Could someone walk me through how to implement IEW SWI-A?

[Porridge]

I'm considering SWI-A with the DVD next year for DD8. We did Bible Heroes last year and skipped a formal writing curriculum this year. Could someone walk me through what SWI-A with the DVD looks like in your home? How long are the videos? How much additional parent teaching is there? Are the guidelines / tips for parent teaching clear? How many days per week do you schedule it?

 

We actually have the theme based curriculum: Medieval History (IEW). I am also contemplating this for next year, but it seems difficult to teach. Going back and forth between the student and teacher book is complicated, and picking out the level A stuff from the level B stuff also seems complicated. Perhaps it's only because I haven't really gotten a feel for it yet -- does it get "smoother" (for the parent) as you progress with the curriculum? It reminds of Right Start Math (early versions with all the different books) - trying to juggle the different books was too taxing for my brain.

[mschickie]

I would definitely do the SWI-A before Medieval ( I have done both of them).   We did SWI-A over one year but I know many people who use it as a two year course.  There is a lesson plan guide that shows you how to lay it out for two years in the teacher's material.  Each of the DVD segments are different lengths (I cannot remember all the lengths but this year some are as short as 10 min some as long as 60 minutes, it list the number of minutes in the lesson in the teachers material).  We would watch the DVD  portion on one day (together), do the outline another day, then do the actual writing another day (as the assignments got to more than one paragraph we would do the writing over a couple of days), then do a day to edit, and the last day would be to do a rewrite with all the corrections.  We are doing Continuation Course B this year and that is still pretty much the same routine we follow.

 

We did Medieval after having done both SWi-A and then Continuation Course A.  That worked really well because she pretty much knew the terminology and understood what she was doing so that I did not have to teach the technique.

[SparklyUnicorn]

It's very open and go and step by step.  There is a day by day syllabus.  Really, it could not be easier to use.

 

 

[Porridge]

Many thanks Sparkly Unicorn and MsChickie. I think we'll try it and save Medieval History for another year. Adding to my list of things to purchase for the new school year...