Classical composition in 4-day weeks

[musdir26]

Starting Classical Composition: Fable today! Due to a co-op I condense the five day curriculum into four days. Since Classical Composition seems to follow the same procedure each lesson, which steps of the lesson will be easiest to combine to accommodate a four-day week? TIA!

[Floridamom]

Re: Classical composition in 4-day weeks

Some mom's do CC one day a week by combining the week's worth of assignments. That much writing in one day would never work for us. However, in my CM, the Monday assignment is to polish up the assignment from the previous Friday. Which means those two days can (and in my house, are) be combined into one day, leaving the other day free.

[jen1134]

Re: Classical composition in 4-day weeks

Each lesson is given two weeks in the lesson plans, so you can easily combine days. We did a week’s worth in one day at our MP co-op. It took about 45-60 minutes with a class of three students. For the second week, when they have a Final Draft to do, we would complete the lesson in class and then they would work on the Final during the week.

ETA: Depending on time limitations, be open to modifying Paraphrase I. Instead of doing a full paraphrase, we would simply find the best places in the fable/outline to put the assigned figures of description.

[rweston]

Re: Classical composition in 4-day weeks

Starting Classical Composition: Fable today! Due to a co-op I condense the five day curriculum into four days. Since Classical Composition seems to follow the same procedure each lesson, which steps of the lesson will be easiest to combine to accommodate a four-day week? TIA!

Good Morning,

Wonderful question! Classical Composition is not difficult to contract down to 3 or 4 days. The 5 day model (10 days for each lesson) really is considerably moderate. As there are 8 parts (as laid out in the guides, not the lesson plans) to each Fable lesson, you can simply complete one of the "parts" for each day. The portions of the lesson plans this will combine are the "Narration" and "Correct and Improve the Narration" portions, as well as the "Final Draft" and the "Complete the Final Draft" portions. This will take you through a lesson in 2 weeks.

If you would like to accelerate the pace, and find that your student has a firm grasp on the central concepts and what the lesson requires of them, you can try moving to one lesson per week as outlined below.

Day 1
Parts 1 and 2 (Fable and Variations: Part I)

Day 2
Parts 3 – 5 (Outline, Narration, Paraphrase I)

Day 3
Parts 6 and 7 (Paraphrase II and Variations: Part II)

Day 4
Part 8 (Final Draft)

[carriede]

Re: Classical composition in 4-day weeks

Here's how the plan is written out in my curriculum guide:

Week 1

Monday: Complete final draft (from previous lesson)
Tuesday: The Fable (new lesson)
Wednesday: Variations part 1
Thursday: Outline
Friday: Narration

Week 2

Monday: Correct and Improve Narration
Tuesday: Paraphrase 1
Wednesday: Paraphrase 2
Thursday: Variations part 2
Friday: Final Draft

So. In my limited experience with Fable (we're on Lesson 3), there are 3 compression options you can work with:

1) tacking Week 2 Monday onto Week 1 Friday
2) tacking Week 1 Monday onto Week 2 Friday
3) doing Week 1 Tuesday and Wednesday together

Pick two of those options, and you'll have 2 weeks of 4 days. Hope that helps!

[DiannaKennedy]

Re: Classical composition in 4-day weeks

Good Morning,

Wonderful question! Classical Composition is not difficult to contract down to 3 or 4 days. The 5 day model (10 days for each lesson) really is considerably moderate. As there are 8 parts (as laid out in the guides, not the lesson plans) to each Fable lesson, you can simply complete one of the "parts" for each day. The portions of the lesson plans this will combine are the "Narration" and "Correct and Improve the Narration" portions, as well as the "Final Draft" and the "Complete the Final Draft" portions. This will take you through a lesson in 2 weeks.

If you would like to accelerate the pace, and find that your student has a firm grasp on the central concepts and what the lesson requires of them, you can try moving to one lesson per week as outlined below.

Day 1
Parts 1 and 2 (Fable and Variations: Part I)

Day 2
Parts 3 – 5 (Outline, Narration, Paraphrase I)

Day 3
Parts 6 and 7 (Paraphrase II and Variations: Part II)

Day 4
Part 8 (Final Draft)

Musicdir26,

You could always move to Louisville, then send your students to the Cottage School for composition for Mr Weston. It's a winning combination in our family.

[MamaHill]

Re: Classical composition in 4-day weeks

ETA: Depending on time limitations, be open to modifying Paraphrase I. Instead of doing a full paraphrase, we would simply find the best places in the fable/outline to put the assigned figures of description.

This is brilliant. It never would have dawned on me to do that!

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I really don't understand how people squeeze composition into a one or two day a week chunk. We combine some of the narrations (outline and then do the narration, for example), but my girls don't do any of this independently.

I feel like I'm missing something here.

As for the OP, we do combine the outline and narration into one day, and that helps a bit.

[carriede]

Re: Classical composition in 4-day weeks

This is brilliant. It never would have dawned on me to do that!

---------------------------------

I really don't understand how people squeeze composition into a one or two day a week chunk. We combine some of the narrations (outline and then do the narration, for example), but my girls don't do any of this independently.

I feel like I'm missing something here.

As for the OP, we do combine the outline and narration into one day, and that helps a bit.

We don't compress it much either... sometimes into a 4 day week like this week. But that's it!

[musdir26]

Re: Classical composition in 4-day weeks

Musicdir26,

You could always move to Louisville, then send your students to the Cottage School for composition for Mr Weston. It's a winning combination in our family.

I am DYING to move to Louisville and join the HLS family. I was actually born there and all my extended family lives there!

[musdir26]

Re: Classical composition in 4-day weeks

As always this forum has been so helpful. Thank you all!

[jen1134]

Re: Classical composition in 4-day weeks

I really don't understand how people squeeze composition into a one or two day a week chunk. We combine some of the narrations (outline and then do the narration, for example), but my girls don't do any of this independently.

I feel like I'm missing something here.

We were doing it in a weekly co-op class and that definitely changes the dynamic a bit. The kids weren’t independent either: we brainstormed EVERYTHING as a class throughout Fable AND Narrative. I would write everything on the board and the kids would copy it down. Now that we’ve begun Chreia, the kids are really confident and they actually told me “This is going to be FUN!” I don’t know if any child has ever said that about Chreia, never mind two pen-averse BOYS!