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- Course name
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Writing Essentials 1: Punctuation & Grammar I (MS 6/7-1) with Erin M. Brown
- Summary
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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-tos 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 for writing.
Instructor Access (optional grading support) is available for Unlimited Access or Single Access.
See the sidebar to the left for signup information!
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 Caravel 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: One-half (½) of a semester's credit for 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 for all middle school students — to help master the foundations of punctuation and grammar with tips, tricks, and expertise that helps your student know how to use punctuation and grammar correctly. This foundational course can help your student get rid of struggles with commas, semicolons, colons, and more — tackling the most challenging ideas within punctuation and grammar for middle school students — to 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.
©2016-2024 Homeschool Connections and Erin M. Brown, MA, MFA (aka author Erin Brown Conroy/E. B. Conroy) All rights reserved.
This course is designed by Erin M. Brown, MA, MFA.
This material is only to be used for its intended purpose by active subscribers of Homeschool Connections. Any other use without explicit permission is in violation of the seventh commandment (yes, the 7th commandment) and in violation of US and International copyright laws.
You may print or download to local hard disk extracts for your personal homeschool and non-commercial use only. This is not to be used for homeschool co-ops without express written permission from Homeschool Connections.
Technical Help: If you experience technical difficulty with watching the recorded classes or have a question about course content, please email us at homeschoolconnections@gmail.com. - Course name
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Writing Essentials 1: Punctuation & Grammar I (MS 6/7-1) with Erin M. Brown
- Instructors
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Maureen Ryan, Natalie Meyer Schira
- Semester
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Recorded
- Category
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Writing ➤ 6/7 Series: Essential Writing
- Grade level
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Middle School
- Editors
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Aubrey Heki, Sharon Hamric-Weis, Bonnie Donlon, Erin M. Brown, MA, MFA
- Start time
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March 1st, 2023 at 12:00 AM ET
- Course type
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Recorded, free with subscription
- Relative due dates
10-1 and 10-2 Vocabulary and Writing
12-1 and 12-2 Advanced Rhetoric and Writing
X-21 Story Writing: How to Write a Children’s Book– Picture Books, Readers, Chapter Books, and Middle-Grade Stories
X-22 Story Writing: Journaling to Become a Better Writer and Storyteller
Maureen Ryan
About Maureen Ryan
Maureen Ryan, BA, is a professional writer with more than twenty-five years of experience writing articles and creating content for a wide variety of news outlets, magazines, websites, and book publishers. She has taught writing across grade levels in classrooms and online for more than twelve years. Mrs. Ryan has a Bachelor of Arts in English and studied interactive learning at Teachers College, Columbia University.
As the executive editor for Scholastic.com, she helped refine the educational publisher’s interactive teaching tools and web-based lesson plans for grades PreK-12 and relaunched the site’s online writing tutorials hosted by award-winning authors. In addition to writing and mentoring, Mrs. Ryan has homeschooled her three children for more than 12 years. Having graduated her oldest, she continues to teach her younger two.
“I feel extremely blessed,” says Mrs. Ryan, “to be able to combine my love for teaching and writing with an opportunity to serve homeschool families.”
Mrs. Ryan is the Instructor Access one-on-one mentor/grader for the 6/7 Series Foundational courses (6/7-1, 6/7-2, 6/73, and 6/7-4); the 12-1 and 12-2 Advanced Rhetoric and Writing; the 11-9 course, Business Writing 1: Professional Writing Essentials; and the COLL-1 Essay Test Mastery course.
She teaches the following courses live:
Natalie Meyer Schira
About Natalie Meyer Schira
Miss Natalie Meyer Schira, BA, proudly serves as a teacher of middle school English and writing. She graduated from Saint Mary’s College Notre Dame in 2012 with a major in English Literature and a minor in secondary education.
Since then, Miss Schira has dedicated herself to Catholic education, joyfully serving nine years teaching English in a Catholic high school in Iowa and for three years as a virtual instructor. Miss Schira has also been featured in publications and with awards and recognition for teaching and inspiration.
With a love of language and teaching, she is committed to cultivating students' academic and emotional development and using her teaching credentials to collaborate with and support families and students. Miss Schira’s greatest loves include Christ, commas, communication, caffeine, and her beloved Chicago Cubs while living a life grounded in faith, joy, and opportunity.
To quote one of her favorite pieces of wisdom from her mother, “When life gives you hold music, dance.”
Here at Aquinas Writing Advantage, Miss. Schira is a LIVE course teacher for the 6/7 and 7/8 Series middle school writing courses. She is also the Middle School Writing Support Specialist.