placement for 9th and 10th graders

[Nancy]

I am looking for advice in placing my jr. high and high schoolers. I have five children. I was thinking of starting the youngest two, who will be entering 4th and 5th grade, on Aesop in the fall. For my middle schoolers, I was thinking of using the Older Beginners version of Aesop and Homer. Now I am wondering, should I also use this for my 9th and 10th graders or would that not be rigorous enough to count toward high school credit for them? If not, then should I begin with Diogenes: Maxim and the following Diogenes program. Is there a way I could combine these two to cover one year for my 10th grader? I was also thinking of using Write Guide to help me with their writing assessment since I have so many kids to teach so many subjects!

Any advice will be appreciated.

[greengables]

Nancy,

Your plans sound good for your elementary and middle school students. For your high schoolers, I would say that you could definitely count A&H Older Beginners as 1/2 credit of high school English. I would probably try to complete it in one semester, then move on to Diogenes Maxim and Chreia, trying to finish each in one semester if possible.

I don't know anything about Write Guide, so I cannot comment, but Classical Writing Student Workbooks and Student Guides will give you all that you need to evaluate your students' writing.

Hope that helps!

Kathy

[Nancy]

Thank you.

[Nancy]

For my 9th and 10th grader, do you think the beginning poetry for older beginners should also be included? I did some poetry with them in their younger years. Is it reasonable to think I could finish both of these in one semester? I don't want to overload them (or myself!!)

Nancy

[Lene Mahler Jaqua]

You could not finish both in one semester, or at least I think it would be overload if you tried to.

I suggest starting Intermediate Poetry with Diogenes instead.

Lene

[Nancy]

I wanted to be certain you intended to answer the last question the way you did. That would mean they would skip the beginning poetry altogether. Is that going to work? Will they be able to do the intermediate poetry without the beginning poetry background?

Thank you.

[Lene Mahler Jaqua]

Nancy,

You said you had already done some beginning poetry with your students, so given their ages, and given that Intermediate Poetry starts with a review of previously learned concepts, I thought it best to recommend that they start in Intermediate Poetry.

Lene

[Nancy]

I see what you mean. Thanks very much.
Nancy

[Nancy]

Do you think I should begin Intermediate Poetry immediately after finishing A&H for Older Beginners with my 2 high schoolers, or does it make more sense to begin right in on Diogenes Maxim for the second semester? I don't think we could do both at the same time because of everything else we are trying to cover this year.

As it stands now I have two beginning in on Aesop, 1 middle schooler beginning on A&H for Older Beginners and Beginning Poetry (for older beginners), and 2 high schoolers on A&H for Older Beginners followed either by Diogenes Maxim (which I already have) or Intermediate Poetry (which I don't yet have).

Do you have any advice regarding how to manage this many programs at once? It is especially reading the guides as we go along that seems most problematic, since the three groups will likely go at different paces. I understand the basic approach, having read through Aesop already.

Thank you,
Nancy

[Lene Mahler Jaqua]

First of all, for your highschoolers, I would go straight to the books you already own. No sense in buying new material when you have plenty to do already. Also, high schoolers, while poetry is important, need to get going on writing essays, so get into Maxim some more.

As for managing, I recommend letting your students READ what they need to do. The student guides are weekly guides for the students. They should be mostly self propelled, and you should focus your directional energies at the youngest student who is not self-propelled. If your older students are not self-directed (and this could be a combination of personality and training), slow down for the first two weeks of this semester and slowly guide them to the point where they can navigate the student guides on their own, sending stuff to you (lessons and essays) for your editing and correction and suggestions, but for the most part get your fingers out of the pie as far as their organizing their daily work. (Kathy has done a marvelous job in the student guides of making the task of organization easy for the students, but it does require that they have the skills of reading and doing what that reading tells them to do... this sounds like a simple skill, but for some older students this is actually something that needs to be taught slowly and systematically.)

Did that answer your questions? ... I am on my way to pick up a kid... so ask more if it did not.

