Students will strengthen academic writing skills that are critical to success in school, working on areas such as effective word usage, punctuation, sentence construction, and paragraph development. Specific emphasis will be placed on organizational techniques for prewriting, developing topic sentences, and crafting transitional phrases to improve writing flow. Focus will also be on thesis development, organization of supporting arguments, and the crafting of effective conclusions. Additionally, students will review rules of punctuation, study sentence variety and fluency, and expand their vocabularies, all in the interest of polishing their written work. This course is particularly recommended for students new to Hawken School but is also ideal for any student looking for more reinforcement of middle school writing skills.