Fix-It! Grammar and Editing--thoughts?

[Tess in the Burbs]

Anyone use this? We are hoping to use IEW this fall for writing and saw this for grammar. My son would be the one to use it...typical boy of his age...doesn't love writing or grammar, lol.

 

What did you think of this?

[curriculumhoarder]

We like Fix-It here. It's not too much writing in a day, just a few sentences after correcting the errors in the worksheet that you print out. My dc like that every day is more of a continuous story.

 

It only takes about 15 minutes including the rewriting in their best handwriting each day. Several of the stories are humorous, too, which they like.

 

If you do IEW, Fix-It will reinforce several concepts like sentence openers and dress ups. IEW didn't work well for my dc, but we still do Fix-It :). We do also use another grammar program (Growing with Grammar) to get things like sentence diagramming in.

[brownie]

I'm using it for reinforcement with my 3rd and 5th graders. Honestly, it's a huge help to be familiar with IEW and to be decent at grammar yourself. It's scheduled to be 4 sentences a week...you look up 4 words in the dictionary a week, look for some grammar errors, identify where all the new paragraphs start, find verbs, subjects, adjectives and adverbs. There's not much else to it. Quick and sweet - I use it to make sure my kids can apply grammar in "real life" and know how to see errors in their writing.

 

The sentences are really well written (we're doing Tom Sawyer right now) so we talk about why the sentences are so great. All the quotes can be a little confusing, especially when the speaker is using poor grammar. We talk about that too. It has interested both my boys in reading Tow Sawyer...another bonus! We talk about clauses and complex sentences, subordinating conjunctions, etc...but we've covered all that in R&S...that's not in the book.

 

However, I can't imagine using it for your only grammar unless you've covered grammar before and just want to "maintain" or you don't think grammar is that important to do beyond a 5th grade level.

 

Brownie

[Hunter]

I'm not familiar with the curriculum, but if it shows incorrect examples, I don't suggest it. I'm firmly of the belief that students should never see incorrect models.

[Tess in the Burbs]

I'm not familiar with the curriculum, but if it shows incorrect examples, I don't suggest it. I'm firmly of the belief that students should never see incorrect models.

 

I hadn't thought about that. Thank you, this is why I asked....other opinions!

[Guest annybell559]

We use Fix It and love it.

 

I think using it before your children are familiar and fairly confident in their grammar studies might not be the best idea. I do, however, see how it could work. If the student misses something in their correction the student is to either look up or be taught the rule and write it down for future reference.

 

I use it with my 7th grader. My idea was.... now that she knows English grammar fairly well, let's apply it. I like the idea of approaching the subject from the opposite side of the tracks. She is really enjoying the program and I am thinking of starting it with my 5th grader as well.

 

Just to add in, also, we us Growing With Grammar.

 

Hope this helps!:)

[Dolphin]

We have it, and are using it next year. My son was doing the daily paragraph editing from Evan Moor. He really enjoyed it, but the paragraphs were such...dribble!

 

The first year with fix it is Tom Sawyer (Oh, there is about 3 years of curriculum in it), which is not dribble.

 

Only 1 sentence a day rather than a paragraph, and much more hints to mom on why. The only thing it doesn't do it use editing symbols. DS really likes those, so we are going to add that easily in. He will correct the sentence with the symbols and then write it correctly underneath.

 

I am really looking forward to using this next year. I can not take another paragraph on Kites, and how they are diamond shaped, and sometimes have a tail...