(Spring 2024) High School Essential Writing 2: Excellent Paragraphs and Essays (HS 9-3)-Thursday-2:30 PM ET with Sharon Hamric-Weis, BSEd, JD

Master the details of writing that you need to succeed — and perfect the essential tools necessary for excellent high school writing, including clear sentence and paragraph construction, summary and paraphrase, answering essay questions, linear & process writing, advanced paragraph structure, and more. Take the 9-4 course with this course to gain a full semester’s credit of writing!

 

 

How to get the most out of the Essential Writing 2: Excellent Paragraphs and Essays (HS 9-3) course with Erin M. Brown, MA, MFA :

  • 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 any Quiz(zes) or homework assignments posted. The computer will automatically grade quizzes.
    • *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.
  • If you need review, watch the recording and/or go over the PowerPoint again.
  • Repeat until all six (6) classes are complete.
  • 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

Prerequisite: Required: Registered for Writing Essentials 1: Essential Punctuation and Grammar I (HS 9-1) High School Simplified Writing 1: Strong Foundational Writing Skills (HS 9-2). Because courses in the program are sequential, for your student’s success, it is required that your student take the 9-1 and 9-2 courses before enrolling in this course. Students will be held accountable for all content taught in the previous courses. If your student is unable to take the previous courses LIVE, then at a minimum, he or she can watch the recordings on Unlimited Access before taking this course. An alternative to the prerequisite: a passing assessment from the Aquinas Writing Advantage Assessment service. Please contact homeschoolconnections@gmail.com for any questions on permissions.

Suggested Grade Level: 9th grade; however, all high school students are welcome

Suggested Credit: One-half (½) of a semester’s credit for Writing or English

Combine with High School Simplified Writing 2: Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay (HS 9-4) for one (1) full semester credit. When combined with the 9-4 course, this course is worth one (1) full semester’s credit for writing.

Instructor: Erin M. Brown, MA, MFA 

Course Description: Join this essential writing course for all high school students, to make sure that your student has critical high school essay writing foundations in place. Give your high school student exactly what’s needed for writing well-crafted sentences and paragraphs—including the absolute “must-have” knowledge, review, and practice for the use of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and prepositional phrases, and compound sentence structures. Learn to use transitions and connectives to make your paragraphs smooth; the use of quoted material to support your ideas; and the use of summary and paraphrase that’s required in all academic writing. Even if your student has learned foundational concepts before, the approach in this class is to use high school vocabulary and structures that are more complex and needed for upper-level writing. From mastering the details that are holding your student back to providing much-needed practice, help your student perfect the essential tools for high school writing with this course.

Course Outline:

  • Class 1: Using strong nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs in well-constructed sentences
  • Class 2: Perfecting higher-level capitalization, punctuation, and the use of quotation marks in dialogue in academic writing
  • Class 3: Perfecting linear writing, transitions, and connectives in sentence and paragraph writing
  • Class 4: Writing with summary and paraphrase
  • Class 5: Answering essay questions: structure, form, and content I
  • Class 6: Answering essay questions: structure, form, and content II

Course Materials: Simplified Writing 101: Top Secrets for College Success, by Erin Brown Conroy: Buy the hard copy of the book here:  http://amzn.to/2FMCose OR, buy the Kindle version of the book here (Download the FREE Kindle app to easily read on your computer, tablet, or mobile device): www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00B7AB90W/catholictreas-20

Microsoft 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: Students will have weekly writing assignments with grading and direct feedback from the instructor. Expect an estimated two (2) to four (4) hours per week for homework outside of class time, depending on the student’s ability; homework includes reading, writing, and responding to feedback.