Writing is a mystery, or is it?
During my time as a classroom teacher, the buzz word was “shared writing” and “interactive writing” and the method of writing was “Writer’s Workshop”. The concept was to have a mini-lesson on a writing topic, say using a good sentence opener, and send the kids to their desks to write in their journal. The hope was students would happily go back to their desks and just fill a page with stories and maybe even apply that mini-lesson. More often than not, I would walk around the room and there would be a handful, or more, children staring at a blank page. Sometimes, I would say draw a picture and then tell me about it and they could draw a picture but that was it. Then, there were also the children that just wrote, “I love my mom, I love my dad, I love my dog,” day after day.
I never felt that this was getting us anywhere. Where was the structure? How did you get the kids to write a paragraph, and learn to punctuate, and use colorful language?
Mind you I was a first grade teacher, but regardless, I felt lacking…
Many years later, as I struggled to teach my own son to write, I bounced around from program to program hoping I would find the perfect one. He was diagnosed with dysgraphia in fifth grade and we switched curriculums at least 3 times after that because nothing seemed to fit. We used Writeshop in a co-op setting and I liked it, but it wasn’t perfect for us. It is a good program, but it wasn’t for us.
I wish I had listened to my homeschool friends…
Many of my friends used IEW but it seemed so intimidating. I would hear about it from them and think about making the leap. Really, I just needed someone to hold my hand and lead to me drink the Kool-Aid.
It wasn’t until my son’s 10th grade year, after feeling like a failure in the writing department and wondering what we were going to do about it, that I decided to give IEW a try.
I borrowed the Teaching Writing: Structure and Style and spent the summer reading and watching the videos. I then embarked on the Student Writing Intensive B the following year. It was the middle school level, but I felt he probably had the skills of a middle schooler at that point and I really wanted it to be easy and enjoyable.
We completed SWI B and then did SWI B Continuation for 11th and 12th grade. I wish I had done the program one more year. I would have felt a little more confident about his writing skills. However, the last part of 12th grade, he did all his writing on his own which I never thought would happen. He really surprised me with what he was able to accomplish on his own.
Since that first year, his sophomore year, I decided to complete the practicum to become a Registered teacher and then hopefully a certified teacher. It took me two summers to complete the practicum, but I did it. In Oct 2020, I became a registered teacher.
My goal with this writing program, as with my Barton tutoring program, is to help kids like my son who struggle with learning to write.
My approach is truly EZ+1. IEW encourages teachers/parents to teach concepts until they are easy and then add 1 more thing.
For my classes visit this page.
For more about tutoring with IEW visit this page and scroll to the bottom.
