Customer Service Answers Fix It! Grammar

   Our Customer Service Team members are always happy to answer your questions about our curriculum. This month’s blog posts are focusing on grammar, so here are answers to some of the questions they frequently encounter about our popular grammar program, Fix It! What is the Fix It! Grammar program? Fix It! consists of six levels of editing exercises. Each level is a complete story broken down into thirty-three weekly lessons with editing exercises that take ten to fifteen minutes per day. Each weekly lesson has four separate passages which may be completed one per day or doubled up to complete two passages per day. It starts with the basics of grammar at the elementary level and takes your students into very advanced concepts as they move through the levels through high school and beyond. Sentence diagramming, strictly speaking, is not taught, but your student will have the skills to diagram a sentence should that be required. A free placement test is available online so you may discern which level might be the best fit for your student’s needs. How do you use the Fix It! placement test? We offer a downloadable placement test on our website that will help you determine where to start with your student(s). Start with the placement test for Book One (The Nose Tree) and have your students correct the sentence using the guidelines given on the test. Correct your student’s work using the corresponding teacher key. If your student missed several mistakes in the sentence, start with Book 1. If you believe they mastered the first test, move onto the second test and repeat until your student comes to concepts that are unfamiliar or difficult. Is there any training available for the Fix It! Grammar program? While there is no specific training or DVD course for the Fix It! Grammar series, the Teacher’s Manual is very helpful and thorough, providing both the answers to each daily practice sentence as well as insights and tips for the various grammar concepts. We do have a webinar on the Fix It! overview page which introduces the program and gives some tips for working through the books. You can also view a demonstration webinar given by author Pamela White. Do the Deluxe Combo packages include the Fix It! Student Books? Why or why not? While you do not get the hardcopy student books in the Deluxe Combos, you do receive them as a PDF download which enables you to print as many copies as needed for members of your immediate family or students in your classroom. You are also able to purchase the Student Books individually for $15.00. Because the Teacher’s Manuals include the Student Book as a free PDF, there was no need to include both the Teacher’s Manuals and Student Books in the combo. What age/grade ranges is the Fix It! Grammar program best suited to? The Fix It! Grammar program is appropriate for students in fourth grade through adults. Most students start with Book 1 to ensure that no foundational concepts are missed as each book is designed to build upon the previous one. You can also use this Placement Test to determine where to begin with your students. We recommend not starting higher than Book 3, even for a high school student. Is everything included, or do I need to purchase the story separately? The Fix It! Grammar course is all-inclusive between the Teacher’s Manual and Student Book, so there is nothing you need to purchase or find separately. By the end of the year, students will have corrected and rewritten the entire story corresponding to whatever book in the series they completed. Is the Fix It! Grammar program a complete grammar course? Do I need to be doing your writing program at the same time? The Fix It! Grammar program is a complete grammar course, with each book providing thirty-three weeks of grammar lessons and practice. Although some of the things taught in our writing course will be reinforced in the grammar lessons, the Fix It! books can be used independently. The Teacher's Manual for Fix It! will provide a weekly lesson covering various grammar concepts as well as the answers to the daily "editing" sentences. There are also helpful explanations and tips for correcting the sentences with your students. Each book within the program (there are six) will build upon the previous, beginning with basic concepts such as nouns, verbs, and punctuation and ending with advanced editing techniques used by professional editors. Our writing courses are also designed to be a stand-alone program, where the structures and models for writing/composition are taught and practiced. Can you recommend a good dictionary for my students to use for looking up definitions during their Fix It! Grammar lessons? Should the definition of the word reflect the part of speech that the word is in the Robin Hood passage? Author Pamela White recommends using dictionary.com. Many IEW parents have also appreciated The American Heritage Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus. You can also try using Webster's for high schoolers, which should be about the right level. Yes, define words according to their use in the sentence, which includes the word form. Dictionaries typically do not give definitions for adverbs, so your student will need to add the -ly. Use the Teacher's Manual to help you check vocabulary definitions. How do I count Fix It! courses for high school credit? Assigning high school credit can be a tricky task! I would recommend you take a look at Lee Binz's information on what constitutes an English credit. You can find it by going here. A longer article that goes into more depth about what it means to teach to a level of ability rather than a perceived grade level can be found by going here. For a high school student, I would recommend starting in the Fix It! book that fits them best and then continuing until they graduate, wherever that may be. You may work through two books in a year by doing two passages a day over the four day period, or you may work through one book a year by just doing the one. Why doesn’t Fix It! teach sentence diagramming? Diagramming instruction is not necessary for the learning and understanding of grammar and the application of grammar skills. We believe that grammar should be taught in context, which is why we teach through editing. Rather than doing sentence diagramming, your students will learn grammar in a more natural way, through editing a few sentences a day from an ongoing classic story. Once your students have completed all six books, they will be more than proficient in grammar. We hope this post has helped you learn more about Fix It! Grammar. If you find you have additional questions that we haven’t addressed, please follow up with us. We are available by email, chat, or phone at 800.856.5815. Our business hours are 9:00AM to 5:00PM Central Time. We look forward to helping you select the best resources for your students!