(Fall 2023) Writing Essentials 1: Punctuation & Grammar I (MS 6/7-1)-Tuesday-11:30 AM ET- with Bonnie Donlon

 

Help your middle school student gain confidence and master must-have skills for writing with this excellent foundational punctuation and grammar course — using specific helps, tips, and how-to’s to make your student’s critical writing skills strong. Take the 6/7-2 course with this course to gain a full semester’s credit of writing.   

    

How to get the most out of the Writing Essentials 1: Punctuation & Grammar I for Middle School course with Professor Erin M. Brown (AKA Erin Brown Conroy/E.B. Conroy)

  • Read the course details below.
  • Prepare a notebook for notetaking and homework. Students -- be sure to take notes during class!
  • Students, begin the course by:
    • LIVE CLASS Students - Coming to the first live Class session on the scheduled date and time.
    • Unlimited Access / Recorded Students - Clicking on the "Recording" and watching Professor Brown’s lecture for Class One.
  • Review any supplemental materials (videos or readings)
  • Complete the Quiz(zes). The computer will automatically grade the quiz. Students will review with a parent.
    • *Note* If taking the course in Recorded format, the quiz will reset if someone else in the family takes it, so make sure the grade is recorded by a parent.
  • Weeks 1, 2, and 3 have reading material for parents. Parents, please do not skip this step.
  • If you need review, watch the recording and/or go over the PowerPoint again.
  • Repeat until all 6 classes are complete.
  • If a student is taking the course in Unlimited Access / Recorded Format and has an Instructor Access one-on-one grader for the course, there will be extra worksheets for the student to complete (beyond what is noted on your Moodle page). Please coordinate submitting the extra assignments with your Instructor Access instructor (for grading).
  • If a student is taking the course in Unlimited Access / Recorded Format without using Instructor Access during the course and the student has quiz grades below 80%, feel free to sign up with the Instructor Access instructor for additional help.
  • Once the course is completed to the parent's satisfaction, there is a Certificate of Completion at the end of this page (to be filled in for your records). Homeschool Connections does not provide record keeping.

 

Total Classes: 6

Duration: 50 minutes per class

Prerequisite: No class prerequisite.

Suggested Grade Level: 7th or accelerated 6th grade

Suggested Credit: ½ semester Writing or English. Follow with MS 6/7-2 for a full semester credit. To make a full and complete year of middle school writing, sign up for the 6/7-3 and 6/7-4 courses that follow.

 

Instructor: Erin M Brown (AKA Erin Brown Conroy/E.B. Conroy), M.A, M.F.A.

Instructor Email: ebconroy@homeschoolconnections.com

 

Course Description: This is an essential writing course to help master the foundations of punctuation and grammar with tips, tricks, and expertise that helps your student know how to correctly use punctuation and grammar in all middle school writing. Get rid of struggles with commas, semicolons, colons, and more by tackling the most challenging ideas within punctuation and grammar for middle school students, so your student can become confident and comfortable using punctuation and grammar well in all writing. Sign up for the companion course that follows this course, Writing Essentials 2: Excellent Sentence & Paragraph Writing I (MS 6/7-2), for a full semester of middle school writing.

 

Course Outline:

  • Class 1: Mastering commas in a series; mastering commas with conjunctions
  • Class 2: Mastering commas with "by the way clausettes"; mastering commas with tough constructions
  • Class 3: Using tense (What it is and how to correctly use it); identifying competing punctuation (what it is and how to avoid it); quotation marks (how to correctly use them!)
  • Class 4: Mastering "tricky-pair" sentence construction (if-then, not only-but also, and more); identifying (and working with) tough grammar constructions
  • Class 5: Using colons and semicolons correctly
  • Class 6: Mastering tricky punctuation details; "right way" end punctuation and spacing

 

Course Materials: Course materials are included free as PDF files. Word or the ability to convert a document to a Word-compatible document is required. If you do not own Microsoft Word, you can use a system such as Google Docs that converts to Word documents FREE.

 

Homework: This course has weekly quizzes, with an estimated one to three hours per week for homework outside of class time (depending on the student's skill level upon entering the course). Quizzes are graded automatically by the computer for instant feedback