Posts Tagged classical trivium
Elementary Reading Strategies vs. Whole Books?
Posted by Diane in How to Teach Homeschool Skill 1: READING on April 12th, 2010
If you are familiar with the main tenets of a classical Christian education, you know that you should read whole books aloud daily to your kids. In fact, books are essential to the effective application of teaching the three skills of the classical trivium.
Well, what you do in your Christian home school is not necessarily what teachers in public schools are doing! My friend recently shared an interesting homeschooling article called “Let Them Read Whole Books” by Joy Hakim, author of the elementary series “A History of US,” which argues that public school teachers spend so much time teaching strategies for reading and analyzing paragraphs that there is no longer enough classroom time for reading whole books! Hakim clearly prefers the reading strategies adopted by homeschoolers:
Today, it is only homeschoolers, and children at a few elite or unusual schools who even read as much as one whole book. Teachers are much too busy teaching reading to actually let their students read a nonfiction book.
I’m sure that you would agree, but don’t let up! Keep reading. No matter how busy you are with daily household chores or teaching the math and science curriculum, make a daily commitment to read aloud to your home school kids. If you need a little bit of encouragement, click on the image above and watch my presentation to the Indiana Association of Home Educators on the real benefits of reading aloud.
Big News: Mary Pride & home-school.com!
Posted by Diane in Various Essays for Homeschool Parents on March 24th, 2010
I have been so busy over the last few months that I haven’t had time to announce some exciting news!
Yours truly, Diane Lockman, is now a regular contributor to one of the most popular homeschooling magazines:
Last autumn Mary Pride, Homeschool World editor and author of the three-volume homeschooling series entitled The Big Book of Home Learning, invited me to become her classical method columnist. My first article appeared in Practical Homeschooling issue # 91 in which I introduced the idea of an authentic classical home education with a particular emphasis on mastering the three skills of the classical trivium.
In the most recent issue, PH # 92, I answer the burning question for those of you with high school age kids: once you’ve taught the trivium, what next? For those of you who are patiently waiting for the sequel to Trivium Mastery, my most recent PH article covers (1) the Christian Paideia as Jesus modeled it in one-on-one teaching with His disciples, (2) the Western Canon as it illustrates the cumulative influence of past classics upon future classics, and (3) customization of your high school homeschool curriculum to meet the needs of your family and the needs of college admissions officers.
The subscription price for Practical Homeschooling magazine is quite reasonable, and Mary Pride will include a bonus brochure in which she shares her own success stories for graduating nine kids from the Pride home school. Hope you enjoy!
Integrating Multiple Sources is Tough Work
Posted by Diane in Post-Trivium Homeschool | High School on November 9th, 2009
In How to Guarantee Independent Reading, I discussed four ways to motivate young home school readers to seek opportunities to read on their own. Let’s say that you faithfully follow my advice and begin to see the fruit. In a few short years, your child will substantially master the three skills of the classical trivium and be ready for post-trivium independent studies. On the brink of the homeschool high school years, you sit back and relax, knowing that your teen knows how to read well. You’ve done all you can do to help her succeed in high school, right? Well, I hate to burst your well-earned bubble, but there’s more work to do. What other skills are needed besides independent reading?
Integration of Several Sources
Reading skills are essential to perfecting writing skills, but knowing how to read is not enough. To justifiably qualify as a true scholar, the homeschool high school student needs to know how to read several sources for meaning so that she can integrate or synthesize the main ideas in writing her essays and research papers. Reading for the purpose of integration is not an easy task; many high school students get bogged down in the details and lose the big picture when distracted by multiple sources (you may have been one of these unfortunate souls who dreaded sifting through all the sources for your research paper). To effectively tackle the challenges of essay writing and the even greater challenges of developing a debatable thesis statement for the lengthy research paper, your high school homeschool student needs specific strategies for success. You can give your student tremendous writing help with these three simple secrets.
Secret 1: Manage your time wisely.
