Since I have been part of Explorers I have worked in one way or another in writing classes. Most extensively with IEW. As a homeschool mom, I probably purchased one or two curriculum packages per child for writing! I am quite familiar with many writing programs. Now I am working with Terri Rigby in our High School Classical Writing class. Of course this curriculum is my current favorite.
Since we have this blog, I put this question out there : What is your writing program? Do you love it? Are your kids good writers? How did they get there?
explorers homeschool blog 
I can’t wait to see the comments on this. I am very interested in IEW. If anyone has and would be willing to let me borrow the Structure and Style videos, I’d really appreciate it.
Thanks,
Erin
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Also interested in people’s thoughts on spelling curriculum.
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Me too. Is it legit to just say that a ton of reading causes someone to eventually be a good speller?
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IMHO, I think that reading does inherently improve spelling at least on a subconscious level. The kids start to recognize that a misspelled word doesn’t look right. Additionally though I think it can be helpful to have a curriculum that teaches the rules and rule breakers. We are currently using All About Spelling. At first it seemed a bit tedious, but I really like it and I think will like it even more as we continue to use it.
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Back when I used the basic IEW before they had ANY add-ons, I thought the program was good, but lacking depth. I really liked the key word outlines and rewrites and used them with my 2nd or 3rd – 4th graders for beginning writing. Wonderful! The rest of the basic program was good for one, maybe two semesters worth of writing projects for 5th – 6th graders. JMHO!
Someone else needs to address the program since they have added so many additional options to the basic program.
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I think that reading helps with all of the language arts in a subconscious way. It makes the outright study of those arts a little easier if you have seen them already in many contexts. That being said, reading ONLY is no substitute for actual study of spelling (or or grammar or writing for that matter.) Study of theory first, whether it be spelling theory, grammar theory or writing theory, and then imitating good models of the theory in the form of spelling lists or stories or essays for writing and lastly much good practice is needed along with lots of reading to really GET the understanding and the skills needed to do well. Intuition and subconcious knowledge always need to eventually be explained and understood explicitly as far as possible. This exemplifies the moving toward the true knowledge of something. This is what teaching is aiming for. It brings confidence, clarity and a copiousness of ability.
I had a child who struggled mightily with both spelling and reading so reading was not going to ever teach him how to spell.
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Spelling curriculum: I think that any conventional spelling program is best, those that use rules and lists. Weekly, go over a
rule and the list of words that relate to the rule. The student makes their own list in a copybook. Worksheets are done. Do a pretest to study the words that were missed on the pretest. Do the real test. Move any words missed on the real test to the next week’s test.
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