Fix It! Grammar (IEW): A Rubric Review

Fix It! Grammar is a six-level grammar program from the Institute for Excellence in Writing built around a serialized story. Each day the student finds and corrects grammar problems in a passage from an ongoing story, such as The Nose Tree, Robin Hood, or The Little Mermaid.

Last updated: 2026-10-29 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Subject-specialist / context-embedded / daily-editing
Worldview	Christian-ecumenical (functionally secular content)
Grades	3-12 (six progressive books)
Formats	Print teacher manual + consumable student book
Cost tier	Standard
Parent intensity	3
ESA-common	Listed: Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW), the publisher, appears on the Arkansas Participating Service Providers list, retrieved October 2026; the entry names the publisher, not individual titles
Accredited	No
Established	Fourth Edition, January 2022 for all six levels, per the IEW product pages
Website	iew.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	4	Cumulative through six levels; final book covers college-prep grammar fully
Ease of teaching	3	Teacher manual is excellent; parent must learn or relearn grammar alongside
Content quality	5	In our assessment, an excellent context-embedded grammar program
Flexibility	4	Standalone or paired with IEW writing; works with any composition program
Value for money	4	$29 per level for the teacher/student combo and $19 per additional student book
Worldview scope	5	Story-based passages have no doctrinal content; secular-usable
Visual/design	3	Functional layout; the daily passage is the design
Support resources	4	IEW community is mature; teacher-training videos available

Who the publisher is

The Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) is based in Locust Grove, Oklahoma, and was founded by Andrew Pudewa, its director. IEW's flagship product is the Structure and Style writing methodology, reviewed separately. Fix It! Grammar is the grammar companion to that writing program.

The Fix It! catalog comprises six levels, each named for the story that anchors it, according to IEW's Grammar products page. Level 1: Nose Tree (grades 3-5) is a gentle introduction to parts of speech, end-mark punctuation, phrases, clauses, and homophones; Level 2: Town Mouse and Country Mouse (grades 3-5) adds comma and capitalization rules and complex sentence patterns; Level 3: Robin Hood (grades 6-8) adds further comma rules, phrasal and clausal constructions, and quotation punctuation; Level 4: Mowgli and Shere Khan (grades 6-8) covers additional punctuation rules and essential and nonessential clauses; Level 5: Frog Prince (grades 9-12) turns to verb types, noun functions, and pronoun cases; and Level 6: Little Mermaid (grades 9-12) completes the program with verbals, active and passive voice, parallelism, and advanced punctuation. A student can progress one level per year starting in third or fourth grade, completing the series by twelfth grade or earlier if started later. The series can be entered at Level 1 regardless of age, because the cumulative structure does not assume prior grammar knowledge, and an older student with little formal grammar can start at Level 1 and may compress the early levels.

Fix It! Grammar's anchor stories are The Nose Tree, Town Mouse and Country Mouse, Robin Hood, Mowgli and Shere Khan, Frog Prince, and Little Mermaid, per IEW's Grammar products page. This review did not find religious instruction in the product descriptions reviewed.

Signature mechanics: (1) A daily passage, fifteen to twenty minutes. The student reads a single sentence or short paragraph from the story, identifies the marked grammar elements (underline subjects, circle prepositions, mark commas), and rewrites the corrected passage in the workbook. (2) The story carries the student. In our assessment, the narrative hook, Robin Hood's adventures, Mowgli's life in the jungle, provides the engagement that grammar drill alone cannot. (3) Cumulative review built into structure. Each new grammar concept is added to the running list of marks the student is responsible for finding. By Level 6, the student is marking sixteen or twenty different grammar elements in every daily passage, which in our assessment is a kind of working memory test that builds automaticity. (4) Teacher manual is the curriculum. The teacher's manual contains the full corrected passage, the grammar explanation for the day, and the answer key. Parents read the explanation, mark the student's work against the manual, and teach the concept when the student gets it wrong.

What they do exceptionally well

Story-driven engagement. In our assessment, this is the program's defining advantage. The narrative hook converts grammar from a chore into a daily small puzzle embedded in something interesting.

