 Hi you guys, my name is Brittany and welcome back to my youtube channel. You guys in today's video I'm going to be finally giving you a review on IEW Structure and Style Level 1A. So you guys if any of you are new here to my channel again my name is Brittany. I'm a homeschooling mom to three girls and I am in my third year of homeschool you guys. I am so excited today to share with you my review on IEW Structure and Style. Me and my daughter we have been working through this curriculum for about a month now and I really feel like I can finally come to you guys and talk to you like more details about IEW. I was really looking for more of a structure form of a writing curriculum for my daughter especially since she is wrapping up her elementary years. I know writing is so important especially as she just in life just in general writing is just a really really important curriculum and I really knew that I did want to go ahead and outsource writing for her and um I just have been dying to do IEW. I'm so excited that we have finally started it and uh yeah so you guys I will go ahead and disclose that I am a part of IEW's affiliate uh program. However in this video all of my opinions in my review is all of my own. No one is paying me to uh talk about or to say anything particular about this curriculum. I am going to be truthful and honest about all of the pros and the cons that I have seen so far while we have used IEW Structure and Style. So if you are starting off with IEW's I guess their program when it comes to writing they have specific levels when it comes to their writing program especially the structure and style. The structure and style has a a b and c a is for elementary b is for middle and c is for high school. So if your kiddo is starting the IEW structure program and they are in I believe is it the eighth grade they do still recommend them doing the level b which is their midpoint when it comes to their writing curriculum. Now this curriculum in particular it is video lessons so me as mama I am kind of hands off when it comes to this curriculum as far as the instructions go. However I still do have to you know be very active in this process when it comes to teaching and editing and just the whole thing. I do watch the videos from Andrew Poudois with Brielle. I try my best to watch as many as I can. Sometimes I do have Brielle doing this curriculum when I am working with her younger two siblings and it works out really well for that and other times I am watching the videos with her when it comes to this because I definitely want to make sure that I am giving her the right instruction when it comes to my time as far as parent involvement. So you guys don't be worried when it comes to teaching the kiddos because IEW when you get their structure and style you will have this teacher's guide or this teacher's manual and inside of this teacher manual you will have all of like the whiteboard notes that Andrew Poudois gives the students. You will have particular checklist and markings when it comes to grading your kiddos writing assignments. So you're not just like a left out to dry when it comes to this curriculum. You do have some type of hand holding especially when it comes to this teacher's guide. So this right here will be your BFF in helping your kiddos. So you guys I did already make a initial flip through video of IEW Structure and Style showing you the inside the layout and if you guys want more like details about how the inside looks I will go ahead and put that in the iCart below and I will put it in my description box so you can kind of get a more in-depth view of the inside of the curriculum. However in today's video I'm just going to go ahead and highlight one week's worth of assignments from Brielle and also to you guys Brielle did say she didn't mind talking about IEW and her personal opinion about this curriculum as well. So you're not only going to be hearing my opinions but you will be hearing how Brielle feels about this curriculum as the student. So you guys I went ahead and I pulled out one of the week's worth of assignments to kind of explain to you how this program actually works. This right here is week four's checklist. Hopefully you guys can kind of see this. Here let me the other goes. So this right here is the checklist that they will give you at the beginning of each week and the checklist will go over each and everything that you're going to be doing as far as the days goes. Now this is a four day four to five day writing program depending on how you decide to use it in your household. For me I pretty much follow this checklist pretty closely when it comes to my household and how we use it. The first two days of this writing curriculum the kiddos will be watching a video lesson held by Andrew Poudouin where they will be working on their source text and they will be learning how to make keyword outlines. After they finish watching the videos after the first two days they have made their keyword outline they then will take their keyword outline and they will make their own rough draft. You as the parent will then come in in that portion of their rough draft you will come in as editor where you will help them edit their writing assignment that they have for the week. You will have a specific checklist that you will go over with the kiddos as far as what Andrew Poudouin is looking for the kiddos each week and here goes one of the checklists that I have right here. This one is actually