About the Course
Want to strengthen your ability to persuade an audience? In this course, you’ll read critical and literary texts that will sharpen your ability to think and write critically about yourself and the world around you. You will write and revise essays of varying lengths, including a capstone essay demonstrating the writing skills and cultural criticism strategies you have developed throughout the course. Writing workshops provide the valuable opportunity to grow with the support and insight of your peers. Each unit in this course includes an asynchronous writing workshop in which you share feedback on classmates’ essays and receive feedback on your own. Active workshop participation will develop critical reading and editorial skills that you can use, along with your instructor’s feedback, to improve your writing.
Learning Objectives
- Support claims using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence
- Craft, compare and contrast, and organize claims effectively
- Anticipate an audience's knowledge level, concerns, values, and possible biases
- Use thoughtful language to transition in a text, create cohesion, and balance claim(s), reasons, evidence, and counterclaims
- Identify significant facts, definitions, details, quotations, and examples to grow your audience's knowledge of a topic
- Write narratives using precise details and structure
- Conduct research while narrowing or broadening your inquiry and synthesizing multiple sources
About Advanced Enrichment courses
These courses offer above-grade-level material that is presented in a novel context, explored with other advanced learners, and guided by a CTY educator to help prepare students for higher-order thinking and college-style academic challenges.
Requirements
CTY courses have grade-level requirements and most require minimum test scores. Some courses may also have prerequisites.
Identification DetailsDates and Tuition
Online
You will be asked to join or sign in first.
Register by: December 15, 2025
Time Commitment:
Please acquire all course materials by the course start date, unless noted as perishable. Items marked as “perishable” should not be acquired until the student needs them in the course. If you have questions about these materials or difficulty locating them, please contact [email protected].
Book Title: The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession
Author: Susan Orlean
ISBN: 978-0449003718
Spring and Summer Sessions: 4-6 hours of independent work per week.
You will be asked to join or sign in first.
Register by: February 17, 2026
Time Commitment:
Please acquire all course materials by the course start date, unless noted as perishable. Items marked as “perishable” should not be acquired until the student needs them in the course. If you have questions about these materials or difficulty locating them, please contact [email protected].
Book Title: The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession
Author: Susan Orlean
ISBN: 978-0449003718
Time Commitment: 4-6 hours of independent work per week.
Registration Fee and Financial Aid
Tuition and fees will be waived or reduced for students who qualify for financial aid.
Learn more about Financial Aid