Disclaimer: I received a Complimentary copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. All opinions I have expressed are my own or those of my family. I am disclosing this in accordance with FTC Regulations.
Morning friends!
I hope you are enjoying your Spring Break week! We have been relaxing and regrouping as next week we prepare to enter our last six weeks of our regular school year. This year went by so fast but today I am excited to share with you one of our favorite homeschool language arts curriculum vendors, the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW). We are not strangers to this grammar curriculum provider, nor their award winning have used and reviewed several of their award winning writing curriculum over the last 13 years of homeschooling. Today I am excited to tell you about IEW’s newly revised and improved Fix It! Grammar program. We received the Nose Tree, Level 1 to use with Micah, my 7-year-old 2nd grader. If you have been on the homeschool scene for any length of time I am sure you have heard of Mr. Pudewa and his company, Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW). His mission is to teach children "…to write well, think clearly, and express themselves eloquently and persuasively." IEW is no longer just a company to teach your child how to write. They have a multitude of products to help you completely teach Language Arts to your students. Let me tell you a little more about their grammar program and the improvements that have been made. Pamela White, a certified Accomplished Instructor for IEW, is the author of the Fix It! Grammar series. She holds an M.A. in English and A.B.D. from Vanderbilt University. Fix It! Grammar was developed by Pamela after she was frustrated with traditional methods of teaching children grammar. Fix It! Grammar is the newly revised language arts series that teaches the principles of grammar through real stories. The real stories use sentences that contain errors that your student may make in their own everyday writing. The principle of parsing a sentence and finding the errors helps students to learn correct grammar and punctuation. The complete Fix It! Grammar program consists of six books in the series written for third grade through high school. These include:
Elementary Level:
Fix It! Grammar: The Nose Tree, Level 1
Fix It! Grammar: Town Mouse and Country Mouse, Level 2
Middle School Level:
Fix It! Grammar: Robin Hood, Level 3
Fix It! Grammar: Mowgli and Shere Khan, Level 4
High School Level:
Fix It! Grammar: Frog Prince, Level 5
Fix It! Grammar: Little Mermaid, Level 6
A placement test is available to find the correct starting book for your child, however, IEW recommends that all learners start with Level 1, regardless of age. Each level is named after a story that your child will fix in just 15 minute daily lessons. Over the course of 30 weeks your child will parse sentences to correct the story.
Fix It! Grammar is a 4-day a week program and includes a Teacher’s Manual {$19} and a consumable Student Book {$19}. The option to purchase a Teacher/Student combo is also available for $29. a set. The weekly lessons are set up in the same fashion each week following these five simple steps:
Step 1: Learn It! ~ Explore the grammar concepts to be taught at the start of each new week.
Step 2: Read It! ~ In this section the student will also read the passage for the day. 120 vocabulary words are taught over the course of this book and they need to be looked up in the dictionary and defined. The student should keep either a vocabulary notebook or use flash cards to write out the definitions.
Step 3: Mark It! ~ This section has the student put their knowledge to work by parsing the passage with the parts of speech marks called for. The new edition gives the number of Mark It! errors the student is searching for at the top of the page.
Step 4: Fix It! ~ Now, the student gets down to business and makes the necessary corrections to make the sentence correct. Again at the top of the page you will find the necessary editing marks needed.
Step 5: Rewrite It! ~ Once all parsing and editing is complete your student is now ready to copy the corrected passage onto the lines at the bottom of the page or into a separate notebook.
We also received the new Fix It! Grammar Cards {$15} that contain 30 full color cards with the key grammar concepts. The cards are thick and are printed on glossy cardstock. They also come in a sturdy self-contained storage box. I love that they are versatile in that you can use them for review work or to play games. Best part is that you can use the cards for all the levels, so you only need to purchase them one time. Each level’s Teacher’s Manual tells you which card is used. Since Micah is just starting his formal grammar lessons, we did in fact start with Book 1 for him. The short lessons are perfect for him! Using this program is quick and easy and fits our four-day school week perfectly. We followed the same format each week. On Monday, I teach the concepts for the week and we reviewed with the grammar cards each subsequent week. The rest of the week Micah worked on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday by his side to finish the weekly lessons.
I love that I have had no complaints or whining when it comes time to do our Language Arts lessons with Fix It! Grammar! Micah is interested to hear how the story progresses as he fixes the short sentence each day. The Fix It! Grammar program helps me know that Micah is getting the necessary grammar instruction he needs to learn. The opportunity to use the Nose Tree book with Micah has been a blessing indeed. In fact, I am so impressed by this grammar curriculum that I have recently purchased the updated copy of Level 3, Robin Hood, to use with McKenzie, my rising 7th grader. I plan to have her start the program next week and to continue through our summer learning and next school year. She is no stranger to the Fix It! Grammar program and has completed Level’s 1 and 2 over the last three years. Having a strong foundation in grammar is essential to writing and I am so glad that we have a program like Institute for Excellence in Writing. I will sing praises to this program and all of their products because it works for our family. We have had great success with my older girls and I am confident that my younger three children will see that same success in their Language Arts because of the strong foundation that IEW curriculum provides. But don’t just take my word for it! Check out the reviews of 25 of my fellow CrewMates who also had the chance to review this Level and Levels 2-5 by clicking the banner below.
Format ~ Teacher-Student Combo
Price ~ Teacher, $19.00; Student, $19.00; Combo set $29.00
Ages ~ 3rd grade and up
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