High School Writing Mechanics
This eight-week course covers the technical areas of writing that high school students need to master before moving on to paragraphs and then essays, including:
- Correctly identifying the parts of a sentence
- Understanding complex sentences
- Learning subject-verb agreement
- Differentiating between plural and possessive nouns
- Using pronouns, adjectives and adverbs in sentences
- Identifying and spelling words that often confuse writers
- Correctly using commas, semicolons, and other punctuation
- Proofreading their writing for errors
Unit 1 – Nouns, Verbs, and the Complete Sentence
Students will identify nouns and verbs; detect the subject and predicate of a sentence; correctly locate fragments, run-on sentences, and complete sentences; and will create their own complete sentences.
Unit 2 – Phrases and Clauses
Students will discover how complex sentences are put together with phrases and clauses, and they will create their own complex sentences correctly using phrases and clauses.
Unit 3 – Noun Plurals and Possessive Forms, Subject-Verb Agreement, and Verb Tenses
Students will form the plural and possessive forms of nouns, make verbs agree with their subjects in number, and correctly identify the different verb tenses.
Unit 4 – Pronouns, Adjectives, and Adverbs
Students will be able to identify pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs and use them in sentences.
Unit 5 – Confusing Words and Capitalization Rules
Students will identify and spell words that often confuse writers. They will also capitalize proper nouns and other words that need to be capitalized.
Unit 6 – Comma Commotion
Students will properly place commas within sentences.
Unit 7 – The Semicolon, the Em Dash, and Other Punctuation Predicaments
Students will understand how to correctly use the semicolon, the em dash, and other less used punctuation marks when constructing sentences.
Unit 8 – GUM is not just for chewing!
Students will be able to proofread their writing for grammar, usage, and mechanics errors.