Structure and Style® for Students Year 1 Level B from Institute for Excellence in Writing® Review

{Disclaimer:  I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review.  I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.  This post contains affiliate links.}


If you have been in the homeschool community for any amount of time, chances are good that you have at least heard of the Institute for Excellence in Writing® (or IEW® for short) and their writing curriculum.  We were so blessed to receive their Structure and Style® for Students Year 1 Level B (grades 6-8) to use in our own homeschool!

D and C with their binders.

C (8th grade) and D (6th grade) will be using this program throughout this school year.  A, B and D have all participated in IEW through our weekly homeschool CoOp in the past.  A and D have taken 1 year, while B has taken 2 years.  C has never taken an IEW writing course so this will be his first time using the program.

What's included in this course?  Our physical kit contained a teacher's manual, a student packet and binder, and a card with a unique code for forever digital streaming video instruction.

Our physical kit

Inside the student binder are tabs so everything in the student packet gets organized as you progress on throughout the year.

While there is an option to purchase DVDs if desired, I love that we have unlimited online access to all the videos for our entire family so I don't have to store them or worry about misplacing them.  The student packet is consumable but can be reproduced within your immediate family.  I went ahead and ordered an extra student binder and packet this go around instead of making copies to make my life easier and to give C and D each their own binder.  IEW makes this process easy!

C and D's student binders

What is IEW® and how does their writing program work?  This program uses a unique approach by providing structure for students to learn.  The goal is to help students build confidence in their writing while also moving towards more independence and creativity in their own writing.  The nine structural models used are note taking, writing paragraphs, stories, simple reports, writing from pictures, research reports, creating writing, essays, and critiques.  These models will give students the tools to organize any type of composition they may come across.  I personally love the stylistic techniques that students learn incrementally to help develop more sophisticated writing - these include strong verbs, quality adjectives, sentence openers, various clauses and more!

This course is divided into 24 weeks and is easy to use.  I say this because I feel like most people are intimidated by writing programs and teaching writing but IEW is user friendly and is organized extremely well.  They have put the work into this program and it shows!  

 

 You guys know I love a good Scope and Sequence.  Above is the first page.  It tells you which week each stylistic technique will be introduced as you can see that the -ly adverb appears in week 2 and the who/which clause appears in week 3.  I really appreciate the literature suggestions as well.

D and C with the 1st literature book suggestion, The Twenty-One Balloons

There are daily assignments for each week.  They even show you how to adapt this schedule for a one-day-a-week program, a two-or three-day-a-week program or a four-or-five-day-a-week program.  These schedules give you a lot of flexibility to use this program how it fits your needs best.  I really appreciate the lesson plans for teachers!

Above you can see the lesson overview for Unit 1, Week 1

You can see that students will watch the 1st video this week broken into two parts.  Students will write about their home and save their paper for the last week of the program (it's a before and after type experiment).  They will write a KWO, or key word outline, from a few sources with the class (on the video).  And they will tell about that source from their KWO.

The video dashboard is easy to navigate as you just select the video you need.

Andrew Pudewa is the instructional teacher on the videos.  He is funny and super easy to relate to.  Above, you can see him walking students through the process of creating their first KWO.

A KWO example with the Source Text

I also want to mention that IEW has a companion grammar program that fits extremely well alongside Structure and Style and that is their Fix It! Grammar program.  You may remember our review of their 1st book in the series, The Nose Tree.  We enjoyed it so much that we will be using their 2nd book, Robin Hood this year alongside this program.

Our Fix It! Grammar Book 2 Set

I really like that the Structure and Style daily schedule includes the Fix It! Grammar program as well.

I mentioned that I'm using this Level with C and D.  I also went ahead and purchased Level C (which is in post production) to use with A and B this year for high school as well.  I'm hoping to receive it at the end of this month.  If it's not obvious, I'm a huge IEW® fan!  If you are looking for a well rounded writing curriculum for your students, I cannot think of a program that I would recommend more.

Be sure to click on the banner below to visit the Homeschool Review Crew blog to read even more reviews of IEW®'s Structure and Style® for Students Year 1 Level B as well as reviews for their Structure and Style® for Students Year 1 Level A (Grades 3-5) and stay tuned for reviews of their Structure and Style® for Students Year 1 Level C (High School).

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Rhythm & Writing Review

I want to share with you a super fun handwriting program for kids that I have been using with F, Rhythm & Writing with The Get Write Crew  from Rhythm & Writing.  This program uses music and lyrics to help kids remember the correct letter formations!  We were sent a physical book with dry erase overlay along with a lyric video subscription.

F with his book

The Get Write Crew includes Big Country bear who plays the guitar, Hip-Hop frog the lyricist, Jazzy Faith bunny who sings vocals and plays keyboards, and Mo' Rock monkey who plays the drums.  This program uses catchy phrases to help kids remember how to properly write their letters.

More about Big Country and Jazzy Faith

More about Hip-Hop and Mo' Rock

One of the first things to do with this program is to take the pre-assessment.  It is located in the workbook itself but you can also complete a simple form online and they will email you a link to print a copy of the pre-assessment.  The pre-assessment is designed so that you can determine which letters your child is having difficulty with and then you can either focus on the episodes that include the letters of difficulty or work through the entire program.

 Here is F's pre-assessment page

I was impressed with F's pre-assessment.  You can see that his capital N needs a little work.  I chose to let F pick which letters and videos he wanted to work on, making it really fun for him.  So he is working through the workbook and we are using the website (Instructional Videos) as a supplement.  F is using a transparency sheet in his workbook with a dry-erase marker so he can redo the pages over and over as he wishes.  It is recommended to paper clip a transparency onto the workbook sheets to practice until the student is ready to write in the book.  You can repeat each episode or lesson until the student has mastery or is close to mastery.  F loves the lyric videos and doesn't get tired of practicing his handwriting.

 F watching some of the fun videos (E and G joined in the fun)

 Listening to the videos

 Listening to the videos

The catchy tunes include visual letter formation instruction as well.

Parents and teachers will need to read the stories in the workbook to students who can't read.  The videos can be watched by the students and require less parent-involvement but I enjoyed keeping an ear out and listening to what F was learning.  You can show your student the videos and then move to the stories in the workbook or vice versa - there is a lot of flexibility!

Watching the video on K

The story about K from the workbook.

 Working through the workbook page for K

Almost done

 F with his completed K workbook page.

Watching the video for the letter c.

 F working on c's.

Story from workbook about L, t, and i.

 F working on L's.

Watching the Video for g

You can see his happy face in this photo!

Working through the g page in his workbook.

After all the episodes are completed, your student can complete the post-assessment at the end of the workbook to see all of their progress!  We haven't finished the program yet but I am looking forward to comparing F's post-assessment with his pre-assessment.

Example of the letter review

Right before the post-assessment there is also a great letter review for all the uppercase letters followed by all the lowercase letters.  This is a great way to check for skill level and mastery.

The goal of this program is to really teach kids how to properly form letters at a young age.  Improper letter formation can cause children to write slower, their hands tire easily, and they have trouble learning cursive.  The lyric videos with catchy phrases and repetition for children help them remember how to form letters correctly while having fun.

Be sure to click on the banner below to visit the Homeschool Review Crew blog to read more reviews of Rhythm & Writing.

I look forward to finishing this program with F and seeing all the improvement he makes!