 Hi you guys, my name is Brittany and welcome back to my YouTube channel. You guys in today's video, I am going to finally give you a flip through of IEW Structure and Style Level 1A. You guys, I am so excited about today's video and showing you an in-depth flip through of IEW, what it has to offer, and what writing units my 5th grader is going to be doing for the 2022-2023 homeschooling year. So if you guys are excited to see inside of IEW, then go ahead and stay tuned for today's video. So you guys, if any of you are new here to my channel, again my name is Brittany, I am a homeschooling mom to three girls ages 10, 4, and 2, and I am going into my third year of homeschooling, and you guys, I am not going to lie. Writing has always been the subject in my homeschool that I have been most hesitant and most nervous about because writing is not my strong subject. I am not good at writing. It's so crazy that I was a really good student all throughout my high school years, and I made really, really good grades in everything except for writing, and that has really has always been a struggle area for me. It really has taken me a lot of hard work to get where I'm at as far as my writing and abilities, and I don't want none of my kiddos to struggle, and that is why I wanted to go ahead and use a curriculum that was going to take that pressure off of me from actually teaching writing to my homeschoolers, to my kiddos. I really need that support, and I really knew that writing was going to be a curriculum that I was going to have to outsource at some point. So up until now you guys within our homeschool when it has come to writing, I have taught my daughter simple things like how to structure her paragraphs. We have worked on bibliographies. We've worked on poetry. We have worked on all of the writing skills that I feel confident and comfortable with working on with her. But it comes to a point where like I said before, I was just really ready to let that go, and that was one of my main reasons for choosing IEW Structure and Style. I love the way that it's taking the kiddos through each part of the writing process, and honestly, you guys, I really feel like if I was able to get this form of structure within writing, I feel like I probably would be a stronger writer today. So hopefully by doing this curriculum with my daughter, it's not only going to help her when it comes to her structure form of writing, but it's going to help me as well. So Brielle, my 10-year-old who will be going into the fifth grade, she's very strong in like creative writing. She likes writing about like fantasies. She is really strong in that aspect, but sometimes I find her when I give her a paper or an assignment when I say, okay, Brie, I want you to write a paragraph about this specific topic. Sometimes I'm finding she's clamming up just a little bit when it comes to her still writing in her own voice and adding in information and doing a more structured form of a paper than when she's doing her creative writing. And I don't want my daughter to struggle when it comes to writing in that type of structure format. Writing is so important. I mean she's going to be writing all throughout high school and if she chooses to further her education within college, she's going to be writing all throughout college as well. So I feel like two main subjects that I want to just give her a good foundation in and all of my kiddos a good foundation is going to be math and writing because I know they're going to need those two things to be successful throughout their years. So you guys, I'm done rambling. I'm done talking about all the reasons why I chose IEW. I'm going to flip you guys around. I'm going to show you the writing components and what IEW has to offer. This curriculum is new to my home school. We have not started it yet. So I am not familiar with all of the working parts, but I'm going to do my best to show you guys the insight and how IEW works from the knowledge I have gained so far. Okay, you guys, so this is IEW structuring style level year one. Level A. So this unit right here is geared towards grades three through five. Um, and yeah, you guys, I'm not going to lie. I was kind of hesitant to buy this specific unit for my daughter. I was really tempted to buy the, um, level B for her just because I know she has the stamina to write more and I know she's capable. Um, however, because this is a new program, I kind of rather it be a little bit easier for her than for us to jump in headstrong into, um, year two. But if I do find that she does great with year one level A, we won't do the continuation of level A. We will just go on into a year. We will go on into, um, year one level B for, um, next year. So that is kind of like my plan when it comes to IEW. But, um, yeah, this particular one is geared for grades three through five. So I'm going to go ahead and start off talking about the components. This right here is your student binder that your student is going to be using as they go through IEW structuring style. And this right here is your teacher's manual. So with structuring style, you guys, this is a video based curriculum. So you as a parent, you are going to be kind of hands off when it comes to this curriculum. I am however prepared to help and assist my daughter as we go throughout this curriculum. I will have to grade her assignments and I will have to, uh, help her as she's going along with it. Uh, but hopefully by us doing this, we will learn together with IEW. So IEW was actually taught by Andrew Poudawa. And I have, from what I've heard his video lessons are great. You guys, um, I haven't watched any of the videos by myself yet. I want to kind of save it to watch it with my daughter. And it kind of like be exciting as we start off our new year. So right at the beginning of your teacher's guide, it does have a section where it gives you, um, your access to different downloads that you may want and you may want to use within, um, your