Distributed practice that produces retention. A student who completes Fix It! through Level 4 has marked thousands of subjects, prepositions, commas, and clauses in real sentences. In our assessment, the retention is durable in a way that unit-and-quiz grammar instruction rarely produces.

Bounded daily commitment. In our assessment, fifteen to twenty minutes a day is sustainable across a long year, and the consistency of the daily ritual works in the program's favor.

Excellent teacher manual. In our assessment, IEW's teacher manuals are clear, well-explained, and assume the parent may not remember much grammar from their own schooling. The manual teaches the parent and the student in parallel.

What they do poorly

The first weeks of Level 1 are slow for older students. A fifth- or sixth-grader who already knows basic capitalization and end punctuation may find the opening weeks of Level 1 unchallenging. IEW recommends starting at the appropriate level for the student, but assessing that level requires reading through the books. The program is forgiving, older students can compress the early units, but the first month can feel light.

Parent grammar review burden. Although we rate the teacher manual highly, the parent is expected to teach grammar concepts when the student gets them wrong. A parent who has not studied grammar in twenty years may be relearning alongside the student, which is a real time investment in the early books. By Levels 4 and 5, the parent may have been retrained, but the front-end ramp is not zero.

Consumable cost. The student book is consumable; each child needs their own copy. At $19.00 per student book as of October 2026, a family with three children moving through all six levels spends $342 on student books across six years, plus the teacher's manuals ($19.00 each, or the $29.00 combo for the first student at each level). This is not unreasonable for the value, but the cumulative spend is meaningful for large families.

No composition instruction. Fix It! teaches grammar by editing existing prose; it does not teach the student to produce their own writing. Families need a separate composition program. IEW Structure and Style, Essentials in Writing, Bravewriter, Writing with Skill, to cover the productive side of language arts.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Fix It! Grammar if: you have a student who hates traditional grammar textbooks; you want grammar taught in real prose context rather than isolated unit; you value cumulative-review pedagogy; you are using IEW Structure and Style for writing and want the matching grammar companion; you want a program that works as a fifteen-minute daily addition to any composition curriculum.

• Skip Fix It! Grammar if: you prefer grammar taught in big conceptual units with substantial practice sets (Easy Grammar, Rod and Staff, Analytical Grammar); you object to IEW's broader pedagogy or branding on other grounds; you want a program that combines grammar and composition in a single track; you have a student who finds story-tracking distracting from the grammar focus.

Cost honest assessment

Each Fix It! level requires both a teacher's manual and a student book. As of October 2026, per the publisher's shop pages, IEW lists each level's Teacher/Student Combo at $29.00 and an extra Student Book at $19.00. A family with one student progressing one level per year spends $29 per year, or $174 across all six levels. Each additional student needs only the $19 student book each year, or $114 across six levels. Teacher's manuals are reusable across siblings; student books are consumable.

Easy Grammar, Rod and Staff English, and Analytical Grammar, listed under Alternatives below, each publish their own current prices on their sites, and families comparing totals should check those pages.

A realistic all-in family budget for one student using Fix It! Grammar across the full series is $174 over six years, or $29 per year, with $19 per year for each additional student's book.

ESA eligibility notes

Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW), the publisher of Fix It! Grammar, appears on the Arkansas Department of Education's Participating Service Providers list, retrieved October 2026; the entry names the publisher, not individual titles. We have not confirmed Fix It! Grammar on any other state ESA list. The student book is consumable, so each child needs a copy. Families should verify eligibility with their program administrator before ordering.

Alternatives

• Easy Grammar, a family would choose Easy Grammar over Fix It! for a grade-by-grade grammar series, which its site lists from Grade 1 through an Ultimate Series for Grade 12+.
• Rod and Staff English, a family would choose Rod and Staff over Fix It! for a grade-by-grade English course from Rod and Staff Publishers; rodandstaffbooks.com forwards to Milestone Books, whose catalog lists Rod & Staff English by grade.
• Analytical Grammar, a family would choose Analytical Grammar over Fix It! for a leveled program, which its site lists as Levels 1 through 5, with placement activities to choose a starting level.