In this ongoing class, students will focus on isolated skills to improve their academic writing. The skills can help students with persuasive and expository essays, as well as literature analysis and research papers. As an ongoing class, students may choose which weeks to attend based on the skills they want to improve. 

Class Schedule: 

Week of Nov. 2 -- Brainstorming
Week of Nov. 9 -- Thesis Statements
Week of Nov. 16 -- Introductions
Week of Nov. 23 -- No Class (Thanksgiving)
Week of Dec. 7 -- Conclusions
Week of Dec. 14 -- Topic Sentences and Body Paragraphs
Week of Dec. 21 -- Plagiarism and In-text Citations
Week of Dec. 28 -- No Class (Winter Break)
Week of Jan. 4  -- Finding Academic Sources and Works Cited Pages
Week of Jan. 11 -- Word Choice
Week of Jan. 18 -- Counter-arguments
Week of Jan. 25 -- Sentence Fluency
Week of Feb. 1 -- Conventions

During each class, students will follow along with a Nearpod presentation to learn about the day's skill, followed by a series of discussions and evaluations of textual examples from sample essay prompts. Half of the class will focus on lecture and discussion, and the other half of the class will give students the opportunity to practice using the skill in their own writing. 

Photo Credit: [Image by Ulrike Leone from Pixabay]