Get Ready for High School! Advanced Reading Skills, Vocabulary, & Writing!

WELCOME

Welcome to my course designed to prep students wanting to get ready for high school (including PSAT). The course provides full curriculum instruction on reading, writing, vocab and grammar to get ready for high school. Please read the below information carefully to determine if this is is the correct course for your learner. In my course, I combine teaching and reading/writing instruction from my experience and professional developments with The National Writing Project and Harkness Socratic Seminar Methods. Here are the pillars of writing instruction that I follow: 

1. I work to foster and celebrate the authentic voices of students.

2. I encourage students to write, share, and reflect together through fostering a sense of community and comfort. I will never publicly read a student's writing without their permission, nor will I ever for a student to publicly share their writing. However, it is my hope that they volunteer to do so as they gain confidence in the course.

3. Above all, I seek to foster critical thinking through reading and writing. Good writers read often and write about what they read. My class may often include readings to model good writing or to serve as catalysts for ideas/writing topics.

ABOUT THE COURSE

The weekly cost of this course covers the live video meetings as well as personalized and detailed feedback on all assignment. I'm also committed to responding to both student and parent private messages within 24 hours seven days a week. Graded assignments receive feedback within 48 hours. If you do not hear a response from me within this time, please send me another message; it may have gotten lost in my inbox!

STUDENT REQUIREMENTS
⌛ This class requires strong time management skills and self-motivation. Students will be expected to complete reading and writing assignments outside of class on their own time. The amount of time students spend on these assignments may vary among students, but on average students will spend 30-40 minutes per week outside of class on course work. While students work on their assignments, I'm always available through private messages to answer questions and check work. 

My Refund Policy: Classes are billed each Sunday. If you need to pause/withdraw, please do so before Sunday morning. Refunds are not typically provided (all learners have access to slides, video recordings, and assignments). However, I may refund for certain emergency circumstances.

Please be aware that if there are no students after the first 10 minutes of the live online class, that day's class will be canceled. Our live meetings are scheduled for 45 minutes, but the duration may vary SLIGHTLY based on the number of students and their participation. 

TOPICS/ASSIGNMENTS

Reading Texts:
• Various Nonfiction Articles
• Various Poems
• Various Speeches (Douglass, Anthony, Paine, Franklin, etc.)
• Oliver Twist excerpt
• The Book Thief (novel)
• "The Medicine Bag"
• Mythology stories
• "Unusual Normality"
• Excerpts of Persepolis 
• Excerpts of Shakespeare
• Excerpts from The Odyssey
• "The Red Batch of Courage"
• "The Most Dangerous Game"
• Short Story "Flowers for Algernon"
•Short Story "Once Upon a Time"
• Excerpts from Dystopia (1984, F451, Bradbury, Orwell, etc.)
• Etc


Formal writing projects may include…
• Independent Essay
• Multiple Intelligences Essay
• Sales Pitch Essay
• Business Proposal Essay
• A Picture in a Paragraph Essay
• Narrative Essay
• Guided Research Paper
• Memoir Writing
• Conspiracy Theory/Urban Legend Research
• Fear-mongering Writing
• PSA (Public Service Announcement)
• Character Sweater
• Procedural Writing
• Register in Writing
• Writing Figuratively
• Writing Critiques and Reviews
• Modern Biographies
• The Best Solution
• Fairy Tales & Retellings
• Other Creative Pieces
• Paragraph Writing Skills: Paragraph Types, Summarizing, Paraphrasing, Topic Sentences, Supporting Details, Concluding/Closing Sentences, Main Idea, Hooks, Transition Words and Phrases to Use in Writing, Evidence and Citing, Avoiding Plagiarism, Writing a Rebuttal, Strong Verbs, Show Don't Tell Strategies, Paragraph Structures

GRAMMAR/MECHANICS:
• Faulty Idioms
• Fragments & Run Ons
• Compound Sentences
• Subject Verb Agreement
• Appositives
• Apostrophes
• Dangling/Misplaced Modifiers
• Adjectives v. Adverbs
• Comparatives & Superlatives
• Punctuation Marks
• Parallel Structure
• Semi-Colons & Colons
• Commas & Coordination
• Ellipses
• Dashes
• Punctuating Titles
• Homophones
• Pronoun Agreement
• Parts of Speech
• Singular Plural Irregularities
• Capitalization
• Parts of Speech

Test prep for PSAT


READING SCHEDULE:

Week of Jan 16: Active Reading Strategies, Figurative Language Review, Genres of Literature

Week of Jan 23: "Once Upon a Time" short story, plot chart

Week of Jan 30: "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" short story, inference

Week of Feb 6: "The Medicine Bag" - elements of fiction

Week of Feb 13: Valentine's Critical Thinking Activity

Week of Feb 20:  Claim, Evidence, Explanations

Week of Feb 27: Intro to Oliver Twist: Victorian Era,  article on Victorian poverty, baby farming

Week of March 6: Excerpt from "Long Way Gone" 

Week of March 12: Intro to the Book Thief (PDF provided)

Week of March 19: Parts 1-2 of the Book Thief

Week of March 26: Parts 3-4 of the Book Thief

Week of April 2: Parts 5-6 of the Book Thief

Week of April 9: Parts 7-8 of the Book Thief

Week of April 16: Parts 9-10 of the Book Thief

April 23: Essay, presentation, and wrap-up of novel