HuckleBerry
Center for Creative Learning
Andrew Holyfield
Hi everyone! My name is Andrew. I graduated Summa Cum Laude at UC Riverside in 2016, with a B.A. in Creative Writing. While there, I completed the Honors Program, published a thesis, was an editor for both the campus Research Journal and Honors Program literary journal, joined the Writing Program as a Teaching Assistant, and completed three MFA courses, all with a 4.0 GPA.
Tutoring started for me in the campus Writing Program, in which I tutored eighteen students per week. Around that same time, my younger brother, diagnosed with Aspergers, started college. I tutored him during his four-year journey to receive his Paraprofessional Certificate.
Nerdy as it sounds, I love Grammar and read often (in-between Netflix binges). Until my time at UC Riverside, I abhorred reading and preferred the trusty summaries from Spark Notes. I know English and writing can be both challenging and boring, but perhaps all a struggling student needs a little help and positive reinforcement. If that sounds like you or your kid, I'd love to help.
I’m a published songwriter with 20+ years experience in the music industry.
Language Arts Super Stars!
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Vocabulary, Grammar, Public Speaking and Writing Exciting Sentences to Full Paragraphs!
Ages 7-9
Homework: Required: Should take between 30-45 minutes / week
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Join us this year as we learn to expand our vocabulary and grammar knowledge by playing fun games with our friends! Each week we will start by expanding our vocabulary with a word of the day! We’ll practice identifying it in sentences, spelling it out, and then writing it in new sentences. Our short but fun grammar lessons will incorporate lots of interactive games, including grammar bingo, mad libs, editor-in-chief and more! Kids LOVE finding mistakes in other people’s writing, but that also helps them to find mistakes in their own writing!
We’ll practice writing super sentences in class, which will be expanded or revised and improved upon at home. Once students have become comfortable with their writing skills, we’ll start to share our writing with the class. While we’ll start with the basics of grammar with nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, as we progress through the year we will not only continue to practice identifying these parts of speech, but we’ll also expand our grammar knowledge to include pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections. As we master these new parts of speech, we’ll learn new vocabulary and practice using our new knowledge to improve our sentences. Great sentences become great paragraphs with practice on understanding what each sentence is doing for us. We’ll create fun topic sentences in class, and then learn how to use these topic sentences as our paragraph container, helping our writing to become tighter and more organized.
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Students will be able to work on their own and in small groups as they work on collaborative writing exercises. Everyone will get to experience being both an editor and a writer as we hone our new skills! Through games and projects, this class is designed to nurture a love for language and empowers each child to find their voice—whether they’re writing a short story or speaking in front of a group.
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Andrew Holyfield