Transitioning from IEW to Classical Composition

[ShawnaB]

For a students who have followed the IEW program through Unit 7: Inventive Writing, but not yet done Unit 8: Formal Essay or Unit 9: Formal Critique, where would you start them in Classical Composition? The students in question have taken two full years of IEW instruction-done-well over grades 5 and 6, and are proficient in the stylistic and structural techniques of the program.
I know that IEW is a good program, yields fast results, and improves confidence and stamina. It has worked well for these students up to this point. However, I also know there are some short comings, and I am thinking it is time next year to move them to a more comprehensive writing curriculum that will teach them how to form different types of paragraphs , for example.

I'm just now sure where to jump in. They have already done a lot of narrative and re-writing in fables. Is it possible to start up right at Chreia and Maxim? Or will they be missing essential skills taught in the previous levels of CC?

Thank you for your feedback!

Shawna

[ShawnaB]

Correction, these students have done Unit 8 "Formal Essays", but not Unit 9 "Formal Critique".

[Abigail Johnson]

Hello Shawna,
Thank you for the question! We often have had students transitioning from IEW to CC, and have done so very successfully.
For those students, you are still going to want to start at Narrative, and proceed into Chreia/Maxim in your first year, and then Ref/Con the year-ish afterwards.
MP has this accelerated sequence for older students and IEW transfers, who are more accustomed to writing already and will quickly progress through the lower stages and get into the "meatier" applications in the upper stages.
Even though Narrative will look fairly simple on the surface, and in some ways familiar to IEW exercises, just a few of these lessons will give a solid grounding in the approach and the perspective that we come from in CC, which is a unique one. Then in Chreia/Maxim the skills will begin to look very fresh and different, those heads of development, and then REALLY different in Ref/Con with Heads of Purpose.
I have attached a document with some information on it for you, for your reference.
I would also recommend the Teacher Trainings and the curriculum DVDs or streaming options since you will have less time to master the material before teaching it!
Please let me know how we can partner with you to help make this change in your curriculum, or what resources would be the most helpful for you!

Abigail

[ShawnaB]

Thank you so much, Abigail. You have answered my question perfectly. I did, actually, just last night re-reference the teacher training videos from this summer and watched Narrative and Chreia and Maxim. I see what you mean by needing one before the other.

I have also PM'd you a few more questions about using CC in multi grade classes.

Thank you again,
Shawna

[enbateau]

I PM'd you ShawnaB since I have mixed grades in a CC catch-up class.