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Student Writing Intensive: Group B Review by Kolbi Hunt

Andrew Pudewa
The Institute for Excellence in Writing
800-856-5815
P.O. Box 6065
Atascadero, CA 93423
http://www.writing-edu.com/

Pudewa for Dummies, Take 3: What Is a Student Writing Intensive?

If you, dear Reader, are beginning your initial research of Andrew Pudewa's writing programs by reading this review, let me tell you that you are best served to stop reading right now. Instead, go to my review of Teaching Writing: Structure and Style (TWSS) and read that first. THEN come back here. Really. I'll wait.

You're back? Great! Because now you have a good, solid background on what sorts of writing skills are taught by Andrew Pudewa in his writing courses. The difference is that Teaching Writing: Structure and Style (TWSS, or what you just read about) is meant to be a course that teaches teachers how to teach writing, and this is a course in which Mr. Pudewa teaches writing directly to the students of certain grade groups.

Student Writing Intensive (SWI, the program this review is about), comes in three different flavors: Group A (elementary level), Group B (middle school level), and Group C (high school level). This review will cover only Group B specifically since I was able to review only the Group B materials. (Please note that this review does NOT cover the Student Intensive Continuation Course (SICC), which is meant to be a continuation of SWI.)

What's up with all of these groups? Ah, that's an excellent question, dear Reader! Here's the deal: Andrew Pudewa set forth his entire writing methodology, applicable to all age groups and abilities, in the teacher course TWSS. But some of you will not want to spend the countless hours watching the many discs full of writing theory and instruction presented in TWSS. Some will want to purchase a course in which Mr. Pudewa directly teaches your student and gives your student materials geared specifically for his or her age group. Here is where the Student Writing Intensives come in.

The Group B set of Student Writing Intensive will provide you with a recorded seminar of Mr. Pudewa's in which he teaches writing techniques to a room full of real, live middle school students (roughly grades 6-7 or ages 10-13). The materials provided in the notebook and the materials presented in the DVDs are meant to be given directly to middle school students. Likewise, the Group A set is to be taught directly to elementary students, and Group C is to be taught directly to high school students. Of course, the Group A program will include much less rigorous work (and fewer techniques) than what is covered in Group C. It's all about the target age groups. If you want all the writing techniques Mr. Pudewa teaches, buy TWSS.

So what stuff do you get when you buy SWI Group B? The SWI programs (Groups A, B and C) are $99 each (or $229 total if purchased as a package with TWSS). You get a hard plastic CD container with four DVDs. The original seminar recorded on these DVDs took place over four days in which Mr. Pudewa taught the children for approximately two hours each day. Each DVD (2 hours long) corresponds to one day of the seminar. DVD disc 1 is seminar day one, DVD disc 2 is seminar day two, and so on.

I am thrilled to report that the production quality of these four DVDs is superb. It is a huge improvement from the production quality of the DVDs included in the TWSS course. Not that the DVDs that come with the TWSS course are substandard, but the background is boring in TWSS. In SWI it is immediately apparent that the background of the classroom was purposefully crafted to look very tailored and pleasing to the eye. Watching Mr. Pudewa's courses is a joy, but watching Mr. Pudewa's courses when provided with the backdrop of a room full of interesting scenery (as opposed to the backdrop of a huge white board) is quite nice.

It's also nice to have real children present during the lessons. True, you only see the backs of their heads (this is probably due to some sort of legal reasoning), but it is very cozy to have Mr. Pudewa lecture to and then answer questions from children who are the ages of your student. He interacts with them, asks questions of them, and uses their responses and work in his lessons. It's also a nice touch that they weren't coached, but that they will sometimes get answers wrong or not understand the question. It's very authentic.

In addition to the four DVDs that come when you purchase the course, you also receive a very high-quality three-ring binder and three sets of paperwork. One is a set of five pre-marked index tabs. The index tabs go in the notebook and provide the students with a way to organize the paperwork that comes with the program (and that they will write in response to the course's lessons).

The binder also comes with a stack of paperwork that is directly related to the material presented in the DVDs. This is another area that is a vast improvement over TWSS. I found that the paperwork provided in support of TWSS was disorganized and somewhat random in nature, not really tracking the presentation on the DVDs. But the paperwork provided with SWI is very well organized, well presented and helpful. All small stories dissected in the SWI DVDs are reprinted in these pages, as are all white boards full of summarized topics and worked out lessons. The paperwork that supports the DVDs in SWI Group B is just superb. I was very impressed.

The last stack of paperwork that comes with the program is actually a detailed alternate lesson plan that transforms the SWI seminar from four two-hour lessons into a fourteen-week writing course. These lesson plans direct the student to slow down the viewing of the DVDs (watching only parts of a DVD at a sitting, rather than the whole thing) and also provide much more supplemental practice of the writing techniques taught. This alternate lesson plan was a wonderful addition to the program in that it dovetails with the original presentation on the DVDs and also allows you to have the students go slower (no longer a four-day crash course in writing) and practice the techniques more before moving on. Including this alternative/supplementary lesson plan (with plenty of extra exercises) was a very nice touch.

This is the part of the review in which I usually discuss areas that need improvement - except that there's really just not much to say. My initial criticism of TWSS doesn't hold here with SWI, since the production quality of the DVDs is superb and the paperwork that comes in the notebook tracks nicely with the information presented in the DVDs.

You will, as a parent or teacher, have to watch these along with your children in order to help coach your children along and/or in order to evaluate their assignments, so if you're hoping to plunk this down in front of your child and walk away, I don?t think that will work.

All in all, this is a very solid program. Of course, you (the parent/teacher) will not come away with as much information as you would glean from watching TWSS, but if you are looking for a more streamlined version of Mr. Pudewa's writing techniques, or if you are looking to watch how he implements his writing techniques in a classroom setting, this is the program for you.



-- Product review by Kolbi Hunt, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, December, 2005

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