I wrote about Writing with Ease and now that I have the Institute for Excellence in Writing DVDs on loan (and got the syllabus used but in great condition for $14 vs. the $33 new) I prefer it – I’m returning Writing with Ease. If you do First Language Lessons for grammar then you’ve already learned about copywork, dictation, and narration exercises. WWE is the same thing but with an outline of how often to do it and what length you should expect for kids between 1st and 4th grade. It only has a couple samples for each year and the rest is just weekly reminders. I’m glad I only paid $17 for it (vs. the $30 list price!!) but I don’t think it’s worth keeping. It had a couple good points – have kids practice a bit every day to help them get use to write and exercising those muscles. But the Institute for Excellence in Writing has the “Excellence in Writing: Structure & Style” DVD and syllabus and it covers 1st grade through high school in far, far more detail and with better exercises, I think. (I wish the names were not so similar, I find it confusing.)
Anyhoo, we’re going with the DVD/syllabus program that teaches the adult how to teach writing instead of the one teacher’s book that just says, “Have your kids do copywork & narration every day for 1st & 2nd grade, add dictation for 3rd and 4th grade.” I didn’t think that was worth $17. 🙂
However, I am loving the IEW DVD program a lot, many notes to come.
I’m so glad you’re liking IEW! We’re on Week 6 and I am so glad we found this. Or were recommended it…I can’t even remember how I came about it now.
I do like it, though I’m still sorting out how to do it best with the different age levels. I had the oldest three do an outline with me from a fable and that went well but C needs more depth so I had him do an outline and paragraph summary (with topic sentence and “clincher” sentence) using a multi paragraph biography. He did a great job composing it (and I did the writing for him so he would just focus on the composing from notes and not stress the handwriting.) But that was actually Unit 4 so I’m jumping around!