Total Mastery in High School Writing: Excelling in Every Essay

Description

💯 Total Mastery in High School Writing is a comprehensive ongoing course designed to equip students with the foundational skills needed for success in high school, college, and beyond. From mastering the essentials of essay organization to honing argumentative writing, literary analysis, historical research, and crafting compelling college application essays, this course provides explicit instruction, practical exercises, and personalized feedback to empower students in every aspect of academic writing. Prepare your teen for the rigors of upper-level writing with a curriculum that goes beyond the basics and sets them on a path to confidently excel in diverse writing tasks.

🕖 Learners can join anytime! We will get them going!

𝗖𝗟𝗔𝗦𝗦 𝗦𝗡𝗔𝗣𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗧:
✅ We start with sentence construction, putting grammar knowledge to work to write more sophisticated, mature sentences. This will separate your learner’s writing from the rest.
✅ The instructor explicitly teaches a concept or skill through instruction, examples, and modeling. This direct teaching is critical!
✅ Students practice the skill with teacher feedback and guidance. This is done through the chatbox.
✅ During workshop time, students work independently on their Google Docs while still getting feedback from the instructor. This immediate feedback is proven to increase skill and understanding.

Throughout the week, the instructor gives detailed feedback and suggestions when students turn in work. The student can go back and forth with the teacher on revisions as long as they are enrolled. Students need the repetition of week-to-week practice and explicit teaching in the mini-lessons. These weeks are packed with instruction, workshop time, writing, practice, feedback, and revision, and students will churn out all types of essays. 💥

🚀 𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒 𝐒𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐃𝐔𝐋𝐄: This ongoing course builds throughout each unit, so check the schedule. Students can join late, but to get the full benefit of the course, learners should remain enrolled for the entire unit.

𝕌ℕ𝕀𝕋 𝟙: 𝔽𝕆𝕌ℕ𝔻𝔸𝕋𝕀𝕆ℕ𝕊 𝕆𝔽 𝔼𝕊𝕊𝔸𝕐 𝕎ℝ𝕀𝕋𝕀ℕ𝔾
Many students know how to organize a five-paragraph essay but struggle to generate ideas that fully support their thesis. They aren’t quite sure how to develop body paragraphs that are clear, fully elaborated, and effective. Some find it impossible or difficult to write an introduction and conclusion that are more than just a few sentences. While students will certainly learn how to organize an essay, we teach skills that equip learners to embrace any writing task with confidence and skill. This happens when they are explicitly taught how to do something, followed by guidance and feedback on their independent practice. Students must understand and master these foundational skills for high school, college, and work success.

✔ Sept 8-14–Writing genres & How to organize a 5-paragraph essay
✔ Sept 15-21–Generate main ideas that are broad and distinct and don’t read like “mud”
& the body paragraph structure
✔ Sept 22-28–Considering your audience; generating ideas using brainstorming, sorting, and two rules of thumb, & using Google Docs, MLA formatting, and how to draft the main idea paragraphs
✔ Sept 29 – Oct 5–Learn four elaboration techniques, how to generate research questions, and then find answers & the most difficult component of the essay: the introduction. They learn six different techniques for hooking their readers, how to write an effective thesis statement, and how to bridge the gap between the hook and thesis statement.
✔ Oct 6-12–Students learn how to write a concluding paragraph that leaves their reader thinking by using four different techniques & how to format an essay to follow the MLA style guide, including a Works Cited page.

𝕌ℕ𝕀𝕋 𝟚: 𝔸ℝ𝔾𝕌𝕄𝔼ℕ𝕋𝔸𝕋𝕀𝕍𝔼 𝕎ℝ𝕀𝕋𝕀ℕ𝔾: 𝔸𝕊𝕊𝔼ℝ𝕋, ℝ𝔼𝔸𝕊𝕆ℕ, & ℂ𝕆𝕌ℕ𝕋𝔼ℝ
🥊 Ah, the art of argument! You may think your teen is already pretty talented in this area. This may be true! But are their arguments valid and reasonable? Do they know how to acknowledge the other side of an issue, a counterclaim, and refute it? How well are their arguments presented in writing? Most high school and college writing is argument writing, and this class prepares them for college writing, including dual enrollment. Literary analysis and research papers require argument writing, and all the required writing prompts on the AP English and AP Language exams are argument writing. Students will be prepared for the rigor of upper high school and college writing after taking this course. In fact, some of our students have reported using our writing guide, which has clear and useful graphic organizers, to write their essays in their college courses.
✔ Oct 13-19–Aspects of expository, persuasive, and argument writing as well as the effective strategies of argument. Building critical thinking and writing skills, students learn how to evaluate both sides of an issue and consider opposing points of view. They learn to counter an opposing claim.
✔ Oct 20-Nov 2–Students begin writing their own argumentative essays while going through the writing process. They learn how to conduct online research by evaluating the credibility of a website. They also learn to delineate issues, claims, reasons, evidence, and analysis.
✔ Nov 3-9–Fine-tuning their body paragraphs, students revise body paragraphs and learn to elaborate by using multiple strategies. They also tackle the introduction and conclusion.

