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teachingmyown
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I am wondering about building a high school program around IEW. They have the literature guides, two of which are self-directed as well as the spelling/vocabulary course and then the history-based and theme-based writing programs. Has anyone used their resources extensively?
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Molly
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teachingmyown
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Bump. 
Anyone used these guides?
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Molly
wife to Court & mom to ds '91, dd '96, ds '97, dds '99, '01, '03, '06, and dss '07 and 01/20/11
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stellamaris
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Yes, we used the basic IEW Structure and Style Levels B and C. We also used the Ancient History writing program. My older dd, in high school at the time, used the Level C program. It worked well, but it is a very structured approach to writing. It focuses almost exclusively on expository writing, which is great for the SAT. She did very well on the SAT as a result of this program. However, I do think for high school you should also add some narrative and persuasive writing assignments, as well as some work with poetry. High school is also a great time to do some "in the style of ..." assignments. For instance, you read a book by Hemingway, and then ask them to write a short story "in the style" of Hemingway. It is a wonderful tool to get them to focus on the effect of the myriad of different writing techniques that authors use. I really like IEW and would definitely recommend it as a basic writing program, but I think you'll want to add in some other elements. The Seton English 11 program is another very excellent option. All my older children used this in either 11th or 12th grade. I would suggest IEW first (10th-11th), and then Seton for the senior year (just because IEW is more basic and also more directed to the SAT, which they should take at the end of their junior year).
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Caroline
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teachingmyown
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Caroline,
These are the courses from IEW that I was talking about:
American Literature
British Literature
Intro to Literary Analysis
and then there is The Grammar of Poetry.
I could see that I would perhaps still need to do some other writing like you said if they don't address it in any of these courses. But I am wondering if these would be a work to cover both literary analysis along with writing. If you can take a few minutes to look it over, I would love your opinion.
Dd already writes poetry and I think will be good at any persuasive type stuff. Right now, she is re-writing a chapter in a novel that her older brother's girlfriend is reading. Dd thinks it is poorly written so she is out to prove she can do it better! 
What she really wants to do is handpick the books she wants to read and have me buy individual study guides for her. I am not sure how to make sure that she is getting a balanced variety. So many books that make the "lists" for high school would be books she would skip if given the chance, such as Beowolf, Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby. Are there "must read" books, or is it okay to pick and choose?
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Molly
wife to Court & mom to ds '91, dd '96, ds '97, dds '99, '01, '03, '06, and dss '07 and 01/20/11
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Carole N.
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Molly, I have used the Intensive Program and we are now watching the Structure and Style. We have done the program before when the dc were younger, so it is a review for us. The video is for the teachers, but I think that it is good that the dc are watching it as well.
I do not have any of the writing programs except for the
Fairy Tales and the Poetry. This year I am focusing more on the grammar with Fix-It and essays with The Elegant Essay. I have also have High School Essay Intensive which I have glanced at but not really delved into.
There are so many programs out there that your really cannot go wrong. It is just a question of what your budget can allow ... 
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stellamaris
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teachingmyown wrote:
Dd already writes poetry and I think will be good at any persuasive type stuff. Right now, she is re-writing a chapter in a novel that her older brother's girlfriend is reading. Dd thinks it is poorly written so she is out to prove she can do it better!
What she really wants to do is handpick the books she wants to read and have me buy individual study guides for her. I am not sure how to make sure that she is getting a balanced variety. So many books that make the "lists" for high school would be books she would skip if given the chance, such as Beowolf, Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby. Are there "must read" books, or is it okay to pick and choose?
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Molly, I'll try to look over those links this weekend when I am back in VA and have unlimited internet access...but for now I would just say that you really have to "pick and choose" because there are LOTS of great books out there that are recommended for high school students. You might consider a library run to check out one of the many books that have reading lists for college bound students. What I did, if it's any help, was to gear the literature selections to my history time periods. I also tried to make sure that my students were exposed to several genres: poetry, narrative history, mythology, autobiography, drama, science fiction, short stories, perhaps some philosophy, and some novels written from various points of view (1st person, 3rd person, as well as those told by several characters from different points of view...of which The Woman in Whitewas the first and it's never on any lists that I know of!) There are other genre options, too. Using my approach, we covered "British literature" in two years. First year related to the early medieval period and we read Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Canterbury Tales, among others. Next year was the modern era, and we touched on Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations), Dickens, Wilke Collins, Austen (more for the girls), and some others (I am in a rental house here in DE now and I don't have access to any of my notes or stacks of books that serve as my "memory"  ) American Literature coincided with American History. HTH!
