Writing Classes for middle and high school students

Writing I: Basic Grammar (grades 6-10)

Grammar is no longer directly taught to students in school, but it’s the first step to achieving clear and readable writing.

Course Description: The secret to clear, readable writing is applying grammar rules! This small group class focuses on how to fashion phrases, structure sentences, and produce paragraphs using eight treasured tools. We will highlight the elements in good grammar and work on punctuation, semi-colons, conjunctions, and the homophones, apostrophes and there/their/they’re. Students will learn to polish their writing by learning common grammar rules and sentence structures. Finally, they will assemble a well-written paragraph.

This class meets for 10 weeks onTuesdays at The Reading Center from 4:00-5:30pm

Course dates are: October 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, November, 5, 12, 19, 26, December 3 (Snow Date December 10)

Writing II: Academic Writing (grades 7-11)

Does your child have great ideas but difficulty with school writing assignments? If your student has taken a writing class with us before, they may be ready to take this next course!

Course Description: In this course the student will learn strategies for academic summarization.  The highest level of comprehension is to summarize what one has read. Using a variety of graphic organizers, the student will learn to identify organizational patterns of text and use the organizers to write a summary in their own words. Then, using the writing process, they will refine their pieces, applying grammar to their composition with specific nouns, vivid verbs, and helpful descriptors.

Prerequisite: Grammar or previous Reading Center Writing Class is a prerequisite to this course. You may take a pretest to see if you can test into this course.

This class meets for 10 weeks on Fridays at The Reading Center from 4:00-5:30pm

Course dates are: October 4, 11, 18, 25, November 1, 8, 15, 22, December 6, 13, (Snow Date December 17)

Other Details for All Classes:

• Full payment for classes is due at the time of registration online, or within one weeks if paying by mail, to keep your student's place in the class.  If you wish to set up a payment plan, please contact our bookkeeper, Gade Grinnell at 507-288-5271.
• Partial scholarships are available for qualified families on a first-come, first-served basis. See our website for a scholarship application.
• Each child requires a separate registration, and will receive a separate confirmation email.
• The Reading Center reserves the right to cancel (and refund tution) for classes if not enough registrations are received.
• Please review our class withdrawal policy here.