This course is comprised of weeks 5-8 of a one-semester (16-week) writing course appropriate for ages 9-13. 

Students can expect to have fun while learning how to elevate their writing style through grammatical and stylistic devices. Each individual class will focus on a specific aspect of writing. All weekly assignments will include a checklist that builds over time, and all submitted assignments receive an evaluation with detailed feedback. 

Classes consist of a warm-up activity, followed by an instructor presentation interspersed with learner interaction and activities. Students are welcome to either use chat or out-loud answers. Each week, the instructor will post worksheets that review the class material, classwork and homework assignments. 

The first lesson picks up where Lesson 4 from Building Better Writers Junior Weeks 1-4 left off. At this point, students should be comfortable using a minimum of two adverbs and two adjectives, eliminating specific weak words from writing, and using prepositional phrases and adverbs as sentence openers. 

Week 1: This lesson combines expository (informational) writing with persuasive writing. In this class, students will use a book review -- not a book report! -- to showcase both forms of writing. Writing a book review allows a student to engage critically with the text by showcasing their understanding of the plot, characters, setting, and conflict, and then by providing their analysis of the highlights and lowlights of the story.

Week 2: In this lesson, students will focus on using coordinating conjunctions to join sentences and ideas. Students are also introduced to using a relative clause to extend a sentence and add information. 

Week 3: Students will practice using subordinate conjunctions this week in addition to coordinating conjunctions. The new addendum to the checklist is to use one of the following words to open a sentence with a dependent clause: after, although, as, because, before, even if/though, if, since, unless, until, when, whenever, wherever, while. 

Week 4: We will focus on persuasive writing and how to use a counter-argument and rebuttal. They will focus on crafting an organized paragraph that includes all the requirements from previous classes, plus a counter-argument and rebuttal. 

All submitted assignments received instructor feedback.