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Review: Fix It Grammar

After realizing that Daily 6-Trait Writing was merely a delightful appetizer and not the full-course grammar meal we required, I pivoted to Fix It Grammar by the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW). I secured our copy on Amazon for a cool thirty dollars—bless that free shipping—and I’ve fallen head-over-heels for this structured masterpiece. We needed something that wasn't just a supplement but a comprehensive roadmap, and IEW has delivered that with a side of intellectual satisfaction.

I previously encountered a review claiming this program lacked direct instruction and relied solely on looking at answers, but in my experience, that’s like saying a car doesn’t work because you haven’t turned the key. I use the Teacher’s Manual to facilitate a collaborative deep-dive every Monday. We treat it like an investigation, highlighting definitions and mnemonic devices in her student booklet as if we’re prepping for a high-stakes law exam. It turns out that when you provide a child with the "secret code" to the language, they become much more invested in the outcome.

Our weekly cadence is simple yet effective: Monday is for the heavy lifting of the lesson, and Tuesday through Friday are for the "Fix-It" pages. Since there isn't a traditional "work page" on Monday, I require her to compose an original paragraph using the week’s specific part of speech. It gives her a chance to be creative while proving she actually knows what an adverb is doing in the wild. We go over the example sentences together, ensuring she has the space to ask the "Wait, why?" questions that inevitably pop up when dealing with English grammar.

The daily routine is where the magic happens. She reads the sentence, hunts down the vocabulary word in a dictionary if she’s stumped, and then tackles the "Mark It" section. I don't force a specific order here; if she finds the nouns before the adjectives, more power to her. The process concludes with a "Rewrite" section where she transcribes the corrected sentence. By the time she finishes a book, she has rewritten an entire cohesive story. It’s brilliant, really—she’s learning grammar through storytelling rather than isolated, boring sentences.

We are currently cruising through about 1.5 levels per academic year, and I can honestly say that I’m finally understanding conjunctions better than I did in the nineties. I’ve even pulled in some Schoolhouse Rock classics like "Conjunction Junction" to round out the experience, because you're never too old for a catchy tune. If you’re looking for a curriculum that actually sticks, this is it. Do you have a favorite grammar "hack," or are you still searching for the "One Program to Rule Them All"? Let’s chat in the comments!



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