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LOGIC  SCHOOL

CCA Eighth Grade Curriculum

School of Logic Common placing Themes: virtue, community and fellowship, courage, family, glory and honor, God, justice, mortality, law, love, and man.

COMPOSITION I
Theme/Master
How can we organize and present our ideas to best persuade our audience?

Description:
In this course, students learn to write persuasive essays using the five canons of rhetoric and the six parts of arrangement. Instruction focuses more heavily on the first three of the five canons, namely, invention, arrangement, and style or eloquence. As students in the logic phase of writing, they will write their own story narratives and poetry by imitating great writing, asking why and how great writing is created. Vocabulary exercises teach students the habit of understanding words through their context and by recognizing their Greek and Latin roots. This course is the first of two courses focused on writing persuasive essays. In grades 5–7, students focused on summarizing others’ writing and practicing different ways of ordering their own writing depending on the topic and audience.Composition II lays the foundation of the five canons of rhetoric and the six parts of arrangement that will be built on in all following rhetoric courses at Colquitt Christian Academy.

This is done through: 
• Writing assignment topics should be integrated with other 8th-grade humanities courses, and should be coordinated with other 8th grade assignments via an internal assignment calendar
• As often as possible, students should see and discuss a model of the type of writing assigned before composing their own (there are sample essays in the appendix of The Lost Tools of Writing for this purpose)
• Students should be given a rubric for each assignment highlighting the teacher’s expectations for that writing assignment; each assignment should focus on a limited number of new writing skills
• Teachers should limit feedback on each writing assignment to what a student can apply in his or her next writing assignment; usually, feedback should highlight one strength and two-three items on the rubric for the student to continue to improve
• Read and discuss works of poetry from the 8th grade humanities time period and imitate different poetic forms
• Not every essay needs to have a new topic; students can expand on a previous essay topic when appropriate
• Students should present works of poetry as well as their own writing orally

History, Bible, Literature
Theme/Master
How does our view of the world influence how we live? How does our view of God influence the way we live?

Description: 
This course will briefly cover the early Mesopotamian cultures, biblical history, and Egyptian culture before turning its focus to Ancient Greece and Rome. Students will consider what a worldview is and how it affects life and culture, both in their personal experience and in history. Much of the course will be spent on understanding Greek thought, philosophy, culture, literature, and art as the foundation of Western civilization. It will then turn to the Roman culture and its influence on the world as well as Christianity’s influence on Rome. The integration of Hebrew Scripture,Roman culture and Greek thought into Christianity is taught from the perspective of God’s divine plan for His Church. Students will focus on logical applications and inquiries from this time period, preparing them for the rhetoric track in 10th grade.

This is done through: 
• Primarily lecture and discussion-oriented, based on individual or in-class readings using Socratic Discussion Rubric as a methodological guide; aim for at least 30% discussion
• Classes and units built around Key Questions, which build to higher Major and Master Questions for each work, unit, semester, and course
• Debates, recitations, and student presentations
• Lecture and discussion, particularly as introductory material or historical framework requires
• Viewing and discussing of pertinent works of art, literature, music, and poetry
• Beginning class each day with a brief activity, questions to consider, or written response designed to focus the class discussion and prepare students for the lesson.

Math
Theme/Master
How do equations reflect the order of Creation?How does one solve for the unknown?

Question: 
God reveals Himself as a God of order.

Description:
This course focuses on the development of the algebraic skills and concepts necessary for studies in further mathematics courses. In AlgebraI, students learn to use the fundamental language of algebra to describe patterns. They work with formulas, discuss unknowns, and graph functions, as well as learn to apply these concepts to everyday problems.Statistics and geometry will be included to motivate work with algebraic expressions, equations, functions, and fractions.

This is done through: 
• Teaching is primarily presenting new concepts to the class, coaching, working with students individually and in small groups to practice problem-solving strategies and conceptual thinking about math
• Math should be presented as often as possible with real-life situations
• Emphasis should be placed on logical evaluation of how and why math works as well as aesthetic evaluation of the elegance of the mathematical systems and solutions
• Class should begin each day with a brief activity, questions to consider, or written response designed to focus the class discussion and prepare students for the lesson.

Conceptual Physics

Question
How do the principles of physics explain events in our everyday lives?

Description:
In this course, students learn to appreciate the beauty and orderly nature of God’s creation as manifest in the laws of physics. Students are introduced to key concepts of a traditional physics course, with a focus on qualitative rather than quantitative aspects of the field. The course covers kinematics, motion, forces, waves, optics, electricity, and magnetism. Students demonstrate mastery through labs, case studies, discussions, projects and logic-based summative assessments.  

This is done through: 
• Class is structured around lecture, discussion, readings, labs, and projects
• Teaching should be inquiry-based, posing key questions around which student learning is centered
• Class should begin each day with a brief activity, questions to consider, or written response designed to focus the class discussion and prepare students for the lesson
• Laboratory work and experimentation is a key part of this class, both individually and in groups.

Latin
Theme/Master

Question: 
What do we learn about a people and thier culture through their language?

Description:
This course is the second in a mandatory four-year Latin program. LatinII is an early intermediate course in the ancient Latin language. Students engage in the four proficiencies of language