A Practical Application for All Nine of the IEW Units

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      SOURCE: IEW_Jill_TWSS_help

Ideas on how all 9 units integrate into writing assignments in all your other subjects.

With some of the questions lately about how to tackle various writing assignments, I thought it would be of benefit for me to give you a birds eye view of IEW and how it integrates into your schoolwork overall. The nice thing about IEW is that instead of presenting nine-zillion writing styles, you get 7 Units suitable to handle ANY prompt that is given to you. The trick is learning to realize which Unit your prompt requires. Below is a little quick key for writing.

Units 1 and 2
I said you have 7 units for writing because these first two don't really count as a structural model. Rather, they are the gateway into the IEW methods. Unit 1 shows students how to create an outline from a single paragraph and Unit 2 shows them how to take that outline and re-create a paragraph. These Units are there to get the kids started and are easy to learn thus helping even the most writing-phobic student to achieve. But don't be tempted to stay there, the best is yet to come!
In the same way, the stylistic techniques are also set to the side, much like the spice shelf of a chef's kitchen. The chef needs to eventually learn what all the things are and how to use them, but you don't need to know how to use them all to make a pretty wonderful chili. Also, since not everyone likes to use every spice on the shelf, once you have tasted them all and understand them, you might not use them all in your own writing. But you know how if some "recipe" (such as a picky college professor?) calls for a special one.
The rest of the Units (3-9) can be taught in any order, so don't feel like you have to progress thru them numerically. The rest of the units are split into two sections for ease of use: fiction and non-fiction. I'll describe the non-fiction first.

NON FICTION UNITS (even numbered units)
Unit 4: Reports from a Single Source
This is great for any quick report when you are working from a single source (such as a textbook chapter, encyclopedia article, magazine article, etc). It is perfect for answering the question, "what does this chapter/article say about _____." Use it instead of end of chapter quizzes or to fill an empty afternoon. :) Just be sure to give the assignment in number of paragraphs. "Write me 1 (or 2, or 3, etc) paragraphs on what you find interesting or important in this document." Beginning students will collect a jumble of facts and string them into a paragraph. Older, more mature students should be able to choose topics on which to write.
It is in this unit that the concept of topic sentence is introduced along with the Topic/clincher rule.

Unit 6: Reports from Multiple Sources
This unit builds on Unit 4 by increasing the complexity of the report. Instead of "what does that ONE reference have to say about ____," you're asking "what is the general consensus about ___________." All grade levels need to learn how to take several references, choose topics, and write a report using details from a variety of sources. These can be anywhere from short 5 paragraph report to a multi-page research paper.
You can assign research reports as part of science or history. "Write a ___ paragraph report on China, planet Mars, history of flight, etc." They don't give EVERYTHING they can find about the subject, just the number of topics necessary to create the number of paragraphs you assigned. They simply pick the portions that are interesting or important to them located in the sources available.
You don't have to teach footnotes right off the bat. Teach bibliography first and slowly work your way into requiring foot notes.
You can also use this Unit when notebooking as you can write a variety of paragraphs on related subjects from various sources. For instance, if you read a book like Johnny Tremain and wanted to do a study on the Rev War, you could create a notebook and do paragraphs on silver smithing, Paul Revere, printing, Ben Franklin, various British generals, muskets and how they work, a map of Boston in 1776, etc. (notebooking works with Unit 4 too).
Lastly, this unit is a good one to introduce introduction/conclusion methods.

Unit 8: Formal Essay
This is the crown of "non-fiction" as you take what you have learned and add your own opinion to the piece. The prompts tend to include phrases such as
-what is your opinion
-what is important
-which is better
-what is the reasoning behind
-what is the central premise
-compare this and that
-contrast this and that
-persuade me what you think about....
Again, it can be any number of paragraphs from 5-hundreds. The famous "Thesis" statement that everyone is looking for is simply the point of your paper in one single sentence and usually is located either at the beginning or the end of your introduction. The rest of the paper is the proof of what you are trying to say, and your conclusion can be a restatement of your thesis statement underscoring your most powerful argument.
"The Elegant Essay" goes into depth on essay writing, the High School Essay Intensive will give you a one-day seminar touching on the basics of doing essays, especially timed and personal ones.
The formal essay is a way for the evaluator to see what information is in the writer's brain. When writing a formal essay, you might need to do some study to get some information in there before you can actually write something. :)

