IEW Fix It! Grammar - TOS Review

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

The past month, Titus has been using Fix It! Grammar from the Institute for Excellence in Writing. I'm really impressed with this grammar program already, and I'm planning to use it for all of my children next year! Titus received the Level 1 Nose Tree Teacher/Student Combo along with the add-on Fix It! Grammar Cards.

IEW is a curriculum that claims your child can successfully learn grammar in 15 minutes a day. I am a proponent for short lessons, especially in the elementary years, so I whole-heartedly agreed with this statement. With the right program, your child can learn grammar in 15 minutes a day. Titus has already shown so much retention and it doesn't even take him 15 minutes a day!

I placed Titus in Level 1 even though he is in 4th grade. He has had grammar the past several years, but he hasn't really internalized it yet. He has had basic instruction with the parts of the speech, but I wanted to start from the ground-up to really cement this into his memory. 

Levels 1 and 2 are for elementary ages, Levels 3 and 4 are for middle school, and Levels 5 and 6 are for high school. Each level builds on the previous level. Level 1 begins assuming your child has had little to no grammar instruction, so you could always begin here with any age child if they need to start at the very beginning.

Fix It! Grammar works like this: Your child will learn a new grammar concept at the beginning of the four-day week. It's presented in a simple and straight-forward way with several examples. The "Learn It!" page is in both the Student Book and the Teacher's Manual, which I really liked. That way Titus could read along with me while we learned the new concept.

Following the "Learn It!" page, there are four worksheets, one for each of the four days. At the top of the page, it tells you if there are any new vocabulary words (and defines them in the Teacher's Manual), how many parts of speech you will mark, and how many mistakes you must fix. 

Your child will read a sentence. This sentence is not capitalized or punctuated. Your child will mark the parts of speech they are learning and fix any capitalization or punctuation mistakes. Finally, your child will copy the corrected sentences on the lines below.

Each sentence works together to form a story. The entire story is found in the Appendix, so you and your child can read the story before beginning the program. The story in Level 1 is called "The Nose Tree." There are 30 lessons in this curriculum, with four days in each lesson. The lessons are on the parts of speech, capitalization, punctuation, clauses, homophones, and more. I feel like this is a really nice variety for this age level.

Each week your child builds on and reviews what they have learned. They will continue to find the various parts of speech as each lesson moves to the next. I love this because it ensures that Titus will not forget what a pronoun is because he will be identifying them in the sentences.

Also included are the Fix It! Grammar Cards. This is a set of 30 full color grammar cards that feature key grammar concepts. You can use these cards to play games (instructions are found on their website) or for review. These cards are a thick and glossy and come in a storage box. The Teacher's Manual states which cards are used each week. These cards go along with every level, so you only need to purchase the set once.

This takes Titus less than 10 minutes a day, but he has really picked up on the grammar! He also takes his time to write his sentence neatly, and that doesn't happen all the time. He has completed five weeks of this curriculum and has learned nouns, pronouns, articles, and who/which clauses, along with remembering to capitalize and punctuate each sentence. This was a struggle for him before using this program! He needs little to no help each day, making this almost independent for him. 

I am really pleased with IEW's Fix It! Grammar! It's priced at $29 for the Teacher/Student Combo (both books!) and $15 for the Grammar Cards, making this a complete grammar program for less than $50. Read what other reviewers thought of this program (in all different levels) by clicking the banner below!