all filled out because this is a week that Brio actually already completed and in the checklist it'll have specific things that you're looking for like capitalization, in marks, punctuation, you're looking for complete sentences and correct spelling and as the weeks go on your checklist as far as your compositions will increase by the specific guidelines that they are looking for the kiddos. So this curriculum is very systematic and it definitely builds upon each other as the weeks go on. So I definitely love having like all this hand-holding. Writing is not a strong subject for me and while I love reading and things like that it just doesn't come natural to me but as Brio is doing this curriculum I am learning a lot alongside her so I'm definitely happy to be kind of like doing this writing process with her. So the first thing the kiddos will get will be their source text and in their source text they will be highlighting the key words that they're going to be using to make their keyword outline and here goes Brio's source text right here that she already highlighted and this source text is the fox and the stork. IEW does use a lot of like ASOP fables and things like that when they're allowing the kiddos to use the source text from that and it's kind of cool because Brio is learning a little bit more about literature as she's doing this writing curriculum so it's like we are hitting like two birds with one stone. Along with that and a lot of these ASOP fables there are like higher vocabulary words that your kiddos don't know so in your teacher guide it does suggest you to allow your kiddos to look up those definitions that they don't know so you are inadvertently getting more vocabulary and for me vocabulary is definitely something we're definitely focusing on this homeschooling year. So this is Brio's keyword outline that she already did or her source text that she picked out the words from the video and after this she will then create her keyword outline and here goes her keyword outline right here that she created from the video and in this particular week she was actually going over L.Y. adverbs and they were teaching her how to add in more into her writing so from her keyword outline then she has to write her rough draft so Brio she has to follow the guidelines from Andrew Poudawa and writing her rough draft and here goes her rough draft that she did he specifically goes over how he wants the kiddos to write he even has like them having their name and date at the beginning of the paper he talks about making titles and he actually teaches them how to write when they're writing their rough drafts to double space to allow room for edits and he goes over all of that like I didn't even have to tell her that and it was really cool seeing her first rough draft that she made and following the instructions that Andrew Poudawa gave her. Now after she gets to her rough draft that is when me as mom I have to come in and what I typically do is Brio she's actually pretty good at writing her rough draft and sometimes before I even get an opportunity to do her edits she kind of is editing it herself because she kind of sees oh yeah I forgot to add a period and sometimes when I go in what I do is I go ahead and I tell Brio Brio go ahead and type your rough draft and what she will do is she will type her rough draft and in this case she typed her rough draft and I told her to go ahead and highlight all of the L.Y. adverbs that she added into her paragraph that she wrote for her from her keyword outline and from here then I will go over any edits or any mistakes and we'll kind of like work on our edits on the computer and after we finish that Brio will have her final draft of her writing assignment and then we will move on to the next week's worth of writing so Brio is a really strong writer writing is definitely something that she is passionate about and she is very interested in so right now at the beginning I definitely know that these lessons are really really easy and they set it up that way to really build confidence within the kiddos as far as their writing goes Brio right now it's finishing this four-day process in two days I know this program is going to get difficult for her and she definitely is going to have to take all four days when it comes to this writing process as the guidelines increase as far as like banned words or L.Y. adverbs as those checklists increase I definitely know she is going to have to take longer on her assignments but right now she is going through this curriculum pretty fast but she definitely is enjoying it so now I'm going to go ahead and talk to you guys about my pros and my cons about this curriculum and whether I believe it will be a good fit for you so my pros of this curriculum is first and foremost it definitely teaches the structure and style when it comes to writing it breaks it down into the simplest forms it's no questions everything is really direct systematic your kids will understand I think this program is definitely great for a struggling writer because it's definitely going over each process it's definitely breaking it down you're not telling your kiddo to write about their favorite food and giving them a sheet of paper and you know magically thinking that they can come up with a paragraph without any particular like help or guidelines uh Andrew Pudawa definitely takes the kiddos through each step so they're not left just staring at a blank sheet of paper and that's