WS, IEW SWI B, Please help me decide

[Peggy in Va]

I posted this on the K8 board, lots of views but no responses, so I thought I'd try here. Hopefully there is someone that has been in this situation.

Someone please help me decide on which writing program to use. I am planning on using R&S 6 for grammar, but I think I need something different for writing. But then again, maybe I don't. I just don't know.

Here is my situation. We are bringing dss back home next yr. and they will be in 6th and 7th grade. I want to use R&S 6 for grammar because younger ds will be in 6th and the older one hasn't had enough formal grammar to go into 7.

The problem is, older ds can write fairly well. He has not really learned how to outline, much less a key word outline, but he has been required to do research on a topic. He does this by reading the material and then just sitting down and writing. The requirements for the research papers he has been assigned have always been a page to a page and a half, single sided, double spaced.

Ideally I would be able to use this program with both dss so I don't have to teach them separately. Teaching writing is not one of my strong areas, but I am quite capable of reading someone else's work and critiquing it. I have looked at WS, IEW SWI B, and several others, but I am still at a loss. Perhaps one of these is not what I should be considering. Again, I am at a loss.

Following is an example of a paper he had to do for his art class. This is not the whole paper, just an excerpt from it. After he wrote the first draft I did offer opinions (but not so many that it would no longer be his paper) on paragraph flow, such as, this might work better up there. I also found myself explaining to him that while the info he had about the artists was good, he really didn't have a great deal on the style of art, which, after all, was the topic of the paper.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

TIA


Some people say Cubism is ugly and dishonors art; I disagree. Cubism is a way of seeing into someone or something in such a way as to understand people or objects. It took Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque years to create the fascinating art of Cubism.

Pablo Picasso preferred to paint people, mainly women, and liked to change his way of painting every few years. He was the type of artist who never could find his way of painting. For him, it was just a new fad.

Georges Braque liked to paint simple things, like landscapes, buildings, or even a bowl of fruit. He was a new artist who worked his way up the ladder. When he was young, he was terrible at art, but after of years of practice he became one of the founders of Cubism.

Cubism is a style of art which takes the shape of familiar objects, such as people, landscapes, and simple things, and transforms them into geometric shapes. It can include squares, triangles, cones, but almost never curves. It is very colorful and bright, or sometimes just black and white. The shapes and the colors jump out at you and take time to interpret. It took ages to develop and started with one man.

[Laurie4b]

I think if you use IEW, you should purchase the regular IEW program. It comes with a few CD's directed at students. It's my understanding that the Student Intensives are meant to be used in addition to, or after, the basic program.

We have the basic IEW program. We use it because one of my kids has dysgraphia, and it's broken up into bite-sized pieces that he can do. The DVD's are the heart of the program. They teach the parent how to teach writing. It also does not offer you anything but sample writing assignments, which to me is a strength because it teaches you to pull your own assignments out of your other work. It also gives you the encouragement to go ahead and help your child all you need to until they "get it." You do a lot of modeling that way. (ie You don't worry that it's not "his paper".) You can resell them when you're done and recover most of your $$. I do like the structure part of IEW, but am much less enamored of the style part.

Rod and Staff actually has a good bit of writing in it. Rod and Staff 5 has outlining and writing a report. I prefer IEW's method for putting together a good report, but R&S's outlining is the more traditional way to do it and will certainly work. The trick is to apply what you are learning to other subject areas, not just limit it to what Rod and Staff offers as topics.

Your son's writing is not at all bad for his age; he just needs to learn how to pull it together. You could try teaching him a standard 5 paragraph essay.

[FloridaLisa]

Peggy,

My middle dc have used SWI-B and my olders SWI-C and the CC. I am also using the American History theme-based lessons with one of mine this year. I looked at WS waaaaaay back when we first began homeschooling but I didn't like it and we didn't stick with it.

Based on what I know of the two programs, IEW will give you much more structure and format for the writing assignments than WS. IEW also uses models, so the student learns to make a key word outline from the model and then write his/her own version. While I'm not crazy about the strict rules for dress ups and sentence openers, I understand the theory behind them and was willing to tolerate that last year. :tongue_smilie: (I do think it can lead some kids to use adverbs and openers incorrectly, but that just needs to be watched by the teacher and corrected.)

Another benefit of SWI-B is that Pudewa does the teaching for you. He will teach the lesson and give the assignment on the DVD, as well as read some student examples. He is very encouraging and engages the students well, and it comes across on the video. You, then, just need to edit and work through your dc's papers with them.

IEW's unlocks the mystery of writing for many kids and breaks down the writing process into manageable steps. And for parents that don't have time or don't feel the ability to teach writing, the lessons are accessible via the DVDs. I worry that the tight structure and strict formatting rules will create formulaic writing with no personal style if used year after year; but that's my *fear* and I have no evidence for that. Because of my concern, though, we use other writing programs as well.

Okay, that was more than you asked! Despite my *concern* I saw that IEW worked last year with all of my dc and a class of middleschoolers. It gave my less natural writers the keys for writing and allowed my natural writers to develop their writing at their level. In fact, as I'm now recalling their work, my natural writers' personal style was quite apparent despite the models, rules and format. I've given IEW a thumbs up to many, many folks. I don't think you'll regret using it.

HTH,
Lisa

[Kathy in MD]

I, too, endorse IEW. I've started by using one of the theme based programs. It's good for my ds because it breaks down all the steps of writing and guides him through it. It teaches organization and how to write a good 3 and 5 paragraph report. It teaches how to add detail and dialogue. I've learned a lot personally from it as well.

[Peggy in Va]

Thanks ladies.

You've given me some things to think about. I suppose my concern is that he was in ps for 2 yrs and I know they didn't do hardly any grammar there, and this past yr he's been in private. They have been working on grammar, but they don't really start pushing it or writing until 8th grade when they finally do some "intensive" thing. So I guess I just feel, based on where I remember my oldest ds being at this point, that he's behind in his writing. Maybe he's not as far behind as I thought.

Thanks again.