homeschooling year. The only thing so far you guys that I have downloaded from the access downloads has been this right here, which is, um, hopefully you guys can see that. Okay. Which is this right here, which is the scope and sequence for a 30 week adapted schedule. So this right here gives me a schedule of how we're going to complete this, um, whole year one level A IEW within 30 weeks. Our homeschooling year is 36 weeks. So I kind of feel like it's kind of cool. It's giving me a six week leeway. So if we want to take a, um, Christmas break and not worry about doing IEW, we will be able to still do that and finish this course within our year of, um, homeschooling. So I'm really excited about this schedule. Um, I'm going to follow it pretty tightly just because, um, I'm new to this, but, um, as we go on, if I find my daughter needs a little bit more time with the longer units, we will kind of just adapt and go from there, but, um, I'm happy that the downloads has this schedule. So I don't have to worry about scheduling it. All they have to do is just write in my planner what unit we're going to be doing and keep on moving from there. So if anything, I would definitely say to go ahead and download the schedule. So you can kind of like know, uh, when and where and how many units you're going to be doing per week, et cetera. Okay. So the units and the contents that my daughter is going to be going over this year is the first unit is note making and outlines. The second unit is writing from notes. The third unit is retelling narrative stories. The fourth unit is summarizing a reference. The, uh, fifth unit is writing from pictures. The sixth unit is summarizing multiple references. And the seventh unit is inventive writing, or I feel like this is probably going to be like a creative writing unit. So she's probably going to really enjoy doing the creative writing unit at the end. Now at the end of the units, they will have like a timed essay assessment that they're going to be doing as well. Kind of like to see how they have done throughout the course of this year. So within, uh, the, um, teacher's guide, they do again have another copy of the schedule that I just showed you. I just like having two copies so I can put this one in my planner and then I have this one in my teacher's guide. So I don't have to always pull this out, but this just gives you the scope and sequence and how many weeks you're going to be doing each unit. So now here goes the meat of IEW. So for week one, it tells us our, our, um, source texts that we're going to be using for our note taking, which is the first unit. It tells me right here, um, what total time we're going to be spending on our video for that week. It also tells me, um, just everything that we need. It has a literature suggestion too, as we're going on the week. So that's what these little portions are right here is literature session, literature suggestions that we can read, um, as we're doing IEW, um, I don't expect to do all of these literature suggestions, but it will be kind of nice for us to do a few. So I might carve out time for us to do a few of these literature suggestions. We actually, um, read Little House on a Prairie this year. So it'll kind of be fun for her to, um, review that story since she's already read it as well as a literature suggestion. So it outlines right here what we're going to be doing for day one, day two, day three, and day four, and five. So I really like how it gives you specifically what we're going to be doing each day. Um, and what's kind of cool is that they already, um, what's kind of cool right here is that they already have scheduled in Fixit Grammar. So I actually have Fixit Grammar, the, um, I have Fixit Grammar right here. Town, town mouse, town mouse and country mouse level two because we are actually going to be completing Fixit Grammar, the old version of level one. So it's kind of cool how it already has the schedule for us to add in Fixit Grammar as well when it comes to our days and how we're going to be doing it. So right here on this section right here is actually the board notes that, um, Andrew Poodlewa is going to be going over with the kids. So if Brielle kind of like, uh, misses it, uh, we can, uh, go back and she can kind of have, I'll have all of the board notes from, uh, his class discussion. Right here is going to be the source text that she's going to be using for her outline. I have a sample right here of it. And then here goes the rest of the source text that she's going to be using. Um, it also gives, these are little highlights that's also going to be within her student binder as well about making notes and outlines. And then it just goes on to the next week. Again, with the video preparation, how long we're going to be doing it, it breaks up what we're going to be doing each and every day. Um, by guidelines, which is really, really cool. Um, I'm hoping to be able to complete this within four days because I do like to reserve my Fridays for, um, fun Fridays for us to do creative things. However, if that last Friday, we are like editing one of her final drafts or something like that. I don't think my daughter will mind. She loves writing and, um, I think she won't mind if we have to do day five, but my goal is for me to utilize just days one through four when we're doing, um, our keyword outline, our source text and things like that. So again, the same four matches, uh, goes along, uh, with IEW, as far as this teacher's guide, it just goes over, um, our schedule at the beginning of the week, the videos and the total times we're going to spend on the videos and, uh, it gives me my source text and it also gives the board notes and that is pretty much how this whole, um, teacher guide looks. So what I'm going to go ahead and do you guys is I'm going to flip through the rest of this, um, teacher's guide and let you see all that's in it. You guys, I forgot to mention that there is a composition checklist at the end of each