THE COURSE

HSW1 is a 12-week, on-line, individualized writing course that introduces students to the four broad categories of essay writing: description, narration, persuasion, and exposition. Students will write 8 essays throughout the term (see course outline below). In each unit (except unit 1 which deals with the basics of paragraph form) students will work with models in that essay style, and draft, revise, and publish original essays. While there will be direct instruction for each essay, as well as lessons on grammar, mechanics, and usage, most of the instruction will happen through feedback and revision of the essays themselves.

COST: $300

LOCATION: On-line.

WORKLOAD: 3-5 hours per week

DATES: (12-week sessions)
             Sept. through early Dec.
             Late Jan. through April

TENTATIVE COURSE OUTLINE…

wk 1; unit 1: essay-writing fundamentals. We’ll begin the unit with a writing inventory and baseline assessment. I’ll then be introducing and assessing some basic essay mechanics; these would include such things as paragraphs of order, description, and narration; the use of transitions and transitional expressions; the role of the thesis and topic sentences.

wk 2,3; unit 2: descriptive / reflective essay (to explore and describe a significant person or place). Unit 2 covers our first essay type: the descriptive essay (some teachers use the separate category “reflective.” My definition includes it, since what’s the point of describing something without reflecting on its significance? We’ll be doing close description exercises and some memory-dredging pre-writing for this essay.

wk 4,5; unit 3: narrative (personal narrative). For this two-week unit, students will be exploring, recounting, and reflecting on a significant event from their lives. We’ll work with narrative techniques (transitions; the difference between 1st and 3rd person narrative), and more memory-dredging exercises.

wk 6-8; unit 4: persuasive (compare-contrast, editorial, book or film review). In unit 4 students will be writing three types of persuasive essays. (Because we cover the 3-part persuasive essay so heavily in the ACT Prep course, I’ve decided to leave it out here. See me if you’re interested in learning more about that essay type.) 

wk 9-12; unit 5: expository (literary analysis, definition/classification, process analysis). In our final unit, students will begin to write with the purpose that they’ll rely on most at the college level: to inform. They’ll analyze literature and define/classify a word or term.

*Please keep in mind that because revision is a key to success in writing, work in these units will overlap. A student may be drafting the lit analysis paper at the same time she’s revising the book review.