IEW SWI-A Question

[amyc78]

We have decided not to do CC Essentials next year, instead I want to use IEW Fix-It Grammar and SWI-A. I am having a hard time figuring out what SWI looks like on practical daily/weekly basis. I understand you can go through the program at your own pace, correct? If you have experience with SWI, would you mind sharing how you implement it in your homeschool? My DS will be in 4th grade and this will be the first formal writing program we have used.

[tmstranger]

Following as I've been trying to decide if IEW will be a good fit for my rising 4th grader, too.  I've used the themed unit for my older ds before, but I'd like to do SWI-A in hopes that we'll all get more out of it. 

 

 

[cintinative]

There is a schedule in the front of the teacher guide that details what a five day week would look like. It is set up for 30 weeks.  So you can go for longer or shorter depending on your goals.  My children had prior experience doing other IEW stuff so the first few weeks was a lot of review (key word outlining, etc.).  For those weeks we went at a much faster pace than recommended in the guide.  

 

SWI-A differs from the theme based products used in Essentials in a couple of ways. One is that it is a video based course so your child will watch a video with Andrew Pudewa teaching similar aged students and walking through the techniques with them (in lieu of you doing all of this yourself, or the Essentials tutor doing it).  The other is that it does not incorporate vocabulary words.  It is a great course. My recommendation is if you are concerned about the length of the videos to split them into two sections. Most are less than 22 minutes but there are a few that are longer (37 min or so).   It may put you off schedule but it doesn't make sense to push through if the attention span is gone. There is a summary of time stamps and content for each DVD section so it is really easy to know where to stop the video.

 

Generally our week would look like this:  Monday--watch video, Tuesday--develop key word outline if not done on video  Wed--skip (co-op),  Thurs--write draft from KWO and incorporate dress-ups  Friday--recopy or type final

 

Plan for about 20-40 min per day four days a week or less if you stretch to five days. We averaged around 30 min.  

 

ETA: If you still need to purchase, and will not buy used, it makes sense to buy directly from IEW. They have a 100% money back no time limit guarantee on everything they sell--you can return it at any time, even used.  So if it doesn't work out for your family, they will even pay return shipping.  You don't get the guarantee if you buy from Rainbow or CBD or another retailer.

 

P.S.  IEW allows copies within a family so you can copy the student sheets to use later for your younger one.  

Edited April 9, 2016 by cintinative

[mom31257]

I taught it in a co-op which met every other week. SWI-A is about 15 lessons, so you could easily do one lesson every two weeks. That gives you plenty of time to watch the video as well as work on each lesson. In fact, the daily suggested lesson plans in the program suggest one every two weeks. 

 

http://iew.com/sites/default/files/videocourse/fileattachment/SWI-A_Sample.pdf

 

Mr. Pudewa is very entertaining, and my class loved his videos. You could continue with SICC-A the next year or use a theme book like CC uses. 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 11, 2016 by mom31257

[amyc78]

There is a schedule in the front of the teacher guide that details what a five day week would look like. It is set up for 30 weeks.  So you can go for longer or shorter depending on your goals.  My children had prior experience doing other IEW stuff so the first few weeks was a lot of review (key word outlining, etc.).  For those weeks we went at a much faster pace than recommended in the guide.  

 

SWI-A differs from the theme based products used in Essentials in a couple of ways. One is that it is a video based course so your child will watch a video with Andrew Pudewa teaching similar aged students and walking through the techniques with them (in lieu of you doing all of this yourself, or the Essentials tutor doing it).  The other is that it does not incorporate vocabulary words.  It is a great course. My recommendation is if you are concerned about the length of the videos to split them into two sections. Most are less than 22 minutes but there are a few that are longer (37 min or so).   It may put you off schedule but it doesn't make sense to push through if the attention span is gone. There is a summary of time stamps and content for each DVD section so it is really easy to know where to stop the video.

 

Generally our week would look like this:  Monday--watch video, Tuesday--develop key word outline if not done on video  Wed--skip (co-op),  Thurs--write draft from KWO and incorporate dress-ups  Friday--recopy or type final

 

Plan for about 20-40 min per day four days a week or less if you stretch to five days. We averaged around 30 min.  

 

ETA: If you still need to purchase, and will not buy used, it makes sense to buy directly from IEW. They have a 100% money back no time limit guarantee on everything they sell--you can return it at any time, even used.  So if it doesn't work out for your family, they will even pay return shipping.  You don't get the guarantee if you buy from Rainbow or CBD or another retailer.

 

P.S.  IEW allows copies within a family so you can copy the student sheets to use later for your younger one.  

 

Do you feel like it is relatively independent? We will have a newborn and a 2nd grade sibling so my availability is hit or miss...

[amyc78]

I taught in in a co-op which met every other week. SWI-A is about 15 lessons, so you could easily do one lesson every two weeks. That gives you plenty of time to watch the video as well as work on each lesson. In fact, the daily suggested lesson plans in the program suggest one every two weeks. 

 

http://iew.com/sites/default/files/videocourse/fileattachment/SWI-A_Sample.pdf

 

Mr. Pudewa is very entertaining, and my class loved his videos. You could continue with SICC-A the next year or use a theme book like CC uses. 

 

Asking the same question above, do you feel like it is relatively independent? We will have a newborn and a 2nd grade sibling...

[mom31257]

Asking the same question above, do you feel like it is relatively independent? We will have a newborn and a 2nd grade sibling...

 

 

Personally, I don't think any writing program should be very independent, especially a first writing program. Writing takes a lot of discussion in order to understand any changes which need to be made. You will need to watch the videos with your ds (or in a separate sitting) in order to understand what the program is teaching and expecting. It's the only way you'll be able to evaluate his writing and help in the revision stage. 

 

In my classes, the students I know are expected to do the assignments independently are the students who have the most mistakes and miss the most points on the grading system. 

 

To me, skills such as writing and math need more hand-holding to make sure the proper skills are in place. If I had your situation, I would let things such as reading in science and history be the more independent subjects. The 3 Rs are what kids need to learn anything at anytime and be successful in life. I always advise busy parents focus primarily on those. 

Edited April 11, 2016 by mom31257

[cintinative]

Agree with prior poster. I am always around when they are watching the video and when it comes to the actual writing portion I am right there helping. My 3rd grader still needs more coaching but my 4th grader is now to the point where he can write from his outline and do the dress ups and I just need to go over it when he is done to check for run-on sentences and flow issues, etc.  It has taken us a few years to get to that point (we have used IEW from the very beginning in 1st grade). So I would not set expectations for independence high at this point.  As Andrew Pudewa would say, there is no such thing as too much help.  You might consider including your 2nd grader in on the videos but not push a lot of writing. Just include him/her in the discussions. 

[mom31257]

Ooh, I second the idea of the 2nd grader sitting in! I might would do KWOs with that child and have him or her retell them from the outline.

 

I did IEW with my ds in 3rd grade and found he did much better if I was his scribe while he retold it to me. I think he could have done as well in 2nd.

[cintinative]

Ooh, I second the idea of the 2nd grader sitting in! I might would do KWOs with that child and have him or her retell them from the outline.

 

I did IEW with my ds in 3rd grade and found he did much better if I was his scribe while he retold it to me. I think he could have done as well in 2nd.

 

Absolutely. You can scribe the outline and have him/her copy, have her work on retelling from the outline, and scribe a draft from her verbal that you can mark up together.