Talk to me about IEW

[Halcyon]

I am rethinking WWS2 for my DS11 next year. His grammar, syntax and spelling are strong, but his ability to write good, flowing, pleasing sentences and paragraphs needs work. Would IEW fit? As background, he has done WWE1-3, WWS1, a few extras like Unjournaling and Story Starters for fun. He enjoys poetry and is working through Fig Speak now. He just started Hake 6, the writing portion, and so far it's going very well.  He seems to have trouble, however, with "putting all he has learned" into play in an essay--does that make sense?

 

When asked to write a particular type of sentence or short piece of writing (ie. a paragraph) he does fairly well but he seems to only be able to incorporate one skill set at a time. Perhaps this is something that just takes time to develop?

[Alte Veste Academy]

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[prairiewindmomma]

I'm going to vote no.

 

IEW is really good at figuring out content, imo. Stylistically, IEW gives you differently things to try, but my son did much better with WWS in terms of learning to write in a flowing, pleasing manner. In my experience, ds can either do content or style or mechanics but he simply needs more practice to master doing all of it together in one essay. Interestingly, if I have him type his essay he writes with a completely different voice.

 

My ds is the same age as yours. We are also putting WWS2 on hold for next year. We are not going back to IEW. We are pulling out the WTM recommendations for writing 1 page essays. We are also working on different types of writing by using some ideas from Voyages in English and some across the curriculum writing in history (writing ads, writing diary entries from the perspective of a historical figure, writing persuasive paragraphs based on ethical decisions, etc.) I am making the content of the reading a couple of grades below and seeing what happens. Although ds has a strong vocabulary and is an excellent reader, I've noticed that his ability to narrate is far ahead of his ability to write. I'm hoping that by making a few things easier, his brain will be able to master a bit more, and then ease into being able to do content and style and mechanics all at the same time.

[Halcyon]

This is a nice idea. I think WWS pushes my DS on So. Many. Fronts: reading level, vocab level, stylistically, output..that it might help him if we backed off on the reading level a bit and had him apply the same skills to an easier text. 

 

Nice idea. :)

[Mom-ninja.]

Well, we've put WWS on hold while we do IEW.

[Dolphin]

I have a ds11. We were struggling with WWS. What we are now doing is 2 weeks on IEW and 1 week of WWS. He is much happier. He loves IEW and will do one week of WWS to get back to IEW. IEW is about content at this point, but the main thing is that he LOVES it. He is happy doing it, he laughs at Andrew Pudewa's jokes etc....

 

One other thing, double check. IEW has a fantastic return policy. We have gotten a lot to try from them because of this policy. Get it, try it for a month and if it does not work for your family, return it. (Do make sure that is still the policy). At the time of our last order, that is all the reason you need, it did not work for us. I do have to say, so far we have not returned anything as it works well in our family. We do Phonetic Zoo, Poetry, and the Writing course.

[serendipitous journey]

I am rethinking WWS2 for my DS11 next year. His grammar, syntax and spelling are strong, but his ability to write good, flowing, pleasing sentences and paragraphs needs work. Would IEW fit? As background, he has done WWE1-3, WWS1, a few extras like Unjournaling and Story Starters for fun. He enjoys poetry and is working through Fig Speak now. He just started Hake 6, the writing portion, and so far it's going very well.  He seems to have trouble, however, with "putting all he has learned" into play in an essay--does that make sense?

 

When asked to write a particular type of sentence or short piece of writing (ie. a paragraph) he does fairly well but he seems to only be able to incorporate one skill set at a time. Perhaps this is something that just takes time to develop?

 

I am thinking of the specifics of your OP.  On the one hand "good, flowing, pleasing" is just what IEW is not known for (and we have used it).  The dress-ups and required stylistic devices lead to stilted writing before good writing: eventually one jettisons the requirements for the devices, but meanwhile the child is more or less trampling on one's sense of what good English sounds like. 