Lene

[Nancy]

Dear Lene (by the way, how do you pronounce your first name?),

I think I am going to have WriteGuide (you may be interested in finding out about their services) edit my high schoolers' writing projects so that I don't have to do that part. I have used them before and they are very motivating to the kids because they are friendly, encouraging, not too critical, yet demand good work by constant reminders. They edit right on their papers via email and then the kids try to incorporate the suggestions into their next draft. They don't cost all that much, and they are very flexible -- you can even have two or three children share a subscription, so long as you are only sending them one email per day.

Back to the issues at hand; I was wondering if it would work to have them reading the guide themselves... OK, that sounds much more workable.

My next question has to do with scheduling both A&H for Older Beginners and Maxim: Diogenes into one school year. This will be quite challenging since the first has 22 lessons and the latter has 25. Would you recommend that I skip some of the lessons? Which ones would I skip? Or, I noticed that your online tutorial skips A&H for Older Beginners altogether and just starts them right in on Diogenes. It does begin with at least one fable (they pick from some, I believe, but I'm not clear on this since I haven't really read much of Maxim yet). Would it be advisable to just do parts of A&H and then move on to Maxim for the remaining 25 weeks of the school year? That would give me about 11 weeks for A&H.

My children have had (Zaner Bloser) grammar instruction before (quite a bit actually - especially my 10th grader; my 9th grader has a little more trouble understanding the concepts, but I think she almost has most of it with reminders). I think the parsing will be exciting for them and really reinforce their grammar knowledge.

I hope you don't mind me asking, but I am curious if any of your curriculum authors are Orthodox Christians. I noticed that you use some of the early church fathers, Fr. Alexander Schmemann, St. Athanasius, and Fr. Jack Sparks (I just recently met him!). My husband and I converted to the Orthodox Church before we got married (1991) and are bringing up our kids in that tradition, so I was so excited to find your writing curriculum that incorporated these elements of our faith.

Thanks so much for your patient responses. It is really helping a lot!

Nancy

[Lene Mahler Jaqua]

Nancy,

My first name is pronounced "Leenah", my parents are Danish.

>>Back to the issues at hand; I was wondering if it would work to have them reading the guide themselves... OK, that sounds much more workable.>>

The student guides are for the kids to read, definitely. They are to be more independent once they go from workbooks to student guides. The student guide also tells them when to work with the teacher in discussion and what to turn in. We still recommend that you are abreast of what they are doing, reading along and such. It is not a self-teaching course.

>>
My next question has to do with scheduling both A&H for Older Beginners and Maxim: Diogenes into one school year. This will be quite challenging since the first has 22 lessons and the latter has 25. Would you recommend that I skip some of the lessons?
>>

Skipping anything depends on how well your students already know grammar and how to rewrite narratives. If you were to skip, skip the beginning lessons of Older Beginners, starting where you get into the 'in media res' stories. Also, you may possibly skip some of the repetition at the very beginning of Maxim. As you go through the books, look at repetition from one week to the next, possibly cut out that repetition, or combine weeks that look to be of lighter work load.

>>I hope you don't mind me asking, but I am curious if any of your curriculum authors are Orthodox Christians. >>

Yes indeed. Our group of four authors spans the Christian spectrum from Protestant to Orthodox. Our emphasis on early Church fathers is one we all share. Alexander Schmemann, C.S. Lewis, and others of the 20th century rank among our favorites in deep Christian thought. Our aim is to present the core of the Christian faith to all Christians as best as our abilities allow us. You will see a lot more both Bible and Church fathers in Herodotus, the book we're sending out in beta version this fall, and it will continue to be one of our aims, to have our kids work hard with works that focus their thoughts on matters of faith.

Lene

[Nancy]

Thank you Lene,

I am grateful for the support you provide via these message boards...I am feeling more and more comfortable with being able to tackle this school year (I feel like I'm about to jump off a high dive...but I did do that successfully at one time!)

It is wonderful to know the origins behind this program. I feel so privileged to be able to share in the fruit of your collective labors and obvious friendship with eachother.

Nancy