Am I a chicken?

[Melissa in CA]

We will be starting school soon and I have both IEW Middle Ages and CW Older Beginner sitting on my shelf. My intention all summer has been to use CW, though I have not looked at it much these past weeks...frankly, it frightens me. What if I am just not smart enough to teach it? What if my son is not smart enough to do it? What it, what if, what if??

 

So, as I sit here contemplating starting school, I am seriously considering using IEW for 7th and holding off the CW OB for 8th grade. But, I ask myself if 8th grade is too old to be starting CW.:confused: Should I bite the bullet now, or wait until he's a bit on the older side. He does not love to write, so anything we use will be a challenge for us both, but IEW does not seem as MUCH of a challenge, KWIM? Let me put it this way...I don't mentally break out in hives when I look through it. :lol:

 

Am I just being a chicken? :confused: Should I jump in with both claws, bite the bullet and go for it....or take the easier more familiar route with IEW.

 

I really, honestly don't know. IEW seems very do-able, and I feel confident I can teach it. CW, quite the opposite. :tongue_smilie: Yet, I feel CW will be of more benefit in the end than IEW. But, I cannot decide if the benefit will be worth the effort involved. Ugh.

[Karen in CO]

IEW seems very do-able, and I feel confident I can teach it. CW, quite the opposite. :tongue_smilie: Yet, I feel CW will be of more benefit in the end than IEW. But, I cannot decide if the benefit will be worth the effort involved. Ugh.

 

Since you asked, I would advise that you know what you should do. Try it. Resolve to give CW a two week trial. A lot of things seem more intimidating before you actually try them. Read the lesson, plan it out and try it. Regroup after the first day, and try it again and again. If after two weeks of trying, you feel like you aren't ready to teach it still, then do IEW and have a good year with no Regrets. No program is a perfect answer for everyone, but CW also isn't impossible.

[Kfamily]

For me it was helpful to decide if CW was a curriculum I was willing to stick with throughout high school. Once I had decided that I was prepared to do this- then I was prepared to start CW. I'm not suggesting that only doing part of the curriculum isn't beneficial, but for me personally I wanted to start down the CW road only when I knew that everything we were doing was for a finished point and that we would stick with it (otherwise, for me, it was too high a price to pay if we did not finish it). Does that make sense?

 

We have started Homer and to be quite frank I don't see what all the fuss is about sometimes. I know I am not nearly as well educated as many of the ladies and gentlemen on this board but we have been pushing through this. I realized that I still feel unsure of myself in the exact same places that I was unsure before starting CW. I still feel the need to prepare heavily the night before we have a diagramming or CW grammar lesson and I still feel unsure of my abilities to grade and correct her work. But, correcting her work was still an area I was uncertain of even while doing Writing Tales. And, while the grammar has really ramped up I know we would have had to get to this level of grammar anyway so the learning curve was always there.

 

I hope this helps a little and mostly that it make some sense. Writing is not my strong point!:D:lol:

[dangermom]

The funny thing is that IEW scares me a little. I think largely because I don't know what it's supposed to be doing--I've never sat down and tried to understand it.

 

I use CW (we're starting Homer), and my experience has been that it takes me a while to wrap my brain around what they're trying to do, but once I sit down and study it out (with Homer I made an outline!), then it becomes pretty straightforward and not hard to do.

 

Someone here said the key to Homer was rearranging it into skill levels instead of days, and that was just magic for me. Trying to read through about 10 skill levels for Day 1 before getting to the next day just made things confusing, so I wrote out just what we were going to do first: Skill Level 1 through all 4 days. Then SK2, then 3. Voila, it was much simpler than I had thought!

[mama25angels]

Since you asked, I would advise that you know what you should do. Try it. Resolve to give CW a two week trial. A lot of things seem more intimidating before you actually try them. Read the lesson, plan it out and try it. Regroup after the first day, and try it again and again. If after two weeks of trying, you feel like you aren't ready to teach it still, then do IEW and have a good year with no Regrets. No program is a perfect answer for everyone, but CW also isn't impossible.

 

 

 

:iagree:, but I think you should give it 30 days before changing.

[Annabel Lee]

My guys aren't ready to begin CW or IEW, but both are programs I have my eyes on for Logic stage. I ordered a used copy of CW Aesop A & the gal kindly threw in her dc's used student workbook for B. I flipped through it and loved what I saw; I knew CW was a top contender for logic-stage writing program. It did look like there would be a learning curve for me to get familiar w/ the program, but most programs that aren't scripted have that anyhow.

 

I'm w/ dangermom on this - IEW is the one that interests yet scares me. I know it's a good program, but I really like a direct teacher's manual to go by. Just the idea that it's a workshop for me to learn to teach writing rather than a step-by-step open & go how-to manual makes my head spin, and I've never even seen it! :D

 

I agree w/ the above poster about giving it a month. 2 weeks may be too short to really know. Best wishes!

[Melissa in CA]

Thanks all!

 

I think you're right, I shouldn't just put CW aside without giving it a good solid try first. I can do that! ;) And hopefully, I will find it not as frightening as I am imagining it will be. :001_smile:

 

As for IEW. I have used it before so I am somewhat familiar with it. I used to own the TWSS (the main DVDs for the teacher) and then bought an SWI (Student Writing Intensive) for my two older boys in high school. So I kind of know what is expected. For those of you who really want to try IEW but are afraid, I personally would forget about purchasing the TWSS set and just purchase an SWI. Mr. Pudewa does aaaall the teaching for you and it's pretty much a no-brainer. He tells your students what they need to know, walks them through how it's done, and they do it. It couldn't be simpler. BUT, it is still up to you to grade and evaluate their writing....that's the tricky part for me.