Welcome to Advanced Middle School Writing! In this course, 7th-9th grade students will learn tools and strategies to craft words, phrases, and sentences into quality paragraphs and essays. This class helps prepare students for high school essay writing. They will read portions of esteemed literature as models to develop their own style and shape their pieces of writing. Mini-lessons, group discussions, peer feedback, and instructor feedback will be foundational in this class. Writing is a process which includes - brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Students will go through this process and become BETTER readers, writers, and thinkers. *Students should have successfully completed a middle school writing class before taking Advanced Writing.*

This course will explore many major types of essays, including: narrative (tells a story), descriptive (describes something/someone), comparison/contrast (compares and contrasts two items, ideas, or people), argumentative research (with the goal to sway the reader to accept the writer’s point of view), traditional research paper (exploring both MLA and APA formats), and timed writing (writing a response with only a certain amount of time to complete, which will be great preparation for college entrance exams as well as college courses). Kristen will take students through the entire writing process, focusing specifically on the type of essay at hand. Students will learn how to brainstorm, find research, take notes in an organized fashion, write an outline, edit one’s own work, edit other people’s work, and complete a final draft.

Welcome to Middle School Writing! In this course, 6th-8th grade students will learn tools and strategies to craft words, phrases, and sentences into quality paragraphs and essays. They will read portions of esteemed literature as models to develop their own style and shape their pieces of writing. Students will bring their prior knowledge and experiences to write a variety of essays and creative pieces. Mini-lessons, group discussions, peer feedback, and instructor feedback will be foundational in this class. Writing is a process which includes - brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Students will go through this process and develop as readers, writers, and thinkers.

This class is designed to help students become even better writers while preparing them for college writing, as well as doing some prep work for the writing portions of the ACT, the AP exam (specifically, the English Language and Composition Exam), the CLEP test (specifically the College Composition Exam and the College Composition Modular Exam), and the Accuplacer exam at KVCC.

In this class, students will develop a love of writing by being exposed to a variety of writing types and activities to strengthen their writing abilities. Students will learn about the 6+1 traits of writing (ideas, word choice, fluency, voice, organization, conventions, and presentation) and use these to bolster their writing to the next level.