Rose Academy: IEW Fix It! Grammar Review

Fix It! Grammar has always been a huge help in our homeschool. Actually, all products created by the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) have been huge helps in our homeschool. I always enjoy teaching from the teacher manuals, and the student materials are always top quality. For this review, my high school girls were able to gain access to book 3 in the Fix It! Grammar series. I have been crossing my fingers that this product was going to come up for us to review this year, as I have been anxiously been waiting to have my girls work through this level, which is based on the story titled Frog Prince, or Just Desserts.

We were given the teacher's manual, which includes a copy of the student book as a free pdf download. We were also given a spiral bound copy of the student book, which was really nice to only need to print one copy since both of my high school girls are using this. You can purchase a spiral bound copy of the student on the IEW website, but if you have access to a reliable printer with ink that doesn't cost a fortune, then the teacher's guide is really all you need since it does include a pdf download of the student book. It's super simple to create an account on the IEW website (or login to your existing account). Once you have accessed the download, you are free to print it for your family. IEW has always had a very generous copyright policy in that it allows you to make copies for your immediate family. For me that means that I purchase a product one time and then simply print it for each student as they are ready for the level.

IEW Fix It! Grammar teacher manuals are always very thorough and contain enough information to help the teacher knowledgeably answer student questions without needing to have an entire degree in grammar. In addition to showing how the student sentences should be correctly marked, the teacher's manual goes into some depth of information for the teacher to explain to students if you wish. There is even quite a bit of additional information included, just in case you have an especially eager student, who has a thirst for additional grammar knowledge. My kids prefer to just get the basics in and be done with it. Surely they aren't the only ones, right?

Since my girls are currently working in book 3, I can speak to the progression of the curriculum as my some of my children have worked through the first and second books in the series as well. It is strongly suggested that each student start in book one, especially young students. Each book is based on a popular tale. As students work through the program, they also happen to copy down the entire story in their own words after they have found and fixed all of the errors.

Book one teaches the student the process of Fix It! Grammar and how the program works. Students work through the story of the Nose Tree as they learn to mark basic punctuation and learn to identify nouns, pronouns, adjectives, etc. Each day's sentences in book one are short and simple. Students learn to capitalize the beginning of a sentence and to put end marks at the end of sentences. Skills are taught for identifying when a new paragraph needs to begin.
Book two builds on the skills and grammar concepts taught in book one and works through the story of Robin Hood. About halfway through book two, students are becoming pretty proficient with grammar concepts like finding prepositional phrases and marking and labeling dependent and independent clauses. They should be able to decide when a new paragraph is to begin as well as identify the subject and verb of each phrase. I can honestly say that after book two, a student should be pretty proficient in grammar and able to point out basic punctuation and usage issues.
Book three does a tiny bit of review in the first week but quickly dives into the nitty gritty issues of grammar including punctuation and misspelled words. The passages in this level are beginning to get longer. The passage might be several sentences long and the vocabulary words are more complex. Students mark more challenging mistakes including capital letters throughout the sentence, not just at the beginning of a sentence.

Throughout each book, elements of style are taught. Students are encouraged to choose the strongest verb or a quality adjective. They are also taught the different types of sentence openers, which reinforces these lessons that are taught in the IEW writing lessons. However, this grammar program is considered a stand along program. You most definitely do not need to use it in conjunction with the writing lessons. The teacher's manual definitely has enough information to help your student learn these stylistic techniques.

My high-school girls are pretty much independent in their completion of each day's assignment. I do allow them to have access to the teacher's manual but only after they have found and labeled all of the required elements that they can on their own. The top of each weekly lesson lists the elements that are required to be practiced. I literally teach my own kids and any students in any class I might be teaching to go through the list one at a time and mark each element every day. There are 4 assignments on each page--one per day. When the student is finished correcting the passage or sentence, they re-copy the day's work correctly.

For this example you can see that for each passage, students are expected to define the bolded vocabulary words--I have mine write the definition to the side in the margin. They need to decide if it is the beginning of a new paragraph, mark any capital letters, prepositional phrases, mark the subjects and verbs, mark and label the main clause and the dependent clause, look for spelling and usage errors, and mark punctuation errors. After day four they are instructed to choose specific elements of style.

One of the biggest reasons that I enjoy teaching grammar this way is because it consists of simple, short, effective lessons. Once the student gets into a groove with the material, they really should be able to complete these lessons in about 10-15 minutes. The consistent, repetitive work gradually increases in volume and skill level so the student doesn't get frustrated with too much thrown at them at one time. The consistent practice leads to mastery of the grammar material, which is the ultimate goal. This method also mimics many standardized tests where mistakes are embedded into sentences and the student needs to choose which one is correct or incorrect. I find this method to be very effective and efficient. There are six levels total in the Fix It! Grammar series. At this point, it seems that my high school girls will complete at least three levels in the series. I do feel that this would be sufficient. This level has caused them to think about grammar more than they have in the previous books, but the gradual practice helps the skills to become automatic. The additional skill of copying the passage correctly by hand also helps their brain to capture the image of the passage copied correctly.

In addition to the free student book pdf download are two e-audio talks: Mastery Learning and But, but, but ... What about Grammar? If you have never had an opportunity to listen to any of the talks by Andrew Pudewa, this is an excellent opportunity. I like to load the talks onto my phone and listen while I'm working around the house, cleaning, or preparing dinner.

This grammar curriculum is complete and simple to use. The teacher's manual costs $19 and include the free pdf download of the student book plus two e-audio talks. If you need to purchase a copy of the student book already printed and spiral bound, that is an additional $15. Have you used Fix It! Grammar by the Institute for Excellence in Writing? What levels have you used? If you'd like to read about other levels in the series, be sure to check out the Homeschool Review Crew blog for more details.

Curious what other reviewers had to say about this product? Head on over to the Homeschool Review Crew blog to read all the reviews.