𝕌ℕ𝕀𝕋 𝟛: ℙ𝔼ℕ 𝕋𝕆 ℙ𝔸ℙ𝔼ℝ: 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕃𝕀𝕋𝔼ℝ𝔸ℝ𝕐 𝔸ℕ𝔸𝕃𝕐𝕊𝕀𝕊 𝔼𝕊𝕊𝔸𝕐
In high school English classes, students read a novel or piece of literature, and they are told to write an essay. They may have a few class discussions of the literature, and they may get some help with a thesis statement, but usually, they don’t get the instruction they need. They need explicit teaching! High school students must read literature, think deeply about the essential ideas, and synthesize all of it into an essay. 😳 This is no easy task!
🧠 They have to know how to:
-do a close read of a literary text.
-understand the text
-analyze and evaluate a text
-synthesize background information with an interpretation of the text
-organize all of these ideas
-prepare evidence, analysis, counter-arguments, and rebuttals
-present the ideas in a broad, relevant context
-write a beautiful essay
Students deserve more explicit instruction and support. This is a better way. We break all of this into digestible components, so students can master the concepts, thinking, and skills. We know what they need to have success.
✔ NOV 10-16–Using a short film, the instructor models the literary analysis paragraph. Then, building critical reading skills, students read and discuss a short story, analyzing it for the theme and the way the author developed the theme. After doing some pre-writing and thinking, they write a practice paragraph. The class reads a short story and learn the most difficult component of the essay: the introduction. They learn various techniques for hooking their readers, how to introduce their broad topic and then how to narrow it, and how to end with an effective thesis statement that stakes a claim while giving a concession.
✔ NOV 17-23–Students learn how to develop a body paragraph. It is here they delineate evidence and analysis. They learn to integrate their evidence, which are quotes from the literature, in a way that is coherent and flows with the rest of the text.
🦃 𝘖𝘕𝘌 𝘞𝘌𝘌𝘒 𝘉𝘙𝘌𝘈𝘒 𝘍𝘖𝘙 𝘈𝘔𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘊𝘈𝘕 𝘛𝘏𝘈𝘕𝘒𝘚𝘎𝘐𝘝𝘐𝘕𝘎
✔ DEC 1-7–Students learn how to write a concluding paragraph that leaves their reader thinking. They mirror what they did in the introduction. In the conclusion, they will broaden their topic so that their essay has a larger significance. Then, it’s time to revise and edit the essay for word choice and sentence fluency.

