Paper 2 Question 1- Exam Style Question 9.1: New Student Leaflet

 Forget Surviving- How to Thrive in the First Week of High School

Starting high school can be an exhilarating, yet daunting experience.  However, daunting does not need to be part of the equation.  Take it from me, a junior and an official thriver of the first week of school.  Follow these tips and you will not only survive, you will thrive!

Attend Orientation

This step is crucial.  By going to orientation, you will be able to familiarize yourself with the layout of the school as well as understand what is expected in each one of your classes.  This eliminates the stress on the first day of school of getting lost or misunderstanding what a teacher expects of you.

Organization / Time Management

During the first few days of school, you will get flooded with papers.  Make sure to have specific spots for each class.  Most importantly, designate a time each day to place all of your papers into chronological order.  Lastly, make a plan at night for the next day.  List what you want to accomplish.  This will provide you with purpose and motivation.

Get Involved in Clubs and Activities

There are a multitude of clubs to fit any interest in high school.  We have anything from art club, to fishing club, to chess club, to various volunteer clubs.  Whatever your interests are, there is an activity for you.  Make sure to join activities that interest you immediately, as you will make tons of new friends with similar interests.  

Make a New Friend in Every Class

In high school, many middle schools combine into one.  There will be many new people that you do not know.  This is what makes school interesting.  In the first days of school, meet new people and make a new friend in every class.  This will make you look forward to every single class, even difficult ones, as you will want to cultivate this new relationship.

Balance

If you only remember one thing, remember this: you must have a school-life balance.  As an honor student, I have fallen into the trap of only focusing on school.  However, when I started to make the most out of my time here, I sectioned out times in my day for both fun and work.  If you follow this, you will be well on your way to be a successful and happy high schooler.

Commentary:

In my writing, I followed the form of a leaflet.  Within the leaflet, the purpose was to make the incoming students feel comfortable and guide them on their journey.  I followed the general structure of a leaflet: I included a title, subheadings to explain the pieces of advice I would be giving, and short paragraphs to keep the reader engaged.  The short paragraphs are necessary, as the leaflet is supposed to be condensed with meaningful information, so that the reader can get a lot of information in a short amount of time.  Also, since the reader will most likely be skimming the leaflet for an overview of information, the subheadings are crucial, as it clearly outlines the pieces of advice.  

Within the leaflet, I used second person.  This was relevant to fulfilling the task, since the second person perspective allows a more personal connection to the audience.  It can be seen that within the phrases “if you follow this” and “will provide you” I am suggesting beneficial recommendations for the audience to follow.  This provides a personal element and would also make the reader feel more comfortable with going to the school, as they have a personal mentor and connection already established.  This is more effective than third person for example because third person is impersonal and would not make the incoming student feel comfortable.

Throughout the leaflet I used imperatives.  I used commands like “make sure to have” and “designate a time” to instruct the new students on what I believe they should do to be successful.  This is an important element to the leaflet, as I was supposed to provide guidance to the incoming students.

Additionally, the piece was informal and utilized casual language.  I used phrases like “take it from me” and “official thriver” to create an element of relatability.  If the incoming students can feel a connection to the writer, they will feel more comfortable going to school and take more of the advice to heart.

I used lexical fields within my piece.  The main lexical field focused around success and growth, two ideas that are important to the purpose of the piece: conquering the first week of school.  I used words like “thrive,” “successful,” and “accomplish” to create the feeling that the reader can indeed be successful in school.  I also used words like “cultivate” to try to convince the reader to have a growth mindset, and thus make them successful in the first week of school.