some science). I just started worrying that it wasn't enough. DD is starting 4th grade, and for writing she's done: WWE and Writing and Rhetoric (Fables). I've yet to teach her how to write an actual paragraph, how to use quotations for dialogue in writing, ect. I started to worry that I'm behind on teaching her things for writing that she should know at this age. Trail Guides does ramp up. They just do a gentle ramp as opposed to a fast ramp. The science part is also more of a gentle ramp up but very hands on. Honestly, since you are already doing Trail Guides you might just try pairing that with IEW instead of tackling CLE AND TG. IEW would cover the writing and Trail Guides would cover the rest. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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