🎄 𝘞𝘐𝘕𝘛𝘌𝘙 𝘉𝘙𝘌𝘈𝘒

𝕌ℕ𝕀𝕋 𝟜: 𝕋ℍ𝕀𝕊, 𝕋ℍ𝔸𝕋, & 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕆𝕋ℍ𝔼ℝ: 𝕋ℍ𝔼 ℍ𝕀𝕊𝕋𝕆ℝ𝕀ℂ𝔸𝕃 ℝ𝔼𝕊𝔼𝔸ℝℂℍ 𝕋𝔼ℝ𝕄 ℙ𝔸ℙ𝔼ℝ
🥸 What in the world is an argumentative research paper?!
An argumentative research paper is harder than researching a topic and presenting findings, which is typical of lower-level research essays. In this class, students learn to research an event and then develop an argument about the significance of that event, based on the facts. They learn to follow the facts and present their findings in an argumentative research essay. Students begin by learning the steps of research: how to get organized, ask research questions, search smart to find resources online, read informational texts, and take notes so that they avoid plagiarism. Then they learn to synthesize it all together into a research essay with an annotated bibliography page. This class includes workshop time, which we have found increases student success in writing the paper.
✔ Jan 12-18:
AN INTRO TO HISTORICAL RESEARCH–Students will learn how to get organized for historical research. Students will learn the difference between primary/secondary/tertiary sources. We start with an informational text to build some background knowledge. After reading their first article, they start to ask research questions that guide their efforts.
HISTORICAL RESEARCH & NOTE TAKING–Students learn how to choose a reliable source and how to explore their topic further, answering basic questions about their topic. This includes how to search smart and how to evaluate sources for bias and reliability. They will learn reading strategies and tips on how to read their sources while taking notes. Avoiding plagiarism, they will take effective notes, cite sources, and paraphrase their information.
✔ Jan 19-25:
Workshop Days so students have their instructor to guide them along in the hard work of research.
✔ Jan 26 – Feb 1:
HISTORICAL CONTEXT–Students will research the important people involved with the topic, create maps, and construct a timeline. Students understand what historical context is and begin studying the historical context of their topic using accurate and appropriate references to the time period by specifying the political, economic, social, and cultural influences—events, ideas, people, places, and objects. Includes a workshop day so students have their instructor to guide them along in the hard work of research.
✔ Feb 2-8:
DEEP RESEARCH— The instructor teaches the importance of doing balanced research, where they look at all sides of an issue to understand other opinions, points of view, and controversies. For example, they will ask questions such as: who suffered? Who benefited? What about women? Children? Men? People from other racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic groups? What about people in other geographical areas, those with different values and motivations? Includes a workshop Day so students have their instructor to guide them along in the hard work of research.
✔ Feb 9-15:
Workshop Day so students have their instructor to guide them along in the hard work of research.
ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION–This is when students begin asking and answering “why?” and “how?” questions on their topic to think deeper and discover more. Students will explore the historical impact on a deeper level and write the rest of the essay.
✔ Feb 16-22: Workshop Days so students have their instructor to guide them along in the hard work of research.
✔ Feb 23 – Mar 1 : Students learn how to write the introduction & conclusion, and they do it in class with teacher guidance and support. Last, they learn to create a separate annotated bibliography page and how to revise and edit their entire essay. For homework, they fine-tune their essay and turn them in for final teacher feedback.

𝕌ℕ𝕀𝕋 𝟝: 𝕋ℍ𝔼 ℂ𝕆𝕃𝕃𝔼𝔾𝔼 𝔸ℙℙ𝕃𝕀ℂ𝔸𝕋𝕀𝕆ℕ 𝔼𝕊𝕊𝔸𝕐: 𝔸 𝕎𝕆ℝ𝕂𝕊ℍ𝕆ℙ 𝕋𝕆 𝔾𝔼𝕋 𝕀𝕋 𝔻𝕆ℕ𝔼!
Students, you will learn how to research your audience and how to prepare, draft, revise, and edit an essay to get the results you want. Class time involves direct instruction with a dash of inspiration, and students will have individual workshop time with feedback from the instructor. Explicit instruction includes the following:
✔ Mar 2-8:
Day 1–Learn what colleges and universities look for in college essays. Students begin brainstorming their essay’s topic, audience expectations, and how their strengths fit their prospective school. Students develop a topic idea to illustrate those character traits in a story that is narrow, appropriate, and engaging.
Day 2–Students learn two different methods for organizing the college essay. The instructor inspires them to think deeply about who they are and the significance of their essay’s topic. They read two sample essays and have a little Hollywood inspiration to go deeper into their topic for its significance. They meet in breakout rooms, one-on-one with the teacher for individualized help. When not meeting with the teacher, they are organizing their essays.
✔ Mar 9-15:
Day 1–This is an “ah-ha” day! Students finally start to understand how to be transparent, authentic, and to communicate the significance of their experience. Again, they see on film how to go deeper, read a sample essay, and learn how to make their essays memorable. They meet in breakout rooms, one-on-one with the teacher for individualized help. When not meeting with the teacher, they are drafting their essays.
Day 2–Now that they have a draft, they learn how to write a conclusion that brings closure, satisfaction, and an emotional connection with their reader. When complete, they revise and edit their essays for sentence fluency. They learn some simple tricks to use in the revision process to make their sentence structure stand out from the rest. They meet in breakout rooms, one-on-one with the teacher for individualized help. When not meeting with the teacher, they write their conclusions and revise their essays.