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Caroline
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teachingmyown
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Thanks Caroline! I look forward to your opinion.
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Molly
wife to Court & mom to ds '91, dd '96, ds '97, dds '99, '01, '03, '06, and dss '07 and 01/20/11
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TracyQ
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I heard Joseph Pearce, a guest on Marcus Grodi's The Journey Home, who I just love, at our Catholic Homeschool Conference here in Buffalo, NY this past May. He spoke about some literature guides he has written, and I was EXCITED about them!!!! I got to meet Mr. Pearce, and what a blessing that was! He's a really nice man, and what a life he's had!
Joseph Pearce Literature Guides
He's written a few, and I hope he'll write more!!!
Pride and Prejudice
Hamlet
Frankenstein
King Lear
Wuthering Heights
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Blessings!
Tracy
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Tracy Q.
wife of Marty for 20 years, mom of 3 wonderful children (1 homeschool graduate, 1 12th grader, and a 9th grader),
homeschooling in 15th year in Buffalo, NY
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teachingmyown
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Thanks Tracy. I will look into those. Do you know if they are literature guides in the sense that they have questions and assignment suggestions, or does he just give an analysis of each work?
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Molly
wife to Court & mom to ds '91, dd '96, ds '97, dds '99, '01, '03, '06, and dss '07 and 01/20/11
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ALmom
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Carole,
I have been eavesdropping here trying to figure out some things for my to be 9th grader. He is not a natural writer by any stretch and language mechanics are a real struggle for him - including spelling and punctuation. I really don't care about creativity at this point - just competency.
If you don't have any IEW programs at all and a very challenged writer - what things are needed to get started. I need grammar, spelling and how to write stuff. I am not worried about having enough lit or history or stuff to write on as we are signed up for Kolbe including enhanced evaluation service so I'll have more than enough potential reading/writing assignments. He is fully capable of easily doing all the reading (he has already read a lot of that for the fun of it) - it is the writing I'm worried about. He is an extremely independent fellow so the more I'm out of it, the better. His vocabulary is really fine - just cannot spell it. I think he has a huge gap in that we were unable to do copywork or dictation with him for a long time - so anything involving those skills that are simultaneously addressing writing, grammar and spelling would be ideal.
I hope you don't mind giving me a clue where to go. Thanks and sorry if I'm hijaaking a bit. (I posted over on another post (about writing programs) as well.
Janet
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stellamaris
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First of all, Janet, let me respond to your questions. It sounds like you want to focus on mechanics? Is your son very visual? If he is, I would use diagramming to discuss grammar. You don't need a deep, involved grammar course, just enough that he can properly identify main parts of sentences, independent and dependent clauses, and parallel constructions. These are essential in order to punctuate properly. One good remedial book for punctuation is Jensen's Punctuation, which is very to-the-point and addresses most of the major punctuation rules your son needs to know. Once he has learned a rule, always keep him accountable for that in his writing. I would begin the year only correcting those errors for which he has studied the rule; when remedial work is necessary, it is too discouraging to correct everything at once. Once you see that he has the rule "down cold", then add a new rule and correct for both the old and new rule. As you go through the year, you should begin to see a lot of improvement in his punctuation. He needs to be writing at least 2-3 times a week (it doesn't need to be long, just 1-3 pages), so he gets plenty of practice. As for spelling, some children are natural spellers and some are not. A good remedial spelling program is Spelling Power. I'd also let him do his papers on the computer and use spell check. Another cheaper option is this ESL website that has lists of commonly misspelled words, and lots more. I didn't read all of the words, so maybe you should check over it before you use it! Again, once he learns the correct spelling of a word, or once he learns a phonetic spelling rule, hold him accountable. Use the words in his own papers as spelling lists, too. That way you are focusing specifically on what he needs to know. If you keep a list of them in a notebook, you may be able to find patterns that indicate he has not learned a particular spelling rule, so that is helpful, too. HTH!
