Poll: What is your favorite writing curriculum?

Curriculum
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  • WriteShop
  • Institute for Excellence in Writing
  • BJU Press
  • Abeka
  • Other
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IEW and Mr. Andrew Pudewa…cannot express how much I have enjoyed using that, learning from it myself, and the kids really enjoy writing now. (I think my son mainly enjoys it because he can draw a lot, lol.) I talked with a homeschooling friend that has a child in college now, and when asked what she would’ve done differently, and she mentioned making him write more papers, because that’s what he’s doing a lot of in college. With IEW, they’re writing once a week, and getting sooo much better with it.

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I can’t say enough good things about IEW. I would say that the number one thing that it does is take away the child staring at a blank page saying “I don’t know what to write.” When my oldest son was younger I would say to him "Write 4-6 sentences about …) He would give me 4 very short ‘boring’ sentences. Then I found IEW. Wow! What a difference in his writing. It taught him how to write more interesting stories. I love this program.

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So far we have only used WriteShop, but with four kids, it seems a little too time consuming at times.

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What age did you start IEW? Does it take alot of prep work or outside supplements?

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My son is 5 yo so we are just starting to write sentences. I have found resources online via TpT for journal prompts, sentence correction along with reading comprehension. I do a mixture of all.

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Hands down LOVE Voyages in English. I rarely find people who have used it, but it was the chosen writing curriculum at the private school I worked at. I love how each month is broken into a major writing theme (writing to an author, personal narratives, etc) with daily lessons and step by step instructions for helping the child write. It also includes daily instruction for a monthly grammar theme that correlates with the writing topic. The teacher book is a must to get the most out of the curriculum, but it’s been fabulous. My daughter does not love writing, but she loves her lesson book, the lesson games we play (provided in the lesson portion of the teacher book) and despite not enjoying writing, she’s written some amazing stories from this curriculum.

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I also have four kids but only use WriteShop with two of them right now and I agree it is really time consuming. We may switch away in the fall for that reason.

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Writeshop can seem a bit time consuming but my kids writing has improved so much since we started using it. They actually want to write and I couldn’t be happier about that.

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I’m new to homeschool curriculum. Can you please tell me if IEW stands for something?

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IEW stands for Institute for Excellence in Writing

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I would say that IEW is typically for 3rd grade and up. I started with Level A. There is an entire teaching training video program for IEW that they highly recommend that you use before starting any levels with your children. It trains the parent to teach writing. I purchased it when I was doing the program for my oldest son-it is a one time purchase.
Regarding outside supplements they just have you using books that you are already using in your homeschooling.
This is an excellent program, I highly recommend it.

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Sorry for not responding sooner. IEW stands for Institute for Excellence in Writing. I had to tutor it for a class I led last year at Classical Conversations. It’s just a wonderful way of getting kids engaged in writing. I had to take several of his classes (6 disks worth, I think) and write my own papers using their system. I really enjoyed it. :smiley:

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IEW! It took my kid who absolutely hated writing and turned it into an enjoyable subject, and she’s learning incredible skills. 3rd-4th grade for the level A dvd series would be a good starting place. It’s really worth it.
My mother-in-law, who teaches very intensive homeschool high school literature classes and grades high school reports all the time, told me that when she was telling her class that her grand-daughter was using IEW, it was all her top writers who raised their hands excitedly to say they’d done that, too. That was good enough for me!

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My son will be starting 2nd grade this year, but like alot of homeschoolers out there he is on alot of 3rd grade materials. He writes a paragraph a day right now (4 sentence minimum). We started write shop, but it was too easy on the level we purchased and I wasn’t crazy about the time we put into it. We ditched it and just wrote in a note book with different themes. This comming year I would like something more structured. Do you think it is to early to start on IEW level A?
Also, did you purchase the themed books as well?

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Level A is recommended for 3-5th grade. I think that is a good recommendation. The student is provided with word lists but they need to be able to add into their sentences things like: verbs, adverbs, adjective, clauses etc.

IEW also makes a writing program that can be used before Level A, it is called Primary Arts of Language (PAL). I used that with my youngest son and it is a wonderful transition into Level A.

I have used several of the theme books from IEW also but not until 3rd grade to go along with whatever level they were using.

If you can, go onto the IEW website and get a better look at their choices. I think it is best at a young age to challenge them but not to overwhelm them. You know your son best so only you know what would be the best fit.

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Thank you for the advice @kathleennj. I am deffinately going to check out PAL.

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Institute for Excellence in Writing

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Does anyone teach their kids “italic” writing?? Which is better, italic or the norm?? :slight_smile:

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I am using Logic of English as my only writing/language arts right now for a 3rd and 2nd grader. Should I add IEW to cover handwriting?