![]() ![]() Once students reach the Challenge or Rhetoric stage in high school, they begin to produce materials, which reflect their thoughts on the information they learned during the previous years. “This is when they start to dialogue about it with their peers.” “They have a ton of information by the time they get to that stage,” Baker said. “By the end of one year, they have concrete exposure to 24 major concepts instead of just brushing over lots of things,” she said.Īs children move into a naturally argumentative stage by the time they reach adolescence, the Classical Conversations program encourages parents to use those facts students learned when they were younger to develop logic in the Essentials or Dialectic stage. Through memorizing a historical timeline from Creation to present day, students will leave the program with a deep understanding of historical context. ![]() With classical education, the approach is opposite.” “In my past, I was forced by my administration to move students on regardless of mastery or even a passing grade. “This concept of mastery is a bit foreign to me,” she said. “So to repeat something is never a bad thing.” “There’s a huge focus on mastery in classical education,” Baker said. ![]() Students who begin the program at age 4 will rotate through the program at least two times. Students ages four to sixth grade begin in the Foundations or Grammar stage where they learn facts about science, math, English grammar, historical timeline, history fact, geography and Latin.Įach year the program rotates between teaching children about Creation to the Middle Ages, Middle Ages to Present Day and U.S. The program is set up into three stages: Foundations, Essentials and Challenge. Taking a classical education approach where students memorize information in a structured setting at a young age and then learn to have a conversation and produce their own thoughts during their secondary education was important to the Bakers. “With a classical approach, you have a much more streamlined approach where you’re covering everything, but you’re also able to teach your kids together.”īaker, who taught deaf and hard of hearing students along with math in public schools, now has four children under the age of seven she will homeschool. “This takes so much pressure off of feeling like you have to cover it all,” Baker said. Today, nearly 70,000 homeschool students participate in the program. The Classical Conversations curriculum now covers a curriculum for students ages 4 through high school. ![]() Once Bortins saw the benefits of the accountability group, she developed a program at the grammar level for her younger two. Bortins, who homeschooled her four sons after leaving her career as an aerospace engineer, invited 11 high school-aged students to her home once a week to meet with her oldest sons so they could discuss American literature, Latin, science, algebra, American government and economics. Mahomet resident Julie Baker, who initiated the idea implementing Classical Conversations into the Mahomet homeshool community, said about 10 families have committed to the program.Ĭlassical Conversations was developed in 1997 by Leigh Bortins. Mahomet families seeking information about a home-centered education movement called Classical Conversations met at the Mahomet Public Library Wednesday. ![]()
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