Books~ I looked over the IEW links. Those look great! I hadn't seen them before, but they are very well done. A few of my thoughts (for what they're worth ):
1. I'd definitely do the Intro to Literary Analysis first.
2. I'd intersperse The Grammar of Poetry throughout the HS years, just because a year of just poetry would be really intense! Even I, who love poetry, would not want to do that! However, some 3-4 week "units" would be nice, and would break up the very intense reading schedule of the American and British Literature programs.
3. The literature programs require a high level of self-discipline and motivation on the part of the student. They have tons of wonderful Internet resources, but not very much instruction. They are almost completely independent study programs (which is good and bad...good because it saves you time and effort, bad if your child doesn't do the work and then 3 months later you suddenly realize it! It can happen!) If your student is already a very strong reader and a good writer and is reasonably self-disciplined, it looks like it would work well. I would like to see more discussion questions to help the student draw out the analogies, references, and underlying themes of the literary works, but you can include these using Cliff Notes or some similar type of study guide.
4. I'm not certain how well this would prepare your student for the AP English test. I would definitely ask around for hs'ers who had their students take the AP tests and ask them how they prepared.
Overall, looks good for a motivated student with good reading skills. The Intro to Literary Analysis looks good for most 8th-9th grade students. HTH!
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Caroline
Wife to dh 30+ yrs,ds's 83,85,89,dd's 91,95,ds's 01,01,02,grammy to 4
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ALmom
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Caroline:
Thanks for the suggestions. I have both of the books you recommended. Spelling Power didn't work with us, but I can continue with Writing Road and using the commonly misspelled words lists. I have those.
It sounds like maybe using something like these along with Kolbe's enhanced evaluation services may make it work for me. I know I don't want something that doesn't make him hand in a paper frequently or he'll end up taking the entire year to do one short paragraph (I know it has happened). He is a hard, diligent worker, but he just shuts down with writing.
Now to think about copywork/dictation. Thanks for the help.
Janet
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stellamaris
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OOPS! Sorry, Carole, for "scooping" you by answering Janet...I thought she was asking me; often people call me Carol, so I just went ahead and gave an answer. I just realized as I read over the thread that she wasn't asking me, but you!! Didn't mean to be so rude .
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Caroline
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stellamaris
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Janet, I had one other thought after I posted. Would it help your son to separate the composition and writing tasks? Could he narrate his composition into a cassette tape and then type it? Some students have a lot of trouble doing both thinking and writing all at one time. Another way to separate the tasks is to emphasize the importance of a rough draft...basically compose your paper without being concerned about spelling and mechanics, and then when you are pleased with what you have written (in terms of content and wording), rewrite the entire paper correcting for mechanics, spelling, and grammar. Be sure to have him skip lines or triple space the rough draft so there is plenty of room to edit. Sometimes students are intimidated with the writing process because they feel they need to get all of these elements of writing done correctly on the first draft...nobody who writes does that!
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Caroline
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ALmom
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Caroline:
Don't worry, Even when I address a specific person, I welcome anyone who has some information. I'm still curious about Carole's specific experience with Fix It and the Elegant Essay and wondering if she did the STWS program and which level for a highschooler. I'm just looking for something that would help make for a regular doing something and give me some specific guidelines on how to fix one thing at a time.
Your info is helpful as I weigh how much help something will be considering its cost and how I might use something I already have on hand. We've just had some vision/learning issues that we hope have been corrected but the disconnect between reading and vocabulary vs spelling, writing and punctuation is huge (it is no exaggeration to refer to one group through the roof and the other in the basement). I need something that teaches writing from the ground up - but not in a way that insults this childs immense intelligence. (I tried Jensons stuff with my oldest and while some helped a little, we really disliked their grammar - just didn't work for us.) I still have the books sitting on my shelves somewhere so I can pull and look again. I have almost every language and grammar program
known as we have struggled before knowing what the difficulty really was. Now I need to go back and teach what we missed when we were in the midst of the struggles.