When you assign a writing task like an essay or research paper, give your high school homeschooler hard deadlines with enough time to successfully accomplish the task. Establish a deadline for the final paper, one or two rough drafts, and the preliminary outline. Teach your teen how to count backwards from the final due date and how to subdivide his time into smaller units. For instance, if you assign a three point essay over three weeks, he might want to spend the first week skimming resources for 3 related points, the second week reading and integrating the ideas, and the third week drafting the outline, first draft, second draft and final essay. If your son keeps a calendar, have him write down his own goals for accomplishing the tasks; this act of writing down commitments will teach him to be accountable to himself. You could also teach him how to create a ‘to-do’ list.
Secret 2: Research broadly on the first pass.
Not all information is equally important. Teach your high school homeschooler the 80/20 rule: 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. (Here are two examples of the “Pareto rule” from real life that illustrate this concept. In business, it is generally proven that 20% of a company’s customers provide 80% of the company’s sales. In economics, 20% of the world population controls 80% of the world’s wealth.) In other words, your home school high school student would NOT be using his time efficiently if he read each word in the selected research texts because, out of 100 words, most of the important content would be included in only 20 words.
How do you apply this time management principle? First when you begin your search at the library, pull 20-25 books for the first pass. Preview each book then skim each text and jot down any ideas that might work well in your proposed essay or research paper. Next eliminate half of the original resources by picking those that are most pertinent to your topic. That means that your research pool now includes 10-12 books instead of 20-25 books. Of these culled books, continue skimming until you have six potential topics for your three topic essay. In skimming the text, look for key words that are repeated. Prioritize all six potential topics according to amount of available content. Decide on your top three topics.
Secret 3: Narrow the topic and integrate your sources.
Now it is time for in-depth reading. Read only those passages that deal with your three topics. By reading passages, rather than entire sources, less time elapses between the various readings. This concentrated use of time to focus on the meaty content will help your home school high school student retain the main ideas. Remember the 80/20 rule even in your in-depth reading. Look for the topic sentences in each paragraph of the related passage. Jot down the main ideas from the topic sentences to highlight the issues. Reflect on these ideas. Teach your teen to take his time during this phase of the work so that he can absorb, evaluate, and integrate the ideas that he is discovering.
When my kids were learning how to integrate multiple sources for a mini-research paper, I showed them how to create a multi-column, multi-line chart. Here’s how I structured the chart:
Put each book or internet source on a horizontal line under the first column, then fill in the key ideas about each topic. Once you have the chart filled out, the task is easier. With the chart in front of you, ask your son to point out or highlight elements from each source that are related, similar, or can be combined into a whole idea. At this point, your son or daughter should be able to take multiple sources and hopefully produce a more fully developed idea on the topic than any one of the stand-alone sources. He may even think of new ways to approach the topic.
Now you understand why knowing how to read independently is not enough. Synthesis of meaning for essay writing and research papers is tough work, but if you do your part and teach your homeschool high school teen the secrets of successful integration, you’ll definitely see the benefits, and your rising classical scholar will create thoughtful, meaningful content in every essay and research paper.
Homeschool Parents Need Education, Too!
Posted by Diane in Various Essays for Homeschool Parents on February 6th, 2009
Even if you don’t embrace the 12 year homeschooling philosophy of The Well-Trained Mind, you’ll enjoy hearing Susan Wise Bauer, the keynote speaker at this year’s Midwest Homeschool Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio. Dr. Bauer will be speaking all three days of the convention (April 16-18, 2009) on a variety of topics. My favorite workshop is the one entitled “Educating Our Own Minds: How to Teach Ourselves as We Teach Our Kids.” Here is the teaser from the website blog:
Educating our children involves educating ourselves. And that means gaining confidence in our own intellectual abilities—rather than relying solely on “experts.” Come discover a plan for self-education in the classical tradition, including scheduling for busy adults; setting up a reading plan that involves understanding, analyzing, and discussing literature; and mastering the skills needed for reading classic fiction and nonfiction.
I couldn’t agree more with the idea of parent education! In fact, I’m in the process of producing short videos just for parents to show them how to teach the three skills of the authentic classical trivium (reading , thinking, and speaking) . I think of these upcoming video homeschool courses as “continuing education for parents.” I’ve got a little studio set up in the basement with real box lighting and a backdrop. David even built me a teleprompter for my Christmas present. I’m going to publish little FAQ short videos on my Facebook page and the longer videos here on the website. Vincent Franco, a fabulous Christian graphic designer, is redesigning my website to feature my new book, Trivium Mastery: The Intersection of Three Roads,” as well as these upcoming videos. Look for the new website and first homeschool course for parents later this spring.
