Angela in NC - about Scholar's Online Writing for the College Bound

[Sandra in FL]

Hi Angela,

Would you please comment a bit more about Scholar's Online Writing for the College Bound? What grade/age was your dd when she took the class? Did she also take the World Lit. class? If so, were the writing assignments tied to the lit class? How much work/papers were required on a weekly/monthly basis? Was the teacher responsive? Were there lots of revisions or only one or two?

Thanks,
Sandra

[Angela in NC]

My dd was in 7th and was the youngest of about 10 students-ranging through 12th gr. This was her first "farmed out" class and her first on-line class. She did not take the literature class, because my goal is to encourage and fine tune academic writing. She did text analysis, literary analysis, book report, argument reports, research paper, timed essays, college application essay, and weekly smaller assignments. Weekly, she also edited other student's work as they did hers. Their may be other assignments that I am forgetting about, but it was a lot of work. My dh who teaches high school art says that the students at his high school do not do the amount of writing that she was asked to do. On the flip side, my dd loved it and was highly motivated. I think at times she was confused and maybe even a little lost, but the teacher always responded promptly and kindly to any and all of her questions. I also did not let the class be a hands off class from me. I reviewed and edited and made her use her Rod and Staff Grammar book before I allowed her to turn in any of her assignments. What is the point of learning all that finicky grammar if she is not going to use it in her writing? At least this is what I told her. I would have liked the teacher to give her more pointed detailed ways she could change her sentence structure and her paragraph formation, but through my reviewing her work with her and her assessing older students work, she was able to gain a lot of ideas on how to improve her own writing. This summer she is taking Molding Your Argument and in the fall Rhetoric, Grammar, and Style with Scholar's Online. I then hope she will be ready for AP level writing. But my only goal is to improve and fine tune her academic writing, not prose, poetry, or stories. This is probably more information than you wanted to know, but I hope it has been helpful. Angela:D

[MicheleinMN]

Thank you for sharing your review of this class. I really appreciate you taking the time to write about the experience.