Harlan High School Senior Writing Seminar
Class Syllabus 2009-2010
Teachers: Cathy Jones
Planning: 5th Period
School E-mail Address:
School Mailing Address: 420 East Central Street
Harlan, KY 40831
School Phone: 606-573-8750 ext. 4113
Textbook: Frames of Mind: A Rhetorical Reader with Occasions for Writing (by Robert DiYanni and Pat C. Hoy, II)
Introduction
Harlan High School’s Senior Writing Seminar is designed to engage seniors in becoming skilled readers of prose written in a variety of periods, disciplines, and rhetorical contexts, and in becoming skilled writers who compose for a variety of purposes. Both their writing and their reading should make students aware of the interactions among a writer’s purposes, audience expectations, and subjects as well as the way generic conventions and the resources of language contribute to effectiveness in writing.
Goals
The goals of the Senior Writing Seminar are diverse. The course provides students with opportunities to write about a variety of subjects and to demonstrate an awareness of audience and purpose. But the overarching objective is to enable students to write effectively and confidently in their college courses across the curriculum and in their professional and personal lives. Therefore, the course emphasizes the expository, analytical, and argumentative writing that forms the basis of academic and professional communication, as well as the personal and reflective writing that fosters the development of writing facility in any context.
In addition, students will learn that the expository, analytical, and argumentative writing they must do in college and in professional communication is most often based on reading, not solely on personal experience and observation. The course, therefore, teaches students to read primary and secondary sources carefully, to synthesize material from these texts in their own compositions, and to cite sources using conventions recommended by professional organizations such as the Modern Language Association (MLA). Our purpose will be to enable students to read complex texts with understanding and to write prose of sufficient richness and complexity to communicate effectively with mature readers. Students will be encouraged to place their emphasis on content, purpose, and audience and to allow this focus to guide the organization of their writing.
(amended from the AP English Language and Composition Course Description— (7/28/06).
Grading Scale:
A 95-100
B 88-94
C 80-87
D 70-79
F Below 70
Students will be assessed on the following components:
- Daily work (completion of assigned work, class participation, class behavior)
Senior Seminar writing tasks require critical thinking, discipline, and commitment. Attendance is necessary for success.
- Drafting
Students will receive a composite score for their first drafts and their revisions. Emphasis will be on each student developing
rhetorical and editing skills independent of a peer or teacher editor.
- Revising
Students will be assessed on the level of their revisions following teacher conferencing.
- Classroom Comportment
Students are expected and required to comport themselves in a manner that enhances the classroom environment necessary for successful planning, thinking, and writing.
Materials:
Students are required to keep their drafts in their working folder. It is each student’s responsibility to file his or her folder before the lunch bell. Students are not to take the working folders from the classroom. Failure to do so will result in a drop in daily grade.
Students must have a flash drive in order to save drafts. It is the responsibility of students to ensure that their work is saved on their own flash drive—no sharing.
Students must have a binder in which to keep all Senior Seminar handouts throughout the year. This will be assessed at the end of the Spring Semester.