definitely something I appreciate another thing I definitely can say is that your kiddo will leave this program being a strong writer I mean especially if they go through this program now this program structure and style is intended to be a year long program however I did see a lot of parents who broke up this program into two years and it definitely is possible to break up this program into two years it's a total of 24 units they do have like a 30 week adapted schedule that you can follow some kiddos may go through this fast some might take two years like I said and I definitely can see how you can stretch this program out and it definitely will benefit some students to stretch this program out over the course of two years so you guys my cons about this curriculum is I do feel like the video lessons can be lengthy that's just me in my personal opinion my daughter actually doesn't mind it however I can see some students where that will definitely be a con uh watching a video lesson for 30 minutes now a suggestion I definitely would say is to break up those videos especially if you have like a younger kiddo that will definitely be the best way to do it it's a break it up uh stretch out that checklist that four to five days uh checklist stretch it out over two weeks worth of time your kiddos definitely still will benefit from it but it definitely will be uh more gentle when it comes to learning the structure of writing uh the second thing I definitely will say so far I'm only a month in but I definitely will say this curriculum does not teach the kiddos about their about learning how to have their own voice in writing now something kind of like uh brave writer where she goes over and she teaches like uh having your own voice in writing uh she definitely focuses on that creative outlet that free right type of expressive form uh you guys I love brave writer and I know I can talk about this one in a separate video but I will say brave writer does a better job at teaching your kiddos uh just like uh how to express themselves and how to have their own voice and I feel like if your kiddo doesn't already like have their own voice in writing uh it may not do them justice to start off in such a rigid and structured form of writing style um I definitely see the benefits of teaching your kiddos how to have their own voice and to have that year of doing creative writing my daughter actually did creative writing for probably almost two years now because she started off in a third grade where she did more creative styles of writing and she was able to develop her own voice by doing that and I definitely will say that as something I'm going to do with my year kiddos before I start off with this particular curriculum I will say even though this curriculum is classified uh for grades three to five I definitely will say it is for uh a little bit older of a child I definitely wouldn't do this curriculum particularly with a third grader in my personal opinion if I do do it with my third grader they will definitely have to be a strong writer and already have their voice in writing whereas I did a lot of oral narration I did a lot of things like that with them to prep them for this particular curriculum other than that I definitely would recommend this for a fourth fifth grade starting off the structure of writing I definitely feel like you don't want your kiddo to hate writing you definitely want them to feel empowered when it comes to writing and doing a very very structured program like this starting off I definitely wouldn't recommend okay Bree I'm going to go ahead and get your review on IEW I'm going to ask you a few questions so what do you absolutely love about IEW? I love how you can make a keyword outline and how you can um expound on it and make a great paragraph with it. Yeah how do you like Andrew Poudois teaching you writing? I like it. You do you like the video lessons? Uh-huh. Yeah so what are some things you don't really like about IEW? Nothing. Are you serious? Yes. You absolutely love it? Mm-hmm. Okay so do you like when we work together on the rough draft? Mm-hmm. Yeah you do. Is anything else you want to tell any kids about IEW? Uh that videos are funny. Oh the video he's funny on the videos. Do you like that it gives you a sense of independence? Mm-hmm. Yeah that you don't need mommy to do your writing instruction. Would you like to continue with the IEW program? Of course. Of course okay. So Bree how many thumbs up does it get? It gets a million thumbs up. A million thumbs up okay thanks Bree for your review. You're welcome. But you guys overall I love IEW. It's great. I love Fixit Grammar. Like I cannot end this video without talking about Fixit Grammar. I actually have two books of Fixit Grammar because right now Brielle's on week 14 of Town Mouse and Country Mouse so I know this is not going to last us throughout the whole year so I went ahead and I got the next book which is Robin Hood ready to go waiting for her. So overall you guys this program it's really really great. It definitely has its benefits in my household and uh yeah. So you guys I really hope you enjoy seeing like my review me talking and chit chatting about IEW. I cannot wait to come with you guys with my um overall final review as we finish off IEW and I hope just kind of gave you a little bit more insight to how the program actually works. So you guys thank you so much for watching. I look forward to seeing everybody in my next one. Bye!