Language Arts with IEW {TOS Crew Review}

We love the amount of products we get to review and try out from the TOS Crew!  Today I’m going to share one of those products with you.  This one came to us from Institute for Excellence in Writing(IEW).  We received Deluxe Combo Teacher/Student Writing Package Level A Fix it! Grammar 1 and 2.  This whole package we received is geared towards grades 3-5 and then the parent teacher as well.

Just telling you I received the Deluxe Combo doesn’t tell you much does it?  This is a TON of material!  Right now on their website it’s listed as being $299 for it all!  That tells you this is a lot of material for helping your child learn Language Arts with IEW.  I can’t say enough good things about this Deluxe Combo.  If you’re not sure how to teach Language Arts this is for you.  If your children and struggling with language arts, this is for you too!

Here’s what we received:

1. Teaching Writing: Structure and Style DVD Set with Premium Subscription
2. Seminar Workbook
3. Student Writing Intensive DVD’s Level A, including the Structure and Style overview
4. Student Notebook with handouts and lesson plans
5. Fix-It Grammar books 1 and 2 with e-book student downloads
6. A Word Write Now
7. Portable Walls

This is a ton of stuff!  Seriously, I really can’t even begin to tell you all about how you can use this stuff.  You’re going to have to trust me when I say it’s all super useful!

I’m going to talk about these in no specific order but we will get to them all.

The first one I want to touch on is the Portable Walls.  I love this.  It saves wall space which we lack.  You have a tri-fold laminated supplement to help with teaching.  It’s all the posters most curriculums give you but on this neat little tri-fold that you can set out and use and then put back on a shelf.  You can easily fold it to get to the page you’re using and let it sit next to you child, on their desk, or pin it to a board.  Definitely love this little teacher’s helper as I don’t have the wall space for what I already have!

Next is the A Word Write Now.  This is a thesaurus type book for your student to use.  It’ll help your child find some new words to use instead of saying the same one over and over.  My kids love to write but they don’t use the vocabulary they have all the time.  This is a great way to circle a word and ask them to change it to something else.  Instead of small go look up small in your book and see what you can find is a great way to have them learn to not only use but spell correctly new words.

I’ve reviewed Fix it! Grammar before, you can find that in my Grammar for Kids post, but we’ll discuss it here a bit too!  I received the spiral bound versions of the Teacher’s Book for Levels 1 and 2.  Those are Level 1: The Nose Tree and Level 2: Robin Hood.  The student books are downloadable e-books so you can download and print those off.  This is great for me so I can download and then print more than one copy for multiple children.  You can purchase the student books in spiral bound format too.  The main principle of Fix-It! Grammar is for your student to read a passage and find the errors.  They then fix them.  Using this method they are reading a story and fixing it as they go.  Pretty ingenious as they think they’re having fun while they do school!  If you’re not sure where your child should start you can have them take a placement test.  These are geared for grades 3-5.

Next up is the Student Writing Intensive: Level A.  This has a few different parts.  You get a binder and a packet with pages.  The pages are the handouts and weekly lesson plans.  We also then got the DVD series.  This is a 4 dvd writing course for elementary students.  The instructor is Mr. Andrew Pudewa.  He’s easy to listen to and fun enough to hold the kids attention.  The student pages spell out where on the DVD you should be each day so you’re not driving yourself crazy trying to find where to go.  This is a 30 week course.  Each lesson is 30-40 minutes.  You only listen to one lesson per week though and then do the writing work for the other days.  It’s really a super simple and easy program for the kids to do.  The lessons are fun to listen to and keep them engaged, the work doesn’t seem hard and definitely doesn’t bore them.  It’s a program that they enjoy doing.

The last item in our kit is for the teacher.  That’s me!  I have a class to do.  This is a 12 dvd course taught again by Mr Andrew Pudewa but it is to teach us how to teach our children.  It’s set up as a course and like the student course you have a binder with all the information you’re going to need as well.  We also received a Premium Subscription which includes online streaming video and e-resources to make your learning easier.  Then you can watch and listen when you are on the go as well.  This is really a huge resource.  There is so much to learn here.  I have not finished going through the whole thing yet.  This is teaching me how to teach my children to write.  You’re building a foundation with your children and it’s so important that you know how to do this.  Love how this is teaching and can’t wait to get through it.  I have a feeling I’ll be going through this several times over the years!

I have to say right now that this is probably one of the hardest reviews I’ve ever written.  It’s hard because there is SO MUCH stuff to write about in our Language Arts with IEW package that I really had no clue where to begin.  I hope I’ve done them justice and shared what we truly loved as well as the ins and outs of everything!  Feel free to ask questions you have in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them!

Check out all the other reviews on the Main TOS Review Crew Blog to see all of the different products people were allowed to review and what they thought!  Also connect with IEW on Facebook, Vimeo, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, Google +, and their blog!