Reading & Writing Weekend Program

Leveled Reading and Academic Writing run as two separate tracks, each 90 minutes a session. The weekend program combines them: one two-hour session carries a student through the full path from reading to writing, with the same material serving as both the reading text and the source for the writing. Families with tight weekdays usually choose it.

The beginner tier covers grades 4 to 6, the intermediate tier follows on from beginner, and the advanced and competition tier covers grades 9 to 11. Tier is set by the placement assessment rather than strictly by grade, so a student may be placed outside the grade band listed for a tier.

Poetry trains sensitivity to detail in language: the choice of a single word, the order of a clause, a repeated image. The same features appear in novels and in commentary, only less visibly. High school English courses ask for exactly this kind of judgment in text analysis, so early exposure lowers the cost of adjusting later.

At the advanced tier, classroom writing extends into contests such as the New York Times writing competitions and the John Locke essay competition, and students have the chance to enter with work developed in class. Systematic competition training is handled separately in the Writing Competition Class.