As part of the Schoolhouse Review Crew, I recently received Fix It! Grammar: The Nose Tree [Book 1] (Teacher Manual), $19, and the Fix It! Grammar: The Nose Tree [Book 1] (Student Book), $15, from Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) to review.
Fix-it! Grammer is suitable for 3rd grade and up. There are 6 books in this curriculum. There is a Placement Test to see which book your student should start in. There is also a webinar on the website that you can watch that will answer your questions about the curriculum, and help you decide with book to start your student in.
As a homeschool mom to six kids, 4 of which have already graduated from our homeschool, I always check the copyright on curriculum. I was happy to see that Fix It! Grammar has a very generous copyright. The purchaser may copy pages for use in their own home with their children. Homeschool co-op teachers, after purchasing, may copy pages for use within the co-op classroom.
IEW Fix It! Grammar teaches grammar in context. Meaning students learn grammar while actually using it in real sentences and paragraphs. Each book is a full year of grammar instruction. Book 1 has 33 weeks of daily lessons, with 132 vocabulary words. There are easy to follow directions in the student book, with the same instructions, and more, in the teachers manual. In Book 1, there are Grammar Cards for the student to cut out and keep in an envelope. The student then refer to the Grammar Cards when doing their lessons, or working on writing in other subjects. The Student Book also has a Glossary, and a Certificate of Completion to fill out when the student finishes the book.
Each lesson is divided into four sections. Learn It, Fix it, Discuss it, and Copy it. In Learn it, the student learns a new grammar concept or rule. Fix it has the student fixing grammar errors 4 days a week, in short passages. Discuss it has the student talking about how the grammar concept learned applies to the passage they are correcting. Copy it has the student copying the corrected passage into a notebook at the end of the week. The student doesn’t just learn grammar from random sentences in a book. They learn grammar while correcting a small passage every day until they have a whole story written done. That’s what IEW means when they say the Fix It! Grammar teaches in context.
I really loved that with Fix It! Grammar the teacher does not have to be an English major to teach grammar. The Teachers Manual walks you through each lesson, with notes on the side, and even tells you want to say. The Teachers Manual also has a glossary for you to use. I like that there is a corrected version of each days passages so you know exactly what your student’s writing should look like.
I used Fix It! Grammar: The Nose Tree [Book 1] with my 14 year old, 8th grade son. I like that I can clearly see, by his copying of the passage, that he understands the lesson and can apply what he has learned.
This grammar curriculum has really helped me encourage him to use his best handwriting when copy the passages into his notebook. When the student finishes the book, they will have a whole story written in their notebook. That they corrected all the grammar in, and neatly copied into their notebook. He wants to see a nicely written story at the end, just like I do.
My son likes that each days lesson only takes about 15 minutes. Ok, I like that part, too! He found Fix It! Grammar easy and fun to use. He no longer dreads grammar.
To see what other The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew members have to saw about IEW Fix It! Grammar, click on the graphic below.
