Make your writing strong & clear — and master the most critical foundations needed for excellent high school writing, including writing for an audience and purpose, perfecting word choice, strong sentences & paragraphs, linear writing, rhetoric, transitions, and more.

Take the 9-1 course with this course to gain a full semester’s credit for writing.

Instructor Access (optional grading support) is available for Unlimited Access or Single Access. 
See the sidebar to the left for signup information! Scroll down to read the biography of each instructor.  
 

Special notes: This is the second of a 4-part series. Continue with the HS 9 Series (9-3 and 9-4) for a full year’s credit for writing.

Total Classes: 8

Prerequisite: Required: Registered for Writing Essentials 1: Essential Punctuation and Grammar I (HS 9-1). Because courses in the program are sequential, for your student’s success, it is required that your student take the 9-1 course before enrolling in this course. Students will be held accountable for all of the punctuation and grammar taught in the previous course. 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 Writing Essentials 1: Essential Punctuation & Grammar I (HS 9-1) for one (1) full semester’s credit. When combined with the 9-1 course, this course is worth one (1) full semester’s credit for writing.

Instructor: Erin M. Brown, MA, MFA
NOTE: If you have questions about course content and teaching the material, please sign up for Instructor Access to get one-on-one help. Use the email below only if you encounter errors or problems in course content. Thank you.
Email: ebconroy@homeschoolconnections.com

Course Description: In this foundational course, you can gain the skills that make writing strong and clear, lacking nothing—to articulate ideas well in writing for all of high-school-level work. The most important foundations of high school writing are introduced and discussed, and students learn the keys to perfecting strong sentences and paragraphs; learn nine basic forms of rhetoric; focus on linear academic writing for a purpose; practice transitions and connectives, parallelism, paraphrasing, and summary; review punctuation as it influences excellence in writing (comma, semicolon, colon, and dash use); learn how to recognize and correct common grammar struggles; understand the characteristics of an effective introduction, body, and conclusion; learn prewriting, drafting, and editing skills; and practice sculpting a piece of writing with direction, receiving specific feedback from the instructor.

Course Outline

Class 1: Audience, purpose, and word choice

Class 2: Perfecting strong sentence and paragraph construction

Class 3: Nine forms of rhetoric (and what they have to do with great writing)

Class 4: Linear writing for a purpose; more how-to’s for crafting strong sentences and paragraphs

Class 5: How to use transitions, connectives, and parallelism to make writing cohesive

Class 6: Punctuation and excellent writing: the comma, colon, semicolon, and dash; conquering common punctuation struggles

Class 7: Key components of an essay/paper; the introduction, body, conclusion, hook, and thesis; prewriting for success

Class 8: Drafting for success; editing and polishing your writing

Course Materials
REQUIRED BOOK: Get the book Simplified Writing 101: Top Secrets for College Success by Erin Brown Conroy (aka Erin M. Brown/EB 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

REQUIRED SOFTWARE
All documents must be submitted in this course (and all of the 9 Series courses) via Microsoft Word OR have the ability to convert a document to a Microsoft Word document (if you do not own Microsoft Word, you can use a system such as Google Docs that converts to Word documents FREE). Again, all documents must be uploaded in a Word document.

Homework: LIVE and Instructor Access students will have weekly writing assignments with grading and direct feedback from the instructor (parents will grade Recorded students’ work). 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.