We received the Student Packet and Binder, Teacher's Manual, and 24 Forever-Streaming Videos, a $149.00 value. You can choose between the printed materials and DVDs or printed materials and the Forever-Streaming Videos, which are available to the original purchaser forever, and the price is the same.
Structure and Style for Students Year 1 Level B is a 24-week writing course that consists of 9 units:
- Note Making and Outlines
- Writing From Notes
- Retelling Narrative Stories
- Summarizing a Reference
- Writing From Pictures
- Summarizing Multiple References
- Inventive Writing
- Formal Essay Models
- Formal Critique
There is a weekly scope and sequence with literature suggestions like, "The Twenty-One Balloons", "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", and "The Hobbit." There is also a Suggested Daily Breakdown for each week, and combined with the weekly videos, makes a mostly independent course for your middle schooler!
Your student will watch the weekly video, which is broken down into two days. The videos are more than an hour in length, so dividing it into two days makes it much more doable for your child. The videos are funny, interesting, and easy to watch. Mr. Pudewa normally starts with a joke, and Mercie has shared some of these jokes with her Papa!
Mr. Pudewa writes notes on the board for each lesson, and these notes are printed in the Teacher's Manual. He will ask the kids in the class questions and write their suggestions on the board, so it feels as if your child is in a classroom! Each week also teaches the mechanics of grammar, such as adverbs, clauses, and quality adjectives and verbs, as well as correct punctuation and capitalization.
Mercie's favorite week so far was Week Two, so that's what I'm going to talk about in this review. Week Two was also the beginning of Unit Two and it was called "Disgusting or Delicacy?" The goals this week were:
- to learn the Unit 2 Writing From Notes Structural Model
- to practice the units 1 and 2 Structural Models
- to write a key word outline (KWO)
- to write a summary from your KWO
- to create a title
- to add a dress up: -ly adverb
- to be introduced to the composition checklist
- to use new vocabulary: compensate, editor, larva, style
The things she had to do this week were write a key word outline, retell it to a partner, write a list of -ly adverbs, notice -ly adverbs in books and write a list, learn how to format her paper and write a title, write a summary from her KWO, edit it, make a final draft, and turn it all in!
The Source Text this week was called, "Disgusting or Delicacy?" and was about some of the strange foods people eat in other countries, such as raw octopus, ant larva, and even grilled seahorse! She had a blast reading the text, taking notes, and rewriting her paragraph!
The materials are very high quality, the videos are fun, the instruction is clear and easy to follow, and the program is almost totally independent for Mercie! She has learned so much about writing from using IEW's Structure and Style for Students. It is well worth the investment for a thorough writing program for your child. We enjoyed every aspect of this program. The only problem we had was streaming the videos. We live rurally and our WiFi can be spotty. Sometimes it took her hours to watch the video due to buffering. That was pretty frustrating for her, but it was not IEW's fault! I do recommend buying the DVDs, and we will probably be making that purchase soon. She does want to continue with the program but without the streaming stress!
Check out what other reviewers thought about IEW's Structure and Style for Students, Levels A, B, and C, by clicking the banner below!
We also used Level B and I was so impressed. I know my daughter is going to gain so much in her writing this year through this program. I am glad your daughter enjoyed it. What a frustrating thing to have the buffering issues with the videos. So good that they have another option for you.
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