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.
Writer's Camp!
Ages 9-12
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Requirements: Required homework each week. Please plan on at least an hour of homework each week. Students must be willing to participate in both collaborative work and in sharing their own creative writing!
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Students can take this class multiple times to improve their writing, expand their vocabulary and analyze new stories!
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Come to this class ready to improve your writing in so many areas! We'll be diving into grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure, strong topic sentences and more! Each trimester we'll be reading at least one short story to work on our literary analysis, working to understand what is this author wanting us to think about? Why did they chose this setting? What is it telling us? What symbols are woven into the story?
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Grammar can be hard to remember and implement, so grammar lessons will be featured throughout the year. Our theme for remembering grammar rules include:
Reiteration - we review ideas to its most basic form multiple times to make it stick!
Identification - Can students begin to identify these words, these ideas, and how they’re used?
Comprehension - students will take notes to be able to practice outside of the classroom.
Implementation - By the end of the year, students should be able to use these concepts across any discipline with accuracy and confidence.
Fall
We focus on the words (parts of speech) and how they become sentences (syntax) by doing “jobs” (their functions). We'll expand our vocabulary from lazy words like "bad" to more descriptive words like "lousy", "defective", "corrupt" or "mischievous". Our short story selections will be driven by student interests and will give us plenty of opportunity to look for and write about themes in our reading.
Winter
We discuss the components of sentences (clauses) and how they work together to form paragraphs (focused clusters of sentences). Vocabulary will continue to be expanded as we practice writing strong topic sentences and keeping our paragraphs tight as we support our topic throughout the paragraph. Students that need a bigger challenge will start to write their 5 paragraph essay in this session.
Spring
Students will string paragraphs together (essays) and learn that just like parts of speech, each paragraph has a “job” (function), and by doing so, we construct multi-paragraph essays elaborating on one specific thesis statement.
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Contact
Andrew Holyfield