writing assignment week that goes over what key things that I need to be grading or checking within my daughter's final draft for each week's writing assignment. They will go over the style, the dress ups, the mechanics and the specific structure that Andrew Poudawa is looking for the students to achieve after each writing week's assignment. So that is something else that's in there that I'm really happy that I have. I don't have to worry about creating my own checklist. It's just all there waiting for me to go and look inside of the structure and style student binder and my daughter's student binder is it looks pretty similar to the teacher's guide. So what I did was when I first got my IEW in the pretty little green box, I did exactly what it told me to do was was I had to take out these papers and all it told me to do was put this first section here and the rest of the papers for my daughter with all of her source texts that she's going to be using for her keyword outlining and for her note taken and all those things it told me to put in the back of the binder because as Andrew Poudawa goes over the video lessons with her, they're going to be explaining to her which section she's going to be putting all of her papers in. They have a source text divider right here. They have a models and charts outline work in progress and all of her finished compositions. So each divider has different things she's going to be putting in and I don't actually have to instruct her to do it. The video lessons will. So again, on her, she has her same schedule that I have in a teacher's guide. It actually has the source text that she's going to be doing. And in this case, this is the dog and the shadow is what she's going to be doing for her first source text and keyword outline. And the source text I'm noticing in the beginning they are very, very short. And as it gets further, the short, the source text that she's going to be doing her outlines for, it gets longer and longer. So again, it has the same format where it goes over what we're going to be doing each week. It has the source text and it has whatever else she needs that Andrew Poudawa is going to be telling her to do. So yeah, this is pretty much how it works as far as the writing curriculum, the writing program. I'm not going to lie, you guys, when I first seen this program on the website, I was kind of intimidated about this program as well because it seemed to be like so many moving parts and the website, I will say it's not as easily navigated as I think it could be. But getting IEW in my hand, looking at the videos, it doesn't seem as complicated as I thought it would be. So I cannot wait you guys to come back to you as we've had done IEW in August when we started giving you guys like a quarter review, my semester review of how it is working for us. Like I said before, my daughter is very strong in creative writing. She's very strong in different types of writing. But sometimes when she gets to this type of structure, writing where she is confined to a specific topic, I find that she does clam up. And I really think that IEW is going to give her the tools that she's going to need not to clam up when it comes to more a more structured form of writing and for her to continue to put her heart in her writing. So you guys, as you can see, we're in week 12 and the source text has gotten very, very long compared to how we started off. So yeah, you guys, I'm really excited for us to continue and to start off IEW. So that is pretty much IEW in a nutshell, the student binder and the teacher's manual. Now, like I said before, you guys, I also have I went ahead and I purchased Fixit Grammar, the second book, because we are actually finishing up right now. The first book, sorry, we are actually finishing right now. The first book, which is Fixit Grammar, the nose tree. This right here is the old edition and this right here is a new edition. They have made some significant changes within Fixit Grammar and I'm really excited for my daughter to do this. She really enjoys Fixit Grammar and I enjoy it too. Fixit Grammar is just a very simple grammar program where she's going to be editing one sentence a day, looking up her vocabulary and rewriting it. So that is pretty much Fixit Grammar in a nutshell. And I'm really excited because for the weeks that we do have heavier composition weeks, I know that I can pull out Fixit Grammar for us to do and it could be more simple as far as her grammar so she can get back and focus in a lot more on her writing. So along with Fixit Grammar this year, you guys, I went ahead and I also purchased the Fixit Grammar, the cards that goes along with it. And hopefully these grammar cards will be good tools for her to refer back to when she is doing Fixit Grammar. Fixit Grammar is very independent. I mean, my daughter right now going into fifth grade, she will not meet me at all. She will pretty much be able to do this. I will just have to review and we go over whatever concept it was and kind of keep pushing from there. So I'm really excited for us to continue to use Fixit Grammar within our home school as well. OK, you guys, I really hope you enjoyed today's video. I really hope you enjoyed the flip through of IEW Structure and Style and I really hope that it's giving you a more in-depth view of what IEW is, the writing components that your kiddos is going to do. And hopefully today's video helped you. I will link below two very good IEW videos from homeschooling moms who actually did this curriculum for several years with their kiddos. Those videos actually encouraged me to go ahead and take the plunge to purchase IEW on my own. So I'm going to leave those two videos down below if you guys want like more information and reviews on how it works out for your kiddos since I don't have that experience just yet. So you guys, thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope you enjoy. And as always, I look forward to seeing everybody in my next one. Bye.