WRITING II (10) Syllabus 2017-2018

Froebel Bilingual School

Mr. Jim Soto, Teacher
Office Hour by Appointment Only
Office Hour will be available at least 2-3 days a week
9:00 10:00 am

STUDENTS Please keep this syllabus in your notebook; we will be referring to it during the course

I. Course Description:
In this course students will write every day and they will explore different writing techniques and
styles. Writing skills will be developed through pre-writing, editing, re-writing, and critiquing. Students
will also examine various styles of writing by reading writers of poetry, songs, newspaper columns, short
stories, novels, plays, monologues, dialogues, haiku, reviews, and montages. Goals will be met through a
variety of reading, writing, and speaking activities. Additionally, students must be willing to read aloud
and share their ideas with the group. Students will be asked to critique their own work and the work of
others in a positive and gentle manner. Students will research critically and/or commercially successful
authors to find out their secrets to success. As a group, we will learn a great deal about each other by
writing across various modes of art-in-language and describing how our writing works and what it does
through various methods centering on close examination of language.

II. Course Objectives:

Read and comprehend at grade level
Support and challenge opinions in discussion
Examine themes and motifs in writing
Create and edit in a unique style using the writing process
Respond to a text by employing personal experiences and critical analysis
Analyze ideas, syntax, and word choice to reveal an authors purpose
Compose in a variety of modes by developing content, employing specific forms, and selecting language
appropriate for a particular audience and purpose
Create and revise style to meet the demands of purpose, audience, context
Utilize correct grammatical conventions in writing

III. Expectations
This is an effort-based class: your effort, attendance, and engagement are what will cause you to grow
as a writerand your score too!
Participation is extremely important; this includes completing all assignments, forming thoughtful
responses and opinions, and speaking out in class. You are encouraged to hold and express confident
opinions, but you must behave in a respectful manner at all times. All comments and feedback must be
made in a constructive manner. You will not be successful in this class if you are not willing to
participate and/or comment on works and writings or accept comments/feedback on writings.

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 We will often work on our writing together, which means you will need to become accustomed to
writing legibly and having other students read your assignments. If a students writing is too difficult to
read, he or she will be required to type the assignments.

IV. Grading Policies

Students are rewarded for effort AND quality of work. All assignments must be turned in on time.
Student absence does not change the due date, and assignments that are turned in late may lose points.

Semestral Point/ Weight Layout

category points weight

TESTS (2) x 100 pts. ea. = 200 pts. 31%
BOOK REPORTS (1) x 50 pts. ea. = 50 pts. 7%
PROJECT 100 pts. ea. = 100 pts. 16.5%
PORTFOLIO (1) x 200 pts. ea. = 200 pts. 31%
WORKBOOK/ CLASSWORK x 10 pts. = 100 pts. 15.5%
SEMESTER TOTAL PTS. = 650 pts. 100%

*(Daily work refers to Timely Attendance / Participation / Homework)

V. Writing Portfolio
There is a Writing Portfolio component to this class; students should SAVE ALL WORK including revised
drafts and final copies. The Portfolio accounts for 31% of the students overall course grade.

VI. Textbook:
Kemper, D., Meyer. V., & Sebranek, P. (2012). Write Source: Writing & Grammar (Grade 10). Orlando,
FL: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

VII. What I Value and Expect:

Trust in and respect for yourself and each other
Habitual practice and effort
Specificity and attention to detail and grammar
Curiosity and inquisitiveness
Critical inquiry and analysis
Being in class (physically, mentally, and spiritually)
Being prepared (reading texts to the point where you can discuss them or raise insightful questions about
them, making deadlines, being on time

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 VIII. Required Materials (MANDATORY)
Please refer to the 2017-2018 School Year Tenth Grade Supply List. Notice that in addition to the supplies
listed there youll need a blue pen for editing.
IX. Absence and Make-up Work Policy:
If a student is absent on the day of a test, the student will take that test on reposition day unless other
arrangements have been made ahead of time. Make-up work also will have a specific time frame in order
to be accepted for grading. Finally, if an assignment is due and a student is legally absent from class on
that day but is present in school, that assignment must be turned in or it will be considered late. This also
applies to students who enter school right after class has ended or leaves before class begins. This will
help students to not fall behind.

