Language Arts for Upper School Poetics & Progym levels
continue the progymnasmata sequence begun in Bards
and Poets. Each of these three high school levels will require reading at
least one major literature classic along with poetry. Students will study
grammar with sentence diagramming and will create Commonplace Books (Writer’s
Journals). This series will focus on the skills from which flow expository and
persuasive essays as well as poetry, grammar, vocabulary, word usage, and
punctuation. It's assumed the student completing this course is simultaneously
reading a large quantity of quality literature; particularly the classic works
found in the Great Books. It is also assumed that these lessons are being
completed in the context of a Christian home, where the student is reading the
Bible and is being trained in Christian doctrine and practice.
Level I1 teaches maxim and chreia, serving as a catalyst
for persuasive essays. Students will read Homer’s Odyssey. Level II teaches
refutation, confirmation, commonplace, encomium, and invective, building toward argumentation, research, and bibliography skills. Students will look at
material from differing viewpoints in their evaluation of characters in the
Aeneid. They will also read Plutarch’s Lives (Volume I and II), Macbeth
(including an annotated bibliography). In Level III, students will complete the
last two stages of the progym (thesis and law) and write an in depth response to
Dante’s Divine Comedy. Along with poetry of their choice, students will also
read a number of C.S. Lewis essays from God in the Dock. With this extensive
amount of reading and writing assignments, you might consider taking two years
to complete either Progym II or III.