 

Have you Killgalloned the child?  That's what comes to mind for the good-flowing-pleasing bit. 

 

OTOH, Ruth has happily used IEW by tailoring the requirements -- I think she has the child try them out and then decide for himself if they result in an improved sentence or not.  Or something like that.  And I did like the foundation in outlining IEW gave us but you are beyond that level of outlining after WWS1.

 

and OTOH #2, IEW's explicit list of skills and the fact that they are taught one at a time does help the child begin to automatically incorporate several skills at once.  I think that's true of any good writing program, though, at least any with an incremental approach.  You might be better served by generating your own list of stylistic devices/language checkpoints (from WWS and Fig Speak and Hake?) and them teaching them, one at a time, until the child can easily incorporate them.  Or do a chunk of IEW but modify the lists to suit your purposes? 

 

ETA: the more I think on it, the more it seems you might want to PM Ruth if she doesn't post here since she's used WWS1/2 and IEW...

[Mrs Twain]

We have been using IEW for 2 1/2 years (SWI-A and nearly half of SICC-B ).  I consider IEW to be nearly the same as drill work in math.  For math, we do a lot of drill of basic skills and math facts so that they become natural.  When it is time to do the more difficult math (algebra and above) my kids should not even think about the basic skills because those will (hopefully) be automatic.

 

With IEW, the student completes compositions in which each paragraph has a checklist.  Where we are now in  SICC-B, the checklist has gotten quite long with all of the dress-ups, all of the sentence openers, and one decoration per paragraph.  Yes, my son's compositions sometimes sound stilted because of how many items he must incorporate into every paragraph.  However, the point of IEW is not to produce wonderful sounding compositions.  The point is that the kids become natural at including the various style elements in their writing. 

 

In addition to IEW, I use a different program about every other week.  I have been doing this so that writing doesn't become monotonous and that we can get breaks from the checklist,  What I notice in our non-IEW-checklist weeks is that over time my son really does develop habits of including the IEW style techniques into his writing even when he is not required.  It really does work!  However, I will say that it has taken a couple of years of hard work with IEW to get to this point. 

 

Currently we are using School Composition (Maxwell) for the non-IEW weeks.  Maybe using WWS would work for you as someone suggested above, alternating it with IEW if you think it is worth trying. 

If you are considering the IEW route, I think the SWI/SICC route with Mr. Pudewa DVD lectures have given us much better results than the theme programs which are parent taught.  That is just our personal experience, though.

[TarynB]

We have been using IEW for 2 1/2 years (SWI-A and nearly half of SICC-B ).  I consider IEW to be nearly the same as drill work in math.  For math, we do a lot of drill of basic skills and math facts so that they become natural.  When it is time to do the more difficult math (algebra and above) my kids should not even think about the basic skills because those will (hopefully) be automatic.

 

With IEW, the student completes compositions in which each paragraph has a checklist.  Where we are now in  SICC-B, the checklist has gotten quite long with all of the dress-ups, all of the sentence openers, and one decoration per paragraph.  Yes, my son's compositions sometimes sound stilted because of how many items he must incorporate into every paragraph.  However, the point of IEW is not to produce wonderful sounding compositions.  The point is that the kids become natural at including the various style elements in their writing. 

 

In addition to IEW, I use a different program about every other week.  I have been doing this so that writing doesn't become monotonous and that we can get breaks from the checklist,  What I notice in our non-IEW-checklist weeks is that over time my son really does develop habits of including the IEW style techniques into his writing even when he is not required.  It really does work!  However, I will say that it has taken a couple of years of hard work with IEW to get to this point. 

 

Currently we are using School Composition (Maxwell) for the non-IEW weeks.  Maybe using WWS would work for you as someone suggested above, alternating it with IEW if you think it is worth trying. 

If you are considering the IEW route, I think the SWI/SICC route with Mr. Pudewa DVD lectures have given us much better results than the theme programs which are parent taught.  That is just our personal experience, though.

 

I agree! This describes our IEW experience too.