Do I really need TWSS in order to do IEW's theme units?

[Janeway]

The theme units look quite good, but the training video is $189. Do I really need that to use the theme units? Or is the information I actually need in the teacher's guide?

[kirstenhill]

I was able to teach the themed IEW books after listening to the two hour "overview" lecture (I think this costs $6 or so on their website).  They also have a lot of free videos on their YouTube channel.  

I have a degree in English and writing comes naturally to me, but I don't always come up with the best methods of teaching writing on my own.  However, once I got the gist of what IEW was doing, I certainly didn't think I needed many hours of training to implement it. 

[JumpyTheFrog]

I began by listening to numerous podcast episodes of IEW's podcast. They go through each of the units and describe the goal of each. I have some of the old DVDs, but I haven't really watched much of them. Last year was our first year with IEW and my 9th and 6th graders both did the Ancient History theme book. The reading level was low for my 9th grader, since it was written for late elementary school, but it still worked well. This year we are going to do the Medieval History theme book.

[Momto6inIN]

If you really can't afford the full video teacher course, then at least get the overview lecture. I am a natural writer myself, but I wasn't very good at teaching my kids step by step how to write - it just came intuitively to me, so I didn't know how to scaffold and help them. I really needed to understand what the lessons were hoping to accomplish before I could implement them well. Without knowing *why* I was doing all the stuff the theme books tell you to do, it would have seemed like a series of loosely related assignments and checklists.

[Janeway]

On 8/5/2021 at 2:46 PM, Momto6inIN said:

If you really can't afford the full video teacher course, then at least get the overview lecture. I am a natural writer myself, but I wasn't very good at teaching my kids step by step how to write - it just came intuitively to me, so I didn't know how to scaffold and help them. I really needed to understand what the lessons were hoping to accomplish before I could implement them well. Without knowing *why* I was doing all the stuff the theme books tell you to do, it would have seemed like a series of loosely related assignments and checklists.

I can afford the full video course, I was wondering if it would be worth the cost. Also, if we did the student writing intensive(which costs as much as the TWSS), could I follow up from there with the the themed courses, or would I still need the TWSS?

[Momto6inIN]

12 hours ago, Janeway said:

I can afford the full video course, I was wondering if it would be worth the cost. Also, if we did the student writing intensive(which costs as much as the TWSS), could I follow up from there with the the themed courses, or would I still need the TWSS?

If you did the SWI (not sure what they're called now) then yes you could follow up with the theme courses.

At a convention several years ago, an IEW rep told me there are 3 ways to use IEW effectively:

1. Take the TWSS course yourself and then teach writing however you want, making up your own assignments gathering materials from your history and science or whatever courses.

2. Take the TWSS course yourself and use the theme books for assignments.

3. Have your child take the SWI course and let Mr. Pudewa be the writing teacher.