High School Essay Intensive Review #hsreviews #highschoolwriting #SATprep #ACTprep

There are so many things to think about when you homeschool especially when you get to high school. Taking the ACT or the SAT, writing college applications are just a few of those things that need to be considered. I want to make sure that my kids are ready for these next big steps and we have been using the High School Essay Intensive from Institute for Excellence in Writing to make sure they are.
High School Essay Intensive is an essay writing course that will prepare high school students for the writing portion of the SAT, the ACT, and the college application personal essay. It includes 6 1/2 hours of seminar on five DVDs, student handouts, and the Portable Wall for Essayist. The DVD case is padded vinyl and very good quality. This is the second edition updated in 2016 for the new SAT & ACT.

• DVD Part 1a ~ General Strategies for Essay Writing: Length and Structure
• Initial Exercise
• A Hurt and Rescue Operation
• What is an essay?
• Two Questions Writers Need to Ask
• Translating Assignment Length to Paragraphs
• Types of Paragraph
• The TRIAC Paragraph Model
• Essay Models
• DVD Part 1b ~ General Strategies for Essay Writing: Invention and Style
• Canons of Rhetoric
• Invention
• Practicing Common Topics of Invention
• Practice with TRIAC Outline
• Style
• Sentence Patterns
• Literary Devices: Schemes and Tropes
• Practice with Sentence Openers and Figures of Speech
• DVD Part 2 ~ Understanding and Preparing for the New ACT Essay
• ACT General Guidelines
• The Assignment
• Strategies for Planning
• Strategies for Writing
• Strategies for Proofing
• DVD Part 3 ~ Understanding and Preparing for the Redesigned SAT Essay
• General Guidelines
• The Assignment
• Annotating
• Handy Annotation System
• Annotating Practice
• Strategies for Planning
• Strategies for Writing
• Using Effective Vocabulary
• Strategies for Proofing
• DVD Part 4 ~ Strategies for the Personal" Essay 
• General Guidelines
• Sample Essay Prompts
• Strategies for Planning: Pop out from the Crowd
• Strategies for Writing, Editing, and Proofreading
• A Not-So-Secret Secret
• Final Practice
• Concluding Comments
• Last Bits of Advice for Life
• Portable Walls for the Essayist ~ This Portable Wall is a tri-fold resource that contains many tips to help the student write a good essay. It also has a pocket on one side. 
• Student Handouts ~ There are 25 worksheets that go along with the course. There are places to write definitions, lists of prepositions, -ly adverbs, and writing prompts.  

This course is given by Andrew Pudewa. We get to sit in on an actual class where he is teaching the Essay Intensive. His classes are not boring he does throw in a little humor. Not only is he teaching writing an essay he also gives tips to the students so that they are observant to how they normally write and to use that to their advantage. He also encourages the students to take notes whenever they have the opportunity. 

Delaney has been using this course, she is my writer and was very excited for something new. She writes mostly fiction so she could use some instruction on writing an essay. Since she is not taking the SAT or ACT in the next couple of months she decided she wanted to start at the beginning of the course. In Part 1a Mr. Pudewa starts with a writing assignment. It also covers the general types of essays, how to organize paragraphs for the body of the essay, and how to think about what to write. Delaney never has problems with coming up with something to write about, but if she is writing an essay about something she isn't very interested in she tends to rush through it. So far this course has helped her organize those thoughts so that her essays are more organized. Delaney writes every day, she has a journal, several stories started, she has a notebook with story ideas, she also has a notebook with characters she has made up along with their names and character traits. Mr. Pudewa suggests keeping a notebook of things you read that catch your eye, so Delaney started that notebook too. 

IEW is not new to us. We have reviewed product for them and we have purchased their products several times. Everything we have used from IEW and Andrew Pudewa has been a great addition to our school. 

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