Essay Punch
Helps students already familiar with writing a paragraph begin to write a short essay. Students learn the techniques of expository writing -- to persuade, inform, or describe.
Choosing from a menu of topics, students are guided to develop an idea and write their own short essay. Steps to finished essays include pre-writing, outlining, organizing, revising, rewriting, and publishing.
Teachers can monitor their students' progress in the record management system.
Designed for students in grades 7 to adult (ages 12 and up), the software can also be used by English language learners and adult students.
Curriculum
Essay Punch, Skill Levels 7 to Adult
The program contains 9 writing topics and 1,080 help prompts to guide students through each step in the writing process. Contextual help and feedback throughout.
All student work is stored in the Teacher Program Manager.
Students will...
- Use pre-writing strategies for different writing tasks.
- Write clear descriptive sentences.
- Focus writing on a central idea or topic.
- Use devices to develop relationships among ideas.
- Use supporting ideas, details, and facts to develop and elaborate on a topic.
- Use an effective organizational pattern.
- Proofread to correct conventional errors in mechanics, usage, and punctuation.
- Analyze and revise a draft to develop a stronger, more substantial piece of writing.
Essay Punch helps students learn to write short persuasive, informative, and descriptive essays. The program contains 9 writing topics and 1,080 help prompts to guide students through each step in the writing process.
This writing program helps students with reading levels of six and up write effective essays. It teaches three different ways to develop an essay: through persuasion, information, and description. A step-by-step approach emphasizes content and organization.
To use Essay Punch, students need to be able to write basic sentences on a word processor. The program guides students through each step in writing a complete essay. Help messages are provided throughout. Students are encouraged by the program's graphic and auditory rewards, as well as by seeing their work develop and progress. Students may transfer their finished essays to any word processing program. Teachers may write a comment to the student which will be saved until the student sees it.
Saving, Printing, and Exiting Before Completing Essay
When students exit, the program saves their work and allows them to return to it at another time. The program will quickly scroll the students’ work and stop at the place they left off. After the students have completed Pre-Writing they will be able to print out their work in progress at frequent intervals. Students who return to Publishing can go back to the Editing sections.
Versions are available for stand-alone, network, or home use. The evaluation version of the program permits entry of only two student names. When a third name is entered, the first one will be deleted. The stand-alone version for one station contains record keeping for 42 students. Other School versions permit entry of as many names as disk space allows. When disk space is filled, the name that was entered first will be deleted.
**The online version of the Punch programs works with the Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari browsers. Windows, Macintosh and Linux operating systems are supported.
Requirements
Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/2003/XP
5 MB RAM, 55 MB hard disk space
This program requires a minimum screen resolution of 800 by 600 pixels
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