Our Current IEW Assignment

For the next two weeks, my heir and spare are working on a creative writing assignment from a prompt - a Unit VII paper in IEW.  They are determining things from the modern world that they can't live without and would miss terribly if God suddenly did a Bill & Ted on them, plopping them somewhere in the ancient world.

To stimulate their brains, we watched this TED Ed about the development of civilization, all wrapped up in 4 little minutes [I don't agree with every point of the thesis, but it made for great conversation and a good jumping point for brainstorming].

Pulling information out of our own heads and organizing it into coherent thought can cause many moms and students to hit huge wall in writing.  Ugh!  It is SO much easier to look at source material and regurgitate it.  Yes, it is. And it is a great set of skills to teach [see Units 1, 2, 3, and 4 for confirmation].  Yet, why are we ultimately teaching writing to our children?  Writing is communication.  Our children need to be able to defend their faith, stand up for what is right, and protect our grandchildren!

The purpose of this structure is paramount to our ability to communicate our thoughts and beliefs to others.  When this unit is mastered, our students will be able to write on virtually any topic in any forum, whether it be blue book exams, timed essays for standardized tests, answering prompts for writing contests and scholarships, or impromptu speech preparation [you know...like the time I was sitting in Olive Garden during college and my Unitarian friend leans over and casually says to me "...so, why do you believe Jesus is God's son?"].

I highly recommend registering an account at the IEW website and listening to the archived webinars, especially the one recorded recently by Andrew Pudewa entitled "Unit 7: Cure for the Blank Page."

The key to harvesting information from the vast and fruitful plains in our own heads is to ask ourselves questions.  Then, the key to successfully writing from a prompt is to...this is a shocker, I know...ACTUALLY ANSWER THE PROMPT.

We have to be mean about this.  Pull out your inner Dragonlady.  If the paper doesn't answer the prompt, your student has to start over.  If we guide them through this process now, they will be set up for success whether they are headed to a university philosophy class or a city council meeting to speak about landowner rights.

Unit 7 promises to be a most excellent adventure.