Writing & Study Skills

Writing is a two-year cycle of courses focused on organization, writing, and study skills that will support students in their academic achievements while in the Adolescent Program and beyond. The organizational skills emphasized in this class include keeping an agenda, short-term and long-term project planning, and maintaining a portfolio. The writing skills include paragraphing, summarizing, outlining, grammar, punctuation, and style. In addition, the students learn to write persuasive essays in response to questions that arise from literature pieces and humanities studies. Students contemplate a question and thoughtfully develop arguments that support a thesis statement.  The study skills include note taking, annotating, using reference materials, and finding quality sources (both print and electronic). In addition, students are presented with the research process in the first year and review it each year thereafter. This includes creating research questions, locating quality sources, taking notes, writing a thesis statement, using parenthetical citation, and citing sources in MLA format.