Little Homeschool on the Prairie: Institute for Excellence in Writing & Fix It! Grammar Robin Hood (Book 2) Review

We have been using Fix It! Grammar Robin Hood (Book 2) from Institute for Excellence in Writing for grammar for the past few weeks.

IEW is well-known for their writing curriculum and the founder Andrew Pudewa. I've had the privileged of using their writing curriculum and several of their products in our homeschool throughout the years.

I received a physical copy of:

Fix It! Grammar: Robin Hood [Book 2] Teacher Manual

Fix It! Grammar: Robin Hood [Book 2] Student Book

Robin Hood is the second book in the Fix It! Grammar series of 6 books. If you’re not sure where to start IEW offers a Placement Test each of their six books in the Fix It! Grammar series. The series builds upon itself with each book in its concepts.

This is a complete grammar program and the amazing part is that it doesn’t feel like it should be complete. You are learning grammar with application. That is truly the beauty of it. You have 33 weeks of grammar, each day the lessons are designed to take around 15 minutes. There are 132 vocabulary words and a Glossary for Grammar. Each weeks lessons are set up for a four day schedule.

Fix It! Grammar is what I like to call and open and go curriculum. There is really no preparation other than making sure the flashcards get cut out. I look over the lesson briefly before my son starts and we are ready to go!

Teacher’s Manual

This is a comprehensive manual that helps you implement the curriculum. The first page in the Teacher’s Manual has the instructions to download a PDF version of the Student Workbook and 2 free e-audios.

I would recommend you read over the Introduction pages before you begin. It gives you step by step instructions of how to implement the curriculum each day. It also explains the layout of the pages.

The two pictures above are the Grammar Glossary

In the back of the book there is a 45 page Grammar Glossary with definitions and usage rules for parts of speech, punctuation, phrases & clauses, and the stylistic techniques used in IEW’s writing curriculum.

An example of Week 4 in the Teachers Manual

For each lesson you have the answers of the sentences and where the marks should be. You also have notes for the concepts to help you clarify some points. There is also an advanced grammar section if you have an advanced student. I can also follow along while my son is doing a lesson as I have the same page in my book which, you can see from the above picture.

IEW has wonderful copyright that you can print out the Student Book within your immediate family or classroom. For my family it is easier to purchase an extra physical copy. For a larger family this may be a huge bonus. I also like that when you purchase a physical copy of the Student Book is that the flashcards are already printed out for you on card-stock.

Student Workbook

This has all the 33 weeks of lessons in this spiral bound book. As with the Teachers Manual it has a Grammar Glossary in the back of the book. Also all your flashcards are located in the back to cut out.

Fix It! Grammar is laid out the same with each lesson. There are 4 steps:

Learn it: You will read through this section at the beginning of the week’s lesson. It gives you an overview of what to expect in the weeks lessons.

It’s also reminds you to go over your grammar flashcards. Some weeks no new concepts are taught but, they review some already learned concepts.

You will learn the important information concerning the rules of the grammar that you will be learning and gives you a couple of examples.

Fix it: This is every day. The lessons are labeled Day 1, Day 2, and so on. You read the sentences for the day and you edit the sentence using grammar marks which are at the top of the page and on the grammar cards.

Discuss it: How does the grammar apply to each of the sentences. This is your chance to make sure they are grasping the concepts they are learning.

Copy it: Students write the passage each day after they’ve made corrections using a double space so as a parent you can correct any mistake. Which my son always forgets to double space!

Flashcards are an essential part of the program and are located in the back of the Student Workbook

A binder is recommended for each student. Your student will need paper to write out the week’s story, vocabulary, and storage for the grammar cards.

How did I use Fix It! Grammar Robin Hood (Book 2) in my homeschool?

I’m using this with my 7^th grader who is 13 years old. On Monday we sit down and cut out the flashcards for the week and punch a hole in them for our metal ring. We keep the current weeks flashcards on metal ring and add the other flashcards to a larger ring to keep them all together. We will read the Learn it together and go over the week’s flashcards.

My son is working on a lesson and keeps his flashcards close at hand

Afterwards he does Day 1 and edits his sentences. He looks up his bold word in a dictionary online and adds the word to his binder writing the word and the definition down. I am in the classroom and he can ask me questions as needed. We go over the editing before he writes it in his binder.

Studying his flashcards on Monday

My son is pretty independent when it comes to school work and will usually complete Day 2 through Day 4 by himself. We check his editing with each sentence daily and he writes out the corrected sentence in his notebook.

Week 2 completed with his editing. I had to remind him to write himself a note to be neat when he writes out his lesson!

Week 4 completed lesson

My son’s thoughts, “I like this program. The story is interesting. I want to read a head but, that would take the fun out of the weeks lesson I think.” “I enjoy that the lessons are short and at the same time I feel I’m reviewing things I already know and reinforcing some grammar rules that haven’t always stuck in my head. Writing down a sentence daily from an ongoing story is interesting and has really made it more hands on for me to learn it better.”

Week 18 covers comma rules and a few other rules.

I’m looking forward to several lessons in the future. One area that my son seems to get snagged up on is clauses. He gets confused in all the different types of clauses to the point that he gets frustrated. It looks like there are a few lessons that will cover the different clauses in the coming weeks. It will be interested to see how this will help him with clauses.

A few completed assignments from my son's binder and his vocabulary words

Mom’s thoughts: I used use Fix It! Grammar The Nose Book (Book 1) several years ago with my son when he was in 3^rd grade and 8 years old. We loved it and I honestly don’t’ know why I didn’t go into Fix It! Grammar Robin Hood (Book 2) with him when we completed it. We moved that year and a lot of things going on as it was just a bad year for my family.

When my son finishes this book we will definitely continue into the next book.