by Jean Nichols and Jennifer Mauser
Since its debut in July 2017, IEW’s Premium Membership has proven to be a tremendous resource for teachers. The Premium Membership wasn’t available when I was first trained in the Structure and Style method twenty years ago. There are so many valuable tools I could have used when I taught language arts to my ninety-six sixth graders.
What exactly is a Premium Membership? IEW has curated a collection of content that is available to our members via the Internet. It includes some great tools, including streaming of the Teaching Writing: Structure and Style seminar, the online IEW Checklist Generator™, access to live Master Classes, downloads of the newly updated Student Resource Packet and Writing Source Packet, dozens of audio talks and articles, and other great resources. And all of this content has been gathered specifically to support you as you teach written expression to your students. If you purchased a copy of the Teaching Writing: Structure and Style, Second Edition, it came with one year of the Premium Membership. If you haven’t activated yours yet, we hope to convince you to give it a try.
I’d love to tell you about three of my favorite tools:
1. On-Demand Access to the Teaching Writing: Structure and Style Seminar
One of the most valuable benefits you receive with a Premium Membership is access to streaming of the Teaching Writing: Structure and Style seminar. This video seminar is IEW’s core writing course for teachers, presenting the system of structural models (e.g., narrative, essay, report) and stylistic techniques (e.g., strong verbs, quality adjectives, and a variety of sentence openers) applicable for students of many ages and aptitudes.
The set includes the complete teacher-training course as streaming videos, along with four demonstration lessons showing the first step of the process being taught to students at four different grade levels—an enjoyable jump-start for Structure and Style. In addition to using the streaming to complete your training, having on-demand access to it when you need a review of a particular unit or stylistic technique is a teacher’s dream. How? Imagine you are starting a new unit next week and need a quick refresher before you begin. If you have a Premium Membership, you can watch the appropriate video clip from the seminar after school this afternoon or at home over the weekend. If you are part of a grade level team that plans lessons as a group, you can prepare for an upcoming unit by reviewing the video together before you teach it to your students. Administrators can use the seminar clips to review particular structural models or stylistic techniques at staff meetings. With video streaming, you can access the seminar any time you need to.
2. IEW’s Master Classes
A recent addition to the Premium Membership are IEW’s Master Classes. Master Classes have become more popular than ever in the past few years. They are an excellent way to learn or improve a skill. IEW’s Master Classes are taught by IEW founder and principal speaker, Andrew Pudewa, as well as a few other acknowledged experts in their respective fields. Our next master class is “How to Integrate Poetry and Why” on Saturday, February 27. The other 2021 classes include “How to Teach the Compare-Contrast Essay” (4/24/21), “How to Write Your Own Source Texts” (8/14/21), “How to Implement a Pathway to Public Speaking” (9/18/21), and a Premium Member Gathering (11/20/21).
As a Premium Member you have the option to participate in the live class or to listen to the webinar recording at your convenience. (A few days after they take place, master class recordings are emailed to all registrants along with downloadable slides.) There’s an added value to participating in the live class though. IEW team members are available during the class to answer any questions you might have, so we hope that you take advantage of joining us. As a Premium Member you can register for upcoming classes or watch previously recorded classes by downloading the TWSS2-PREM_Master_Class_and_Webinar_Access_Instructions.pdf file from your account. You can find this download under your FILES tab when you log on to your account.
3. The Online Checklist Generator
I know I’m not alone in believing that the IEW Checklist Generator™ is worth the Premium Membership all by itself. The use of a checklist is an essential component of the Structure and Style method. Serving as a visual reminder to students, the checklist provides a clear and concrete list of expectations for each composition they write.
As teachers become more comfortable with the process, they are encouraged to adjust the checklist in order to differentiate expectations for some of their students. You can add an additional stylistic technique for those who are ready for more or remove a technique for students who need more time before the next dress-up or sentence opener is added. When I used IEW’s materials in my classroom, I had to add the additional dress-ups by hand and use whiteout or cross them out in order to individualize a checklist for my students who required one. I taught writing to three classes of sixth graders with thirty-two students in each class. You can imagine how much time it took to personalize checklists by hand for my students who struggled, had special needs, were English Learners, or were advanced writers.
With the Online IEW Checklist Generator, you can customize a checklist quickly and easily. To access the Checklist Generator, log on to your account and click on “Your Account” at the top of the page. Next, click on the gray IEW Checklist Generator tab. From there, you will be able to select from two types of checklists: Standard Templates for teachers who use the Classroom Supplement or who create their own lesson plans and Product Templates for teachers who use theme-based writing materials or Structure and Style for Students. Select the appropriate template and click on “Customize” at the bottom of the screen to add or remove elements and assign point values if you wish. When you’re done, save the completed checklist and print a PDF for your students.
Your saved templates are stored in My Custom Templates to use again. The linked blog post above includes a video of Andrew Pudewa demonstrating how to use this invaluable tool as well as other suggestions for individualized learning. By using the IEW Checklist Generator™, you will be able to meet the needs of your students with ease, something all educators are happy to accomplish! These are just a few of the many handy and useful tools available only to Premium Members.
Do you have a Premium Membership card that you’ve never activated hidden in a drawer or under a stack of papers? Pull it out and get started! Perhaps you had a card a while ago and have no idea where it is. Contact your Educational Consultant. Maybe you have the first edition of the TWSS Seminar Workbook. Have you heard about the TWSS upgrade? Possibly you’re hesitating because you’re concerned that you’ll be “stuck” with another auto-renewing membership each year. Don’t worry. As your membership approaches the one-year mark, we will notify you with information on how to renew it if you wish. We’ll email you once more after it has expired, but we will not auto-renew it. That way, you can be confident you can use the membership only as long as it is useful to you. We don’t want a single teacher to miss out on this great resource, which is why we are trying to make it as easy as possible for you to become a Premium Member.
If you need more convincing, listen to IEW podcast Episode 179: Hidden Treasure: IEW’s Premium Membership. We think you’ll agree that IEW’s Premium Membership is a great way to obtain education, resources, and support for teaching writing.
Contact your IEW Educational Consultant if you have any questions or need assistance in activating your Premium Membership.
