Even though I taught children to read as a young college student, earned a bachelor's degree in Secondary English Education and instructed a Freshman Composition course at Sacramento State University during my master's program, I never had such excellent tools with which to teach reading and writing until I discovered Institute for Excellence in Writing.
Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) has the most excellent products for teaching reading, writing, spelling and grammar for grades K-12. As a home educator of 15 years, I've had the opportunity to use all of them in my own home school. With wild success, they have simplified and streamlined our English Language Arts studies.
For the primary level, grades K-2, their Primary Arts of Language (PAL) program is all you need for reading, writing and spelling lessons that take your little one from A, B, Cs to reading chapter books!
Although critics call it formulaic, IEW's writing program uses the most ingenious approach to writing I've ever seen, giving students more help at first, then guiding them toward more and more creativity and independence. This focused study of writing places all of the concerns of writing-structure, style and mechanics - in their proper hierarchy. Each of the nine units builds on the last, alternating between creative writing and academic writing. Your student will be more than prepared for college after graduating with IEW and his writing will be anything but formulaic.
The many writing courses IEW offers allow for options in all levels-level A (grades 3-6), level B (grades 6-9), and level C (9-12). Choose from the following:
Option 1: Structure and Style for Students, which includes video instruction for your student. Option 2: Teaching Writing with Structure and Style, the teacher's training course. This video course prepares you, the teacher, to teach your students using any IEW materials you choose. IEW has a plethora of available materials, or use your student's lessons in history, science, art, music or Bible as source material for writing.
Option 3: Once you've taking the TWSS teacher course, you also have the option to use any of the themed writing workbooks, each containing about 30 lessons, a full-year of study.
IEW's Fix It Grammar is a comprehensive, six-year, incremental grammar program. Each lesson requires your student to apply what she has learned in previous lessons and each year of study builds on the last. This program is recommended for grades 3-12.
The Phonetic Zoo spelling program will take your students through a review of 47 phonetic spelling rules, in three levels. Level A can be started as soon as grade 4, Level B is middle school, or grades 6-8, and level C is high school level, grades 9-12. I allow my students to spend two or more years passing each level. The whole program takes them about 6 years to complete. Once your high schooler has passed all the Phonetic Zoo levels, there is an option to move on to SAT vocabulary studies with IEW's Advanced Spelling & Vocabulary program.
Click here for more information or for help using these materials in your home school.
Courses are available taught by Mrs. Melissa Sweeney, MA English, if you'd like your student to receive Language Arts instruction from an experienced English teacher and home educator.
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