Thanks
Janet
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Carole N.
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Caroline, please don't worry. I am always glad to hear all the input that I can. After all, that is part of my decision-making process.
Janet, sorry it has taken me so long to respond. We used IEW with a group of homeschoolers a few years ago. My dc were tutored by another teacher and we worked through the first section of the program. When we moved over here, I bought the high school level of the TWSS. We are currently watching the dvds together (they are designed for the teacher, but I believe that Mary Chris said she had her dc watch with her). This is working out well for us.
I have not used Fix-It or the Elegant Essay. They are on order now. I could not decide between Jensen's and Fix-it and my friend, Linda Nelson at Sacred Heart Books told me to stick with what I had since I knew TWSS worked for us. If I could afford it, I would purchase every grammar book out there, but then again, I have to pay shipping as well. 
Your ds sounds very simular to mine. He will be entering into his junior year in hs and I have noticed a change in his writing. He really seems to care more now about spelling and grammar (hence the renewed effort). He realizes that this is part of what will help in him entering into college life, so he takes it a bit more seriously than before.
This program gives you what you need to teach students to write a paper. They even provide topics because most students have difficulty writing since they can not think of what to write. The program costs a bit, but everything is provided for you. It is a great program from that aspect.
This is not a creative writing program, however. I think that if you want that, you should check out Bravewriter. I think that Jen highly recommends this program. It was discussed in another thread. I will try to find it later. And I am not saying that this program does not teach how to write an essay. I have not used this program (although I would love to have it, but we won't go there right now). I just think that the two programs take a different approach to teaching writing.
IEW has worked for us.
I hope I have answered your questions. Let me know if you have anymore. I have to go to an 80th birthday party now, and the brownies are waiting for me to cute them (they always want me to bring brownies).
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ALmom
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Thank you so much Carole! Yes, what you have shared does help. I am tempted to just order the TWSS level C (is that the correct level). I really don't care a lick about creative writing with this child at the moment. Once he can write the basic essay, then all the rest will take care of itself. He can spin plenty of yarns orally so eventually this will simply be there for him to write. He has no trouble coming up with vivid words. His vocabulary is way up there. Where I am most concerned is for him to get through basic history, lit courses with content essays that are punctuated, coherent and that do not take forever to accomplish.
Caroline:
Thanks for the additional thoughts. We have tried a lot of what you mention. I think for spelling we have decided to continue what is familiar to us - WRR, but using whatever writing program, my husband suggested that we have him print out his paper with the spell check highlights and give it to me, then he can use this to correct his current paper. I will use it for choosing some additinal spelling words - along with any mispelled words on the most frequent lists. Some of the things that occured to us are that he is a very, very visual learner and a number of his misspelled words are the ones he "learned" when he still had a vision problem (ie he wasn't seeing them correctly so who knows what got burned in his memory) and we just have to replace the old memory with a brand new one. This will probably take a lot of repetition seeing the word spelled correctly. The things he misspells are not necessarily harder or easier words, and he seems to spell the words he is learning now better than the ones he learned before.
My dh and I had a great lunch meeting today and I think one of the problems with grammar and my visual learner is that so far everything has been about correcting errors - but then what is imprinted is the wrong approach. So Voyages, Grammar Plus, Editing Adventures and whatever else we've done are all about fixing things that are incorrect. Winston was the only thing that worked - but it didn't have any punctuation training, though it was working from correctly punctuated sentences, at least. They used cards to identify parts of speech. We are both convinced that careful copywork will be the best approach to address this issue. I think I'm going to use whatever we are using and simply have him copy Bible verses (from Kolbe 9), Gettysburg Address and whatever else we might be memorizing from history and other things. Any ideas on copywork - or maybe I should make a seperate thread for that one. We were thinking that he should copy one day - double spaced - then go back and carefully compare his copy to the original the second day and then make corrections on that. We can discuss any punctuation rules and emphasize something different each time. If I am using whatever things I want him to memorize or things he has chosen to memorize, then it should at least not feel like totally extra work.