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Speaking of Facebook, add me as a friend and become a fan of my new Facebook page, Homeschool Online FAQ with Diane Lockman, so that you can watch the homeschool video shorts where I answer your questions about authentic classical homeschooling. In your friend request, please tell me that you are a reader of my blog posts so that I will know you’re not a stranger. Looking forward to connecting “face to face” as we continue our own home education!
Mentoring Teens in the Pursuit of Knowledge
Posted by Diane in Post-Trivium Homeschool | High School on January 7th, 2009
As high school looms on the horizon, your homeschool teen is close to substantially mastering the three skills of the classical trivium. Capable of skillfully using the English language to reason and express his thoughts with intelligent coherence, he can now be released to study virtually any discipline in depth! Early in your homeschooling career, you were the primary teacher, but now, you will guide your teen in the acquisition of knowledge and accumulation of graduation credits. The young scholar will now learn to be primarily responsible for his own learning with mom and dad taking a supervisory role as a mentor.
What disciplines are studied?
An authentic classical Christian homeschool uses primary sources (classic histories, literature, philosophies, science, mathematics,and government treatises) to explore meaning. Secondary sources like surveys are used to supplement the classics and give a cohesive overview. So the idea of “living” books from the earlier years of the homeschool child’s education advances in the teen years as the rising scholar tackles the classics of the past and uses surveys (text and audio) to historically contextualize the meaning.
In this regard, a classical Christian homeschool is very different from a public school. A course for credit does not merely comprise a textbook, but could include a textbook (serving as the survey), a classic text, and an apprentice opportunity. For instance, the student interested in three dimensional spheres might use a geometry textbook, the original classic on geometry written by Euclid, and a CAD-CAM program for designing shapes.
What classic texts are read?
Over the past 2,500 years of Western Civilization, the generally agreed-upon core of a classical education has remained constant while new classics are added to the collection. Hellenistic Greeks like Alexander the Great memorized the legendary epic poems of their past like Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Roman senators like Cicero studied the classic epics of Homer and the classic essays of Aristotle. Christian monks studied the classics of Homer, Aristotle, and the classic oratory of Cicero.
Protestant reformers like John Calvin studied the classics of Homer, Aristotle, Cicero, and the classic Christian confessions of Saint Augustine. America’s founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson studied the classics of Homer, Aristotle, Cicero, Saint Augustine, and the classic theology of Calvin. Confederate General Robert E. Lee studied the classics of Homer, Aristotle, Cicero, Saint Augustine, and Calvin. You can see how as time marches on, certain classics endure in the core curriculum while new classics are added as they prove the test of time.
Must the homeschool high school student read all the classics?
No, even if you get an early jump on high school credit because your 12 year old has substantially mastered all three skills of the classical trivium, he would be unable to complete the list of classics before graduation. Most people take a lifetime to read all the classics! The good news is that your rising scholar can tailor his or her content, with your guidance, to include those classics that are most appropriate to his or her own interests, abilities, calling, and family values.
If this were ancient Rome, the rising scholar, having successfully mastered the three skills of the trivium, would move on to the mathematical arts (the quadrivium) which included arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music theory. If this were the early 1700s, the rising scholar might be reading classic philosophies. Fast forward one hundred years, and you might find that classic histories like Thucydides’ history of the war between ancient Athens and Sparta influenced certain officers of the American Civil War. Vast choices of great variety await the homeschool high school student who desires to study specific areas of interest like military tactics, poetry, political theory, and scientific discoveries!
What else is needed besides classics and surveys?
In order to tackle such weighty material, your homeschool high school teen needs excellent study habits, advanced writing abilities, and the desire to engage in lengthy discussions with the parent or other mentor as the content is explored and understood. Unstructured quiet time to digest the material is also preferable as well as access to a public library or bookstore. Most of all, the rising scholar needs a willing spirit to join the great thinkers of the past and discover the riches of a classical Christian heritage in what some have called “the wisdom of the ages!”
