Syllabus

Introduction
This course, Remedial Writing: Recognizing and Writing a Variety of Complex
Sentences, will focus on teaching high school aged students at the Youth
Learning Institute, in Aiken, SC. The course will take place over the course of
six weeks and will be delivered online through the Blackboard course
management system, as well as additional tools and applications. The
students entering the class will have to have, at a minimum, a basic
understanding of the parts of speech in the English language; in other words,
they will have to be able to identify nouns, verbs, pronouns, articles,
adjectives, adverbs, coordinating and subordinating conjunctions, and
prepositions.
Students will meet on alternating days in their computer lab classroom for 90
minute classes, which will be monitored live with a field instructor who can
also assist students in the actual classroom, but who is not expected to
actually deliver course material. Each student in the class will be supplied an
appropriately equipped computer with a video camera and microphone.
The instructor, Mr. Warner, will teach the course from a location in the
Houston, TX, area. There will be a total of 16, 90 minute classes, during
which time, students will be taught how to write a variety of complete
sentences, including simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex
sentences. They will be able to recognize both simple and complete subjects
and predicates within any type of sentence; how to identify and differentiate
between dependent and independent clauses; appositives; prepositional
phrases; and introductory phrases.
Classes will consist of synchronous lectures delivered through the
Whiteboard tool in the Blackboard course management system, which will
allow the instructor to teach concepts and skills through the use of face-toface interaction, both visually and verbally, as well as the actual white board,
where the instructor can deliver visual demonstrations through the use of
actual real-time writing examples and slides. Students will also be using
tools like Swipe.to receive small group instruction and Google Drive in order
to work collaboratively with other students in the class.
There will be several quizzes given throughout the course including informal
quizzes given at the end of each class using swipe.to deliver and track the
questions and answers, plickers.com (with the help of the on-site field

instructor) in order to track the individual students progress and create

differentiated small groups for further instruction, tutoring or re-teaching.
Two formal tests will be delivered, a midterm and a final. Finally, there will
be a group project that involves writing an expository paper with a variety of
correctly written sentences.

Instructor Information
Matthew Warner
English Instructor
Mwarner2@houstonisd.org
832-273-4154
Best time for contact is M-F 8:00-9:30 am & 3:30-5:30 pm.

Course Description
The purpose of the course is to help the high school students in the Youth
Learning Institute to learn to correctly recognize and write the different types
of sentences in the English language. The course will be delivered online by
an instructor in a different location who has a long history of teaching the
information to students with similar backgrounds and learning obstacles, and
has a long history of success. Students will need to learn the information in
order to matriculate to the next level course, which will be Expository
Writing. The prerequisites for the course include the ability to write a variety
of different sentences correctly. Through the use of technology provided by
the school to each student, students will learn to recognize and correctly
write simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences.

Course Outcome/Objectives

Statement of Learner Behavior:

Given a paper with a variety of simple, compound, complex, and compoundcomplex sentences, the students will be able to identify the complete
subjects by underlining them once and the complete predicates by
underlining them twice with 100% accuracy.

Given a paper with a variety of simple, compound, complex, and compoundcomplex sentences the students will be able to locate and identify any
coordinating conjunctions by circling them with 100% accuracy.
Given a paper with a variety of simple, compound, complex, and compoundcomplex sentences, the students will locate and identify any subordinating
conjunctions by putting a box around them with 100% accuracy.
Given a paper with a variety of simple, compound, complex, and compoundcomplex sentences, the learner will be able to utilize their knowledge of the
differences between the types of sentences to differentiate between them
and categorize each sentence as either simple, compound, complex, or
compound-complex by writing the letters: S, CM, CX, or CM-CX (Simple,
Compound, Complex, and Compound-Complex, respectively.) next to each
sentence, with 100% accuracy.
Given a blank piece of paper and a random writing prompt, the students will
be able to write a 1-2 paragraph response by correctly writing at least one
example of each type of sentence and identify each of the examples by
underlining, circling, boxing and categorizing each sentence as previously
done over the course of the term with 100% accuracy.

Course Requirements
Students will be responsible for completing all of the daily activities,
including online worksheets delivered and turned in through Google Drive.
Students will be required to communicate, appropriately and using the
requirements of the day (simple, compound, complex, or different
combinations of sentences), using the discussion board in the Blackboard
course management system during every class period. There will be a daily
quiz given as an Exit Ticket at the end of each class, using either swipe.to
or plickers.com; in order to track data on progression of learning. Students
will be required to pass a midterm assessment and a final assessment. Both
will incorporate identification of parts of the sentence, as well as application
of the knowledge through actual writing. Finally, students will be required to
complete a group project that utilizes the knowledge of English sentences to
complete a response to a specific prompt.
Students will be expected to attend class every day. Due to the fact they live
in a controlled setting, if the school determines they are unable to attend the
synchronous lesson, an asynchronous version of the lesson will be delivered
by the on-site field instructor at another time. Assignments will be turned in
daily at the end of class, or in certain situations, by the end of the day, either
through Blackboard or Google Drive, depending on the assignment.

Course Outline and Schedule

Week 1
1/11/16
Simple subjects and predicates
1/13/16
Complete subjects and predicates
1/15/16
Differentiating between complete subjects and predicates; writing simple
sentences to answer simple prompts
Week 2
1/19/16
Coordinating conjunctions and combining 2 or more subjects, or 2 or more
predicates
1/21/16
Identifying coordinating conjunctions, compound subjects and compound
predicates
Week 3
1/25/16
Differentiating between compound subjects and compound predicates;
writing compound sentences in response to a variety of prompts
1/27/16

MIDTERM:
Differentiate between simple and compound sentences; identify parts of
each sentence; write required type of sentence in response to specific
prompts
1/29/16
Identifying subordinating conjunctions; specific focus on AAAWWUBBIS

Week 4
2/2/16
Identifying dependent and independent clauses; writing complex sentences
2/4/16
Appositives; Introductory phrases; Prepositional phrases
Week 5
2/8/16
Identify and writing compound-complex sentences
2/10/16
Identifying parts of a variety of all sentences; differentiating between all of
the sentences
2/12/16 Group Projects
Final
Week 6
2/16/16
Group Projects due
2/18/16
Final

Identify the parts of a variety of a variety of different sentences; differentiate

the sentences as simple, compound, complex or compound-complex; write a
response to the prompt using one example of each type of sentence and
identifying its parts