Curriculum Review:Fix it! Grammar Series

Last year when I was searching for our Language Arts and Grammar curriculum, I came across this website Institute of Excellence in Writing and saw their Fix it Grammar sets. I checked the reviews about it and thought of trying it. The first thing that struck me is that I can teach grammar 15 minutes a day. Just what I needed, plus repitition really works for my son. The practice lesson each day will really help in the mastery of the lesson.

I went ahead and purchased The Nose Tree Teacher's Manual and the Student workbook. However I found out later on that a pdf file of the Student workbook can be downloaded for free once you purchased the Teacher's Manual. If you are planning to use this curriculum you just need to have the Teacher's Manual and then print the downloadable pdf file for the Student book, but you can also purchase the book if you wish to have a printed workbook right away.

The student workbook has grammar cards which helped my son to identify and review previous lessons such as indent, articles, nouns, verbs, adjectives and others. He adds each card to his "working collection" whenever a new topic was introduced to him.

Each time we have a lesson for 4 days a week and 15 minutes each day, we learn how such words are being used with a certain part of speech. My son would rewrite the sentence, fix it, write down the parts of speech or how each word was used in a sentence and will do one vocabulary word all for 15 minutes a day!

What are the advantages?
- Grammar is taught in context
- Repetition ensures mastery
- Editing skills transfer better to writing

How does it work?
- Learn it: Explore a grammar concept.
- Fix it: Locate and fix errors in four ahort passages a week.
- Discuss it: Explore how the grammar applies to the passage.
- Copy it: Rewrite the corrected passage into a ynotebook.

What's included?
- 33 weeks of daily passages
- 132 vocabulary words
- Reproducible student pages
- Clear teacher's notes
-Grammar Glossary

It is not a traditional grammar program, so it will not feel as if you are really learning grammar. Instead, you and your child will be internalizing the tools necessary for editing their own compositions, which is the main goal of grammar - Cathy Duffy

This is can be used as early as third grade until high school. However the author Pamela White recommended that each student should start with the 1st book, The Nose Tree and then move progressively since the knowledge, skills, and strategies taught in each book build upon one another. But for higher grade levels, there is a placement test that your child can take to check what level you could start.

Lessons begin on a relatively easy level and gradually progress to a challenging level. The Fix It! Grammar series now includes six courses, each based upon a fictional story in an abridged or rewritten version. The six courses are:

The Nose Tree (Book 1)
Robin Hood (Book 2)
Frog Prince or Just Deserts (Book 3)
Little Mermaid (Book 4)
Chanticleer (Book 5)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Book 6)

This also works well with IEWs Teaching Writing with Structure and Style as the concept is related with each other.

Sharing Cathy Duffy's review on this:

Fix It! courses should be more effective than traditional grammar courses because they teach grammar through immediate application—they teach students only what they need to know at the moment. The interesting language of the stories combined with the story lines themselves are also much more likely to engage students’ attention. Even students who have begun to learn grammar using other resources might find Fix It! a welcome change.

We are enjoying using fix it grammar, he fix it and we discuss and ends in 15 minutes a day! I would recommend this curriculum for your grammar lessons.

This book is available for preorder through Books for Wisdom and Journaling :)