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.

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.

Advanced Writing Workshop is designed for older or more experienced writers who are ready to take their craft to the next level. Like our foundational Writing Workshop, this course emphasizes the full writing process—brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing—while exploring a range of genres and writing styles. Students will leave Advanced Writing Workshop having the foundational skills they need to succeed in Kristen Scranton’s writing courses and beyond. Students will be challenged to think deeply about audience, purpose, and voice, and will be held to a higher standard of excellence in their work. They’ll have significant freedom to choose their own topics within each assignment, encouraging creativity and personal expression. Discussion, collaboration, and peer review will be central to our classroom community. Grounded in a Christian worldview, this course affirms that our words matter because they are part of God’s larger story—a story of creation, fall, and redemption. Through writing, students will explore and express how we can participate in making the world a better place.

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.