IEW is valuable for all students, not just those schooled at home.

IEW is valuable for all students, not just those schooled at home.

My 13 year-old son started in a private school, grades PS-3, was homeschooled in grade 4 while we traveled, and has been in an excellent public school system (we moved here for the schools) since then. He is now in 7th grade. He was a very, very reluctant writer with dysgraphia in PS-3rd grade. At the end of 3rd grade he was at least a whole year behind his peers in school in writing, despite being the oldest child in his grade. Using IEW and other suggestions from this list, along with neuro-motor exercises in our homeschool year, he began to advance and become a much more confident writer. Over the past 3 years with IEW he has pulled up to "grade level" in his writing.

We do IEW intensively over the summer and use the units as a reference during the school year for his school writing assignments. I also "sneak in" a DVD when needed to reinforce concepts from school or when I feel his teachers aren't giving him enough work to do. All of his writing that comes home is gone over with an IEW framework. Slowly the concepts are taking hold. It does take patience and repetition. We are finally at a point where I see writing becoming much more automatic for him. I often feel that we are "creeping along" but we are making forward progress!

Even in the "wonderful" public school he attends, I do not feel that the students get the individual instruction needed to most effectively learn writing. That is why my home use of IEW is so valuable.