Hi there, my daughter has done two years with another classical writing program called “writing, and rhetoric.” She is in 7th grade. I’m trying to figure out if I just continue through the same level if we switch to memoria press next year? If I post a sample of her essay, would someone be able to tell me whether or not she’s on track?? We are supposed to be starting ecomium in spring with this other course.
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Can’t figure out where to delete, but I’ve found an answer to this already
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Hello! I'm glad you found your answer! I did want to just chime in with two cents, just because I teach this all the time. One difference that I found between the Writing and Rhetoric curriculum and the Classical Composition curriculum is that Writing and Rhetoric tends to put what CC deems as later stage skills in the WR lessons for younger learners. Encomium and Invective, as well as comparison form Memoria Press's sixth book in the series. For the best use of that sixth book I would recommend making sure that all of the discrete skills that form the base for the sixth book are firmly in place, especially the heads of purpose.
Abigail JohnsonComment
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I'm hoping I can just post on this thread and that Abigail Johnson can help me! We also have been using W&R and are running into some hiccups (with the curriculum and teacher) and would like to know the best place to start my daughter. She has taken classes online at CAP and has completed Fable, Narrative 1 &2 and is about to start Chreia. My daughter did great with the first 2 books and pretty well with Narrative 2 but can not outline and now has more difficulty finding the main idea in the longer narratives. We will finish out the school year and do Chreia this coming semester. I have been researching and see the suggested sequence. Would you suggest she do Fable and Narrative or just Narrative?Comment
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Hello! I'm so happy to help you! I would start her off with Narrative. Since she is older, she can handle larger stories. Narrative just increases the length and adds the full complements of plot components (instead of just RSC), plus another plot management skill (perspective).
The "recognition" of Narrative will be VERY helpful to you (we focus on the SECOND definition of recognition, please note that!!), since it's all about the "What's the big idea here?" Also, it it reinforced by the cause component of the 9 narrative components, which answers the question "Why is someone bothering to tell this story?" (for example, in "the Rose" the cause is to explain why the roses also red, not only white, and the recognition is the Aphrodite's blood changed the color of the rose to red.)
I think it's really wise to start back in Narrative versus push to Chreia. In Chreia we NEED to be fluent in story elements, because we will use them to invent, not just dissect, story, plus use them in other "story" ways that are examples and analogies, but that still have story components.
Finally, PLEASE do not die on the outline hill! If helpful, take the Fable stories and practice picking out the "Big" sections, usually divided by time, shift in character focus, etc, and then do the same with the longer stories. It might be helpful to work on the breakdown of several stories before writing them, or use some short fairy tales also, to help identify breaks in the story, and major vs minor events and information. Please do NOT think or expect that outlining is a minute, detailed, exercise for students to perfect down to "I. A. 1. a. i. 1) i)" here. We are just learning to observe the big chunks of a story, and then an outline is provided TO the student as a tool to make sure the paraphrase is not missing pieces. One of the biggest ways we can kill writing for students is to make 9 and 10-year-olds spend hours learning minute outlining. We will drive ourselves crazy AND make them hate the process. I don't know about you, but I'd like to both keep my hair firmly attached to my head AND help my children love writing. :-) Outlining is a TOOL, not a PhD skill for our Narrative students. Later on in High School they will need to organize their thoughts more minutely, but honestly, we never even do this in Thesis/Law, because we have HOP's and supporting HOD's, not an outline. I have never, ever, honestly, found ABC's and i), ii), iii)'s to be helpful in my creation of argumentative papers, because it is argument and explanation based, which Yes, you could shove into an outline, but it's easier to just break it down like Thesis and Law do. What modern argumentative writing has done is try to replace real, actual THOUGHT (I have a line of thought I want to explore and expound upon here in a logical, followable manner) with pat "STRUCTURE" (If I just follow these steps, then the ideas just magically appears in the paper without me really having to come up with anything...)
That was probably more than you wanted, please let me know what your thoughts are, and the BEST to you as you go forward!
AbigailComment
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I should have mentions she is in 4th grade but has worked ahead.Comment
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Hello!
Wow, a 4th grader! That's impressive! Definitely start with a small review of Fable, then please! I've found CC to be more demanding for younger students than other workbooks that incorporate some progym skills. Do a few fables, and then, if all is going well, move into Narrative for the remainder of the year. Always start a new year with a review lesson of each previous stage (except that you may omit Fable once attaining Common Topic or above) before introducing a new stage.
Let me know how this goes! I am very interested to hear of your journey in Classical Composition!
AbigailComment
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