Is IEW designed to be done every day?

[Heart_Mom]

I'm considering IEW (starting with Teaching Writing Structure and Style) and am totally new to it. I'd be using it with my rising 6th and 4th graders.

 

Is it meant to be used daily, or would it also work to do it two times per week, maybe for a little longer period?

 

If you have experience with the program, how do you use it?

 

I was originally going to use WordSmith Apprentice for one child, and Learn to Write the Novel Way with the other, but a friend highly recommended IEW. It seems like IEW would be much more comprehensive for my children. Am I right about that?

 

I'm trying to decide if I have the time to invest in learning it right now since I have three younger children also. It seems like the other curricula would be easier to use, but I really do need to learn how to teach writing at some point ...

 

Thank you for any help you can give me! :)

[Mommy22alyns]

:bigear: I'd love to know too. We're planning to use IEW as well.

[AmyontheFarm]

Last week I finished prepping for our IEW program for the next school year. The schedule in the appendix in the back of my book says 5 days a week. But I don't expect the kids to be doing that for more 1/2 a day at first. It look like they will have more writing as the year progresses, I could be wrong, and if I am hopefully someone with more experience will speak up. But, the amount of work that they have to do each day seems pretty small at this point. I suspect that when they have to watch the video that will take most of the time those days. The schedule was very easy to work with, If you have joined the yahoo group then look in the Files section and you will find many helpful hints, etc. But, what I loved the most was the Unit leveled suggested source texts. I copied those out and assigned them to specific days each week and kept working through the year, one assignment at a time. Now, everything I need for all of the units is sitting in a 6 inch deep file box and ready to go for the year, including all the posters and checklists. So, now I just need to grab the unit we are working on, flip to what week it is and take out the sheets we need for that day. Easy Peasy!

 

Once, I did get this all set up, I realized that I've been making the kids do too much writing, but they haven't been complaining so I might just keep that to myself! LOL

 

If I could go back and talk to me 1 year ago, I would tell me to plant my butt on the couch, make some popcorn, open up that binder and just watch the videos. If you do that you are ready to fly through this program. Even if you don't use the actual curriculum, the concepts taught in the videos will help you with many different areas of homeschooling. Andrew isn't boring, he isn't dry and you will learn many things. I've actually watched to Unit 4 twice now because there was so much I needed to learn and both times I was very happy that I had watched them.

[AmyontheFarm]

Double post

[IrishMum]

At the beginning of using IEW my boys spent about 1/2 hour on the writing portion, but by half way through I think they were spending close to 1 hour on the it. I double up a lot of subjects, but I think IEW is best spread out.

[Heart_Mom]

Last week I finished prepping for our IEW program for the next school year. The schedule in the appendix in the back of my book says 5 days a week. But I don't expect the kids to be doing that for more 1/2 a day at first. It look like they will have more writing as the year progresses, I could be wrong, and if I am hopefully someone with more experience will speak up. But, the amount of work that they have to do each day seems pretty small at this point. I suspect that when they have to watch the video that will take most of the time those days. The schedule was very easy to work with, If you have joined the yahoo group then look in the Files section and you will find many helpful hints, etc. But, what I loved the most was the Unit leveled suggested source texts. I copied those out and assigned them to specific days each week and kept working through the year, one assignment at a time. Now, everything I need for all of the units is sitting in a 6 inch deep file box and ready to go for the year, including all the posters and checklists. So, now I just need to grab the unit we are working on, flip to what week it is and take out the sheets we need for that day. Easy Peasy!

 

Once, I did get this all set up, I realized that I've been making the kids do too much writing, but they haven't been complaining so I might just keep that to myself! LOL

 

If I could go back and talk to me 1 year ago, I would tell me to plant my butt on the couch, make some popcorn, open up that binder and just watch the videos. If you do that you are ready to fly through this program. Even if you don't use the actual curriculum, the concepts taught in the videos will help you with many different areas of homeschooling. Andrew isn't boring, he isn't dry and you will learn many things. I've actually watched to Unit 4 twice now because there was so much I needed to learn and both times I was very happy that I had watched them.

 

Thank you so much for your help! :)

 

I was thinking the same thing: that watching these DVDs will make me a better teacher, even if I don't end up using IEW.

 

At the beginning of using IEW my boys spent about 1/2 hour on the writing portion, but by half way through I think they were spending close to 1 hour on the it. I double up a lot of subjects, but I think IEW is best spread out.

 

Wow! An hour is a long time. I'm not sure I can dedicate that long every day to writing instruction. Though I'm assuming I could teach my 6th grader and 4th grader simultaneously.

[IrishMum]

Thank you so much for your help! :)

 

Wow! An hour is a long time. I'm not sure I can dedicate that long every day to writing instruction. Though I'm assuming I could teach my 6th grader and 4th grader simultaneously.

 

My boys were fussy, and wanted their stories to be fun. They always put a big effort in. I could set time limits to speed them up if I had needed. Yes, I taught mine together, 5th and 3rd, and they still do IEW together at 6th and 8th. Together works well!

[Heart_Mom]

My boys were fussy, and wanted their stories to be fun. They always put a big effort in. I could set time limits to speed them up if I had needed. Yes, I taught mine together, 5th and 3rd, and they still do IEW together at 6th and 8th. Together works well!

 

Thank you! I'm glad it will work well to teach them together. :)

[boscopup]

I think we usually needed about 4 days per week for it. I used it with a writing phobic 3rd grader (who, thanks to IEW, can now physically write a paragraph without freaking out :D).

 

The first day, we'd read the passage, do the keyword outline together, and discuss any dressups. This often took at least 30 minutes. The next day, he would start writing his rough draft. In the beginning of the year, I split this up into two days. By the end of the year, he could write the rough draft in one day. This probably took him anywhere from 15-30 minutes, but it didn't involve me at all (I had helped him brainstorm the day before, so he had a list of things he could use). So after the rough draft was done (over 1 or 2 days), I would sit down with him and edit. That didn't really take me that long, since we were doing one paragraph things mostly. I often did the editing the same day he did his rough draft. Then he'd write the final copy across 1 or 2 days (again, 2 days at the beginning of the year, 1 day toward the end).

 

If you put in your time doing the brainstorming that first day (which those sessions can go up to an hour), the rest of the week is fairly easy. As they add more dressups, it takes longer, especially when you get to multi-paragraph things (unit 3 story retelling involves 3 paragraphs, then unit 4 starts reports from multiple sources, IIRC). When we got to the units with multi-paragraphs, I had my son write one paragraph per day, so it was spread out even more (2 weeks for a 3-paragraph story retelling).

 

Of course, there is a huge difference between what a 6th grader does and what a 3rd grader does, so YMMV. ;)