Eccentric Eclectic Woman: Institute for Excellence in Writing Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization Review

My family had the privilege of trying the Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization plus the Student Book by Institute for Excellence in Writing for this review to use in conjunction with our own homeschool curriculum products. This is a Schoolhouse Review Crew Review. All opinions expressed are my own or those of my family.

Institute for Excellence in Writing is a company that helps homeschooling parents and teachers to teach language arts, mainly: reading, writing, spelling, grammar, and communication through speaking and listening effectively. They have many products to help with this. I received physical copies of their Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization to review.

Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization is a program that teaches effective communication, English language patterns, how to understand and use complex English syntax, memorization skills, speaking skills, language, and vocabulary. These linguistic skills will be developed by internalizing the rhythmic, beautiful patterns of English language with poetry memorization through repetition and recitation. This is great for grades K-12.

We got the Student Pages Spiral as a bonus.

What is Included:

Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization: A Mastery Learning Approach Teacher's Manual (spiral bound)
Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization: A Mastery Learning Approach Student Pages eBook (spiral bound also available at additional charge)
7 Audio MP3s you can download from a website
5 CDs of Poems and Speeches, one disk for each of the 5 levels
DVD: Nurturing Competent Communicators, featuring Andrew Pudewa, the director of IEW and author of the program

The Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization: A Mastery Learning Approach Teacher's Manual is a great guide for teaching this curriculum. With this you can download the eBook Student Pages and 7 MP3s with the included instructions. The Introduction has topics covered like: Prerequisites for Effective Communication, Why Memorization?, Why Poetry?, Mastery Learning - What is it?, How This Program is Set Up, and How to Teach the Program. After the Introduction, it follows the same layout of the Student Pages with the same levels, poems, and speeches with added annotations along the side. The Appendix 1 and 2 are exact copies of the ones in the Student Pages, but an additional appendix, Appendix 3 has optional lesson enhancements. This has suggested activities to study the elements of poetry as well as include other subjects in the learning.

The 7 Audio MP3 Lectures Include:

Nurturing Competent Communicators
Mastery Learning, Ability Development, and Individualized Education
Ten Thousand Times and Then Begins Understanding
On Listening
On Speaking
On Reading
On Writing

These lectures are quite long, but provide the listener with a great amount of information.

The Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization: A Mastery Learning Approach Student Pages eBook is available through a link given in the teachers manual (this link also supplies the 7 MP3s to download). This eBook is 170 pages and is the same as the preprinted spiral bound book that we also received. The spiral version can be ordered at additional cost. The student pages have 5 levels in this curriculum which introduce students to 76 classic poems and 20 speeches. Each of these poems are featured in large easily readable font with a black and white lined illustration accompanying it that your student can color. The speeches have annotations along the side of the speech to give more information or an explanation about it. This book ends in short biographies of the poetry/speech writers, going in alphabetical by last name, in Appendix 1 and a bibliography of works in Appendix 2.

Each level in the Student Pages begins with a "Getting Started" page in which instructions are given on how to proceed and ends with a certificate of completion award. Level One has 19 poems plus a poem you can personally select. It tells the student to begin with the first poem, highlight it in the list, practice until you can recite it (using the audio recordings to help), work down the list, recite all highlighted poems daily, record progress on the chart in the book. Level Two has 19 poems more plus a poem you can personally select. Instead of reciting all the Level One poems everyday along with the new ones in Level Two it says to recite odd numbered poems for Level One odd days and even numbered poems for Level One even days still going through the Level Two poetry list in order until mastered. Level Three has another 19 poems plus a different poem you can personally select. The lists for maintaining earlier levels gets a little more complicated for Level Three, but you follow their list and use one half for the first ten poems and the last half for the last ten poems. Level Four has has another 19 poems plus a different poem you can personally select. Maintaining the poems from earlier levels in this level will have to use the handy lists provided because of complexity. Level Five has 20 speeches. The student goes through memorizing and reciting the speeches like the poetry, one by one in order, highlighting and charting as they have mastered them. On the last day of each month the student is to recite their favorite poems and speeches that they have memorized.

In the box along with the Teacher's Manual is a case that holds 5 CDs of Poems and Speeches, a DVD, and a link to download zip files of all 5 CDs' MP3s.The CD/DVD case is very nice. It looks like leather that is stitched all around the edges and has the IEW logo on it. Their are 4 CDs of Poems and the 5th one for Speeches. They go along with the 5 levels and are the audio versions of each poem or speech. The case also includes a bonus DVD of Andrew Pudewa's conference talk Nurturing Competent Communicators.

How We Used This and Our Thoughts:

I was very excited to get this in the mail because I love poetry and wanted my children to be able to partake in this curriculum. Being from IEW, I knew that it would be top notch. Teela, my second grader, accepted the challenge of the program.

When I looked all of the components over I noticed that this curriculum can be used with many types of learners and grades. My youngest, who is 5 and in preschool can listen to the audio of the poetry and memorize the poetry this way since she doesn't read much yet. This will help her also with reading readiness as she can also follow along in the book. My daughter Teela used both the audio and read the words from the pages. I would think that my older sons who are 14 and 15 would just use the book and read them to memorize because they wouldn't need the feedback from the audio.

Teela did exactly what the Student Pages said and I was thankful that I received a physical book because my printer was almost out of ink. Thank you IEW for being so generous! We used this program for 3 days a week for the review period. With this program Teela has been able to work at her own pace and is getting so much better at poetry memorization and recitation. I am amazed at the simplicity of this program and the advances Teela has made just by memorizing poetry. Her vocabulary has expanded and she has gotten better at public speaking, just for starters.

I love how versatile this program is. It can be done just about anywhere, including: at home, in the car, while doing chores, or out on a walk. We have brought this with us on a number of occasions.

I loved the DVD as well. Andrew Pudewa's conference talk Nurturing Competent Communicators was very inspiring. Pudewa talks about how poetry memorization makes you smarter and why we should all be doing it. It was very informative.

Institute for Excellence in Writing Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization is a wonderful curriculum for poetry memorization and recitation. We love this mastery learning study! We recommend it to everyone that would like to add poetry memorization to their curriculum to enhance and benefit the learning experience.

BUY IT

You can purchase Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization for $65 on the IEW website. You can purchase the preprinted spiral bound book of Student Pages for $19.