Description
Dead ants and honey bees. Monarch migration and meteorites. Those are the writing prompts.
Writers in the Making is an online writing class for middle school built for the student who can write a sentence on their own but stalls out at a paragraph. Using the Institute for Excellence in Writing curriculum with a science theme, students learn key word outlines as a prewriting strategy, retell narrative stories, summarize references, write from pictures, and build toward formal essays, working through insects, inventions, and famous scientists as their subject matter.
Grammar is folded in rather than bolted on: parts of speech, sentence types, punctuation. Class time is spent reading and discussing source texts together, trying a specific writing style as a group, and turning in weekly compositions and vocabulary work for grading.
Beth Purcell is an IEW-certified instructor with a degree in English, and this is the level where she does the most coaching: reluctant writers arrive nervous and leave able to start a piece without a parent sitting beside them. One note for planning: this is a writing class with a science theme, not a replacement for a science curriculum.
Beth Purcell, True North’s Humanities Department Chair, is an IEW-certified writing instructor with an English degree from the University of South Carolina.
“My favorite part of this class was completing the homework assignments. When I was finished with my homework, I did not have to stress about it anymore.”
— Luke K., on Ink Masters in Training
A look inside this class
Class details
– Teacher: Beth Purcell
– Day and time: Mondays, 12:45-1:45 p.m. CST
– Term: full year, 2027-28 school year
– Grades: 6-9
– Prerequisites: able to write simple sentences independently; basic word processing skills
– Materials: Wonders of Science Writing Lessons (Student Book only)
– Live, small-group class on Zoom
If your student dreads writing, start here. The class is Cognia-accredited and we handle the grading and the transcript.
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