FICTION UNITS (odd numbered units)
Unit 3: Narrative Stories
This unit teaches the basics of telling a story. You take a very simple fable or tale and reduce it to its basics: beginning, middle and end. The beginning is the Characters/setting, middle is the plot or problem, and end is the climax/resolution/moral.
Unlike the Non-fiction units, the outline for narrative is more free-form with the notes being answers to questions (who is in the story, what do they say, think, etc). Then the construction of the story tends to use the outline rather loosely adding in or leaving out and rearranging at will. There is no perfect delineations between what goes in what paragraph leaving much to the style of the writer. Some people love this free-form flow, others hate its flexibility complaining, "But what is the RIGHT way!" Once either the teacher or the student (or both!) are willing to get past this desire for strict order, this unit can become quite fun. :)
The beauty of this model comes in standardized tests where your students are given a prompt that is supposed to help prompt a story (Imagine you are in your back yard and you find an object. Write a story about that object--Ugh). With this model, your student can scan thru the many stories they know and twist it to match any prompt. Example: Imagine I imagined that I found a stick. What stories do I know that have sticks? Lets say I chose the 3 Little Pigs (I thought about the stick house that the second pig built). Maybe I could make a story about three little mice building their houses against the cat. One built out of bird feathers (leftover from a previous victim), another out of leaves, the third out of sticks. It didn't work. The cat knocked the stick house down too and ate them all, hence the loose stick I found in the yard. Good kitty! :)

Unit 5: Writing from Pictures
I believe this unit was created in response to the Canadian standardized test prompt where school children were given three pictures from which to write a story. It is a great model for taking any picture and writing on it. You simply ask for each picture, "What is the central fact," i.e. What is happening in the picture! After you write that, you simply expand on that concept by asking the famous questions: who, what, why, when, where, and how.
If you have three pictures, you do the central fact and details on each picture, one paragraph per picture. If you need to write 3 paragraphs on ONE picture, you simply do the thing on the one picture, then imagine what the next picture would look like and write on it, then what another consecutive picture might portray and write on that. You could also do one picture prior and one picture after, whatever you prefer.
This can be useful as a chapter test if you would like. Simply choose three pictures in the text book and have your students write a three paragraph report on those pictures. Tada!

Unit 7: Creative Writing
This unit is really more of a confluence of fiction and non-fiction writing. The key is taking information from the brain and organizing it on paper. It can be factual ("My Grandmother") or fictional ("My Pet Monster").
The "My Dog Model" described in the TWSS syllabus is the picture for creative writing. You choose three topics, come up with details, and then finish it off with a intro/conclusion. It is close to Formal Essay, which is why I put Units 7 and 8 together in the helps FILES. Creative writing tends to be what we do in grade school. It turns into essay in high school, but many would think that much reporting is still creative writing. :)
This model is great for the awful, "write about what you did on summer vacation" to "what did you learn in school today?"

Unit 9: Critique
The final result of the fictional models is the formal critique. These can be glorified book reports where the writer simply summarizes an author's basic story line and then critiques it: determining if it was good or not and why. The why part can get into detailed literary analysis where you examine character development, use of literary devices such as irony or foreshadowing, exploration of theme, etc. It is purely subjective, so goes into the fictional model.
Use this model for book reports, movie reviews (its one way to get something positive out of going to the movies!), or full blown literary analysis. Just be sure to assign it BEFORE the fact so they can take appropriate notes.
I hope this overview helps you see how you really don't need to be confined to writing lessons prepared by curriculum publishers. Learn the models and then pick any one of them to create an assignment to cement learning in your student's mind. If you go thru the SWI then SICC A, B, and C, you will have been taught all 9 units and have experience doing a variety of assignments in each one and be pretty well set for ANY kind of future writing.

Jill,
Moderator
Institute for Excellence in Writing


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