Susan Wise Bauer - Writing With Skill, Level 2: Student Workbook (The Complete Writer)

WRITING WITH SKILL, LEVEL TWO

LEVEL 6 OF THE COMPLETE WRITER

by

Susan Wise Bauer

STUDENT TEXT

This book is to be used in conjunction with Writing With Skill, Level Two: Level 6 of The Complete Writer, Instructor Text (ISBN 978-1-933339-60-3)

Available at www.peacehillpress.com or wherever books are sold

2013 Peace Hill Press
Cover design by Sarah Park and Justin Moore
Cover illustration by Jeff West

Publishers Cataloging-In-Publication Data
(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

Bauer, S. Wise.

Writing with skill. Level two, Student text / by Susan Wise Bauer.

p. : ill. ; cm. (The complete writer ; level 6)

This book is to be used in conjunction with Writing With Skill, Level Two: level 6 of The Complete Writer, Instructor Text.T.p. verso.

Interest grade level: 68.

ISBN: 978-1-933339-61-0

ISBN: 978-1-942968-24-5 (e-book)

1. English languageComposition and exercisesStudy and teaching (Middle school) 2. English languageRhetoricStudy and teaching (Middle school) I. Title. II. Title: Writing with skill. Level two, Instructor text.

LB1631 .B385 2012
808/.0712 2012921120

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without prior written permission of the copyright owner unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. Address requests for permission to make copies to Peace Hill Press, 18021 The Glebe Lane, Charles City, VA 23030.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

This is Level Two of the Writing With Skill series.

Level One was divided into seven sections: Basic Skills, Building Blocks for Composition, Sentence Skills, Beginning Literary Criticism in Prose and Poetry, Research, and Final Project. These sections gave you step-by-step instructions in the foundational skills needed for writing brief compositions in history, science, and literary criticism.

When youre first learning an unfamiliar skill, you need to focus on one thing at a time. But now that youve mastered the basics, your assignments dont need to be separated out into units. Instead, youll go back and forth between compositions in history, science and literary criticism. At the same time, youll learn how to make your sentences more interesting, your research more effective, and your note-taking more productive.

In the first level of this course, you reviewed narrative summaries, learned how to construct one-level outlines, and were introduced to two-level outlines. This year, youll use narrative summaries in your writing, practice two-level outlines, and be introduced to three-level outlines.

In Level One, you learned the basics of documentation: footnotes, endnotes, note-taking, and avoiding plagiarism. This year, youll put those basics to use in almost everything you write.

In Level One, you learned how to write seven kinds of forms: chronological narratives of past events and of scientific discoveries, descriptions of places and persons, scientific descriptions, biographical sketches, and sequences of natural processes. In Level Two, youll practice combining these forms together, and also learn to write sequences in history, as well as explanations by comparison and explanations by definition in both science and history. Youll also find out how to round your compositions into fully-formed essays by adding introductions, conclusions, and well-written titles.

In Level One, you were introduced to thesaurus use and learned how to transform sentences by exchanging nouns and adjectives, active and passive verbs, indirect objects and prepositional phrases, infinitives and participles, and main verbs and infinitives. In Level Two, youll also learn about added and intensified adjectives, using metaphors in place of adverbs, phrase-for-word substitution, and exchanging negatives for positives (and vice versa),

In Level One, you learned about protagonists, antagonists, and supporting characters in stories; about inversion, surprise stories and idea stories, metaphor, simile, and synecdoche. This year, youll cover stories-within-stories, different points of view, foreshadowing, comparing stories to each other, and writing about longer works of fiction.

In the first level of this course, you learned about the basics of poetry: rhyme and meter, onomatopoeia and alliteration, sonnet and ballad form, and the relationship between form and meaning. This year, youll learn how to compare poems to each other and how to combine poetry analysis with biographical sketches.

You wrapped up the last weeks of Level One with an independent final project that used several of the forms you learned over the course of the year. This year, youll complete several different independent projects by combining forms together, and youll also learn how to find your own original topics by brainstorming.

Finally, youll practice a whole new kind of writing by modelling your own work on classic essays.

Each days work is divided into several steps. Complete each step before moving on to the next. It is your responsibility to read the instructions and follow them carefully. Go slowly, and make sure that you dont skip lines or sections.

Whenever you see this symbol, , youre about to see the answer to a question asked in the text. Stop reading until youve answered the question yourself. Its usually best to answer the question out loudthis forces you to put the answer into specific words (rather than coming up with a vague idea of what the answer might be). Only after youve answered the question out loud should you read the answer below the line.

Whenever you have trouble, ask your instructor for help. Many of the assignments tell you to Check your work with your instructor. Before you show any work to your instructor, read through it a final time, checking for basic grammar and punctuation mistakes.

If you are writing by hand, make sure that your handwriting is legible! If you are working on a word processor, print out your work and read it through on paper before handing it in. (Sometimes it is difficult to see mistakes when you are reading on a screen.)

Plan to work on your writing four days per week.

Last year, you put together a Composition Notebook with six different sections in it:

Narrations

Outlines

Topoi

Copia

Literary Criticism

Reference

You can use this same notebook for this years work. Youll be using all of the sections except for the first, but you may find it useful to look back at your narrations occasionally.

If you want to start a new notebook (or if youve lost last years notebook!), you can make a new notebook and divide it into five sections, leaving out Narrations . However, this workbook assumes that you will be able to look back at the pages you added to the Reference section in Level One. These were:

Topoi Chart

Chronological Narrative of a Past Event

Chronological Narrative of a Scientific Discovery

Description of a Place

Scientific Description

Description of a Person

Biographical Sketch

Sequence: Natural Process

Literary Terms

Sentence Variety Chart

Time and Sequence Words

Points of View

If you no longer have these reference pages, youll need to recreate them for your new notebook. Ask your instructor for help!