X. Behavior
1. First and foremost, you will critique the work not the person.
2. Treat the room, your classmates, yourself, various works, and me with respect.
3. Bring all materials to class
4. Keep evidence of all your work. This includes e-mails
5. You may not consume food and beverages in my class.

XI. Principles of Writing

1. Expert writers must first become expert readers
Students in Writing classes must become aware of the basic techniques of literary expression,
including narrative strategies, genres, and aesthetics.
2. Writers must become more self-aware, craft conscious, and self-critical.
The students must learn to revise. As important as learning how to write is the ability to evaluate and
rewrite.
3. Students must recognize that writing is never simply descriptive or imaginative.
Writing creatively also involves ideas, themes, questions, and arguments.

XII. House Keeping and Fine Print

Print out all final papers on 8 1/2" X 11" white paper. Double-space your work, and use 1" margins. Please
provide a cover page for all work. Do not place your work inside an attractive folder. Instead, all
pertinent information should appear on the first page of your work Note: It is a good idea (1) to make a
back-up copy of all work that you turn in and (2) to keep all papers that are returned to you.

I will show little-to-no toleration in dealing with late papers. I will glance at late work only to determine
whether it merits a grade of "D" or "F." Late work is, by definition, below-average; deadlines are a normal
and necessary component of all scholarly and artistic production. Familiarize yourself, early on, with
course requirements.

Feel free--make that, feel obligated--to check on the progress of your writing during the course of this
term. Should you need special assistance in understanding or in completing an assignment, ask me.

There is no such thing as an excused or unexcused absence; there are only explained and unexplained
absences. A missed class means missed material. Never--if you miss class--ask me if you missed anything.
Forgetting to find the material is not a reason for an assignment being late.

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n 0 XIII. INSTRUCTIONAL PACING OVERVIEW

FIRST QUARTER
Writing lessons: understanding the writing process, narrative paragraphs, taking notes, understanding the
traits of writing, using rubrics, publishing, creating a portfolio, writing a phase autobiography, listening
and speaking, peer responding, writing effective paragraphs, critical reading, cause and effect.
Grammar skills: punctuation, nouns, pronouns (agreement), commas, spelling, verbs, verbals,
active/passive, sentences, dialogue, plurals, word choice, capitalization, abbreviations, numbers,
parallelism.

SECOND QUARTER
Writing lessons: cause and effect essay, responding to expository prompts, response to literature-
analyzing a theme, more peer responding, persuasive writing- paragraph problem/solution, the
problem/solution essay, responding to persuasive prompts.
Grammar skills: parallelism, wordiness and deadwood, clauses, rambling sentences, compound and
complex sentences, apostrophes, comma splices, run-on sentences, punctuating titles, figures of speech,
misplaced and dangling modifiers, pronouns (relative, indefinite, interrogative, demonstrative),tense
shifts, punctuating compound and complex sentences, punctuating quotations, end punctuations, direct
quotations, complete sentences, sentence types, hyphens and dashes, tenses (irregular verbs), commas
with introductory phrases and clauses, pronoun-antecedent agreement.

THIRD QUARTER
Writing lessons: historical narrative, responding to narrative prompts, writing stories, responding to
prompts about literature, expository writing- defining a concept, persuasive writing- an editorial, writing
plays, oral presentations, writing across the curriculum.
Grammar skills: transitions, conjunctions, pronoun review, end punctuation, pronoun shifts, appositives,
commas in a series, commas to separate adjectives, punctuating, conjunctions and interjections, modeling
sentences, sentence problems, subject-verb agreement, specific nouns, sentence variety, sentence
problems (comma splices, run-ons, fragments), commas, sentence combining, nonstandard language,
punctuation review.

FOURTH QUARTER
Writing lessons: writing poems- free verse, research writing skills, taking notes, summarizing and
paraphrasing, MLA research report, research report, making oral presentations, freestyle writing, final
reflections essay.
Grammar skills: prepositions, prepositional phrases, parts of speech review, adverbs, basic sentence
patterns, phrases, commas review, active and passive verbs, mood of verb, commas in a series, commas
to set off appositives, commas to separate adjectives, brackets, ellipses, colons, semicolons, parentheses
and other forms of punctuations, review of comma rules, pronoun antecedent agreement, subject-verb
agreement, shifts in construction.

This syllabus is subject to change without previous notice.