AP/IB Intensive Writing Classes
Free
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
The AP/IB Intensive Writing Classes are designed to enhance writing skills at an advanced level. Following the English 8-12 curriculum, these classes allow students to practice techniques and skills required for academic papers ranging from short answers and paragraphs to various styles of essay writing. The main focus of the class is teaching analytical tactics in brainstorming ideas, organizing and structuring ideas, and in-depth analysis that requires textual evidence and citations.
The class is taught to write in the Modern Language Association (MLA) format and apply their writing practice through poems, short stories, novels, Shakespeare, articles, and essays. Students are pushed to reach the above and beyond in their writing and critical thinking skills to heighten their skills in analyzing various literature. With these classes, most students who follow the lessons consistently have been guaranteed grades of excellence in English.
Key Factors:
- AP/IB curriculum based
- Diverse literature analyses
- Detailed feedback and check-in
- High rate of achieving extending grades in English at school
Covers:
- Poems
- Shakespeare
- Short stories
- Articles
- Speeches
- All types of academic writing (paragraph analysis essays)
Best fit for students who are:
- Taking or planning to take Advanced Placement (AP) Students
- Taking or planning to take International Baccalaureate (IB) Students
CURRICULUM
Section 1: Introduction to Handstands
Section 2: Reference Material, Moodboards and Mind Mapping
Wrist Strengthening
While your wrists will certain get stronger from practice and grow accustomed to the stress of the skill, a basic amount of wrist strengthening exercises for several weeks can only help things. I’d recommend working wrist curls and reverse wrist curls for around 6-10 reps for 3 sets. I also strongly recommend trying some sledgehammer levering. Work in 2-3 sets of 3-5 reps. In particular, exercises 1 and 3 are fantastic for building wrist strength and they are much harder than they look! Start with them to get the hang of sledgehammer work before you progress to the other two exercises. I don’t want somebody putting a hole through their floor or their face because they rushed things!Section 3: Sketching out Ideas
- The main objective to the sketching process is to generate super rough thumbnail sketches of what we feel best visually communicates the highlighted words from our mind maps.
- Take as much time as you need for this step — this might be 10 minutes or it might be 10 days.
- Personally, I like to work quickly and try not to analyze or elaborate too much.
- Now, that doesn't mean you should only create a handful of sketches.
- Even though this step only took a couple of hours, I was still able to put over 100 thumbnails on paper.
- The whole point of this process is to flush out the bad ideas and narrow down the good ones until we find that one layout that really speaks to us.
- Also, keep in mind the project brief and have your list in front of you as a reference to avoid getting sidetracked.
- Remember—detail is not needed. Simply flush out the bad ideas and find a great direction.
- Once I feel I have a good direction with the sketches, I'm now ready to take a quick photo with my phone and import it into Illustrator.
Section 4: Conclusions and Evaluation
About Instructors
Free