I'm still thinking about TWSS. I could use the Kolbe writing program but I just think it might not show enough of how to piece thoughts together. It spends more time telling them how to use adjectives and expand vocabulary (neither of which he needs). This was quite helpful for my other son. I don't think it will help this one much.
Thanks for helping me think out loud. Please let me know what basic level of TWSS you think is the correct one.
Janet
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stellamaris
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Just got back from vacation, so sorry I'm not responding until now! I am thinking maybe Level B might be a good place to start. It's geared to middle school, is basic and not difficult, but presents the writing method well. The assignments are not too long. We did one assignment a week, and then you would also have time to do lots of copywork. I think you are right on target with having him copy...we did this with a few of ours, just started at the beginning of the Bible! But I like your idea of incorporating history material and material from other subjects as well. Praying a Memorare for you...may our Lady obtain patience and wisdom for you and diligence and courage for your son as he works to overcome his rocky start!
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Caroline
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stellamaris wrote:
| 4. I'm not certain how well this would prepare your student for the AP English test. I would definitely ask around for hs'ers who had their students take the AP tests and ask them how they prepared. |
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Janet it has been a year. Were you able to learn more about these IEW courses and would they prepare a student for the AP english test?
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Leslie
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ALmom
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Leslie:
I borrowed a friends IEW and looked at it closely without purchasing it. It wasn't really what we needed, so we never did it. We chose to enroll with Kolbe instead, picking from their assortment of lit. along with other things and using EES. That worked great for us!!! This child is an avid reader, so the reading was no problem at all. He had a great EES person who used a lot of color on her responses to him and helped him see what he needed to do. She also sent him synopsis of rules whenever things turned up in writing so he picked up a lot of punctutation from her. We continued with WRR for a while - then began alternating that with lists from his misspelled words. We saw huge leaps forward. For grammar, he is so rule based and we just went with Grammar 7 with Seton.
As far as the question for what would prepare you for AP. I've never even paid attention to this. I figure the world's standards are not mine and I really don't care. We cannot even take the AP test since no one around here would let us test with them anyways.
I have used several of the other materials mentioned - the Catholic Great Books Study Guides for The Ballad of the White Horse is one that comes to mind. They had plenty of material to draw from - questions per chapter, tests that included short answers, identification of quotes by who said them, marking of rhyme scheme, poetic devices, etc., questions related to theme and at least an essay question or two.
With Kolbe, I ended up picking some things from their plans and using some things I want from other sources - so he did essays for theology, history (Declaration Statesmanship) and Catholic Study books type stuff and some of the Kolbe paper topics for the ancients.
Sometimes, my objections to AP materials is that they are extremely dark and depressing, frequently delve into content inappropriate, more often than not have emphasis/interpretations with totally different world views. I am not saying that I never have my children read things on these lists, just that I've come to the conclusion that "experts" aren't always the best judge of what my child should read. I also know they will get their fill of this stuff in a first level college course, and I like to take time in high school to read some of the great works I know no one else will ever emphasize - or if they read it they will distort it. So we read St. Augustine in entirety with one of mine in high school and when someone goes shooting off that he was chauvinistic, we knew exactly which quotes they were twisting out of context (never saw any chauvinistic tendencies at all in the good saint- and dd could intelligently ask that if this were true why did he say xyz (which just happened to be whole chunks of St. Augustine they like to leave out in college if they even bother to read him). Same thing with Venerable Bede - read a short excerpt trying to say he was opposed to Catholicism (huh?)but since we'd read the whole thing in high school, dd got brownie points for asking why he said xyz then in the part of the text they weren't reading as part of class assignment.
I'm also learning to trust my own instinct. Some of the great ancients were read for their rhyme and use of language but we're not reading them in their original - so you lose a lot of that. You have to discern how much you gain by reading the work in translation. We've read some - not saying we ignore booklists, just don't feel confined by them. I am a bit of a maverick.
Janet
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4Real Forums : High School Years and Beyond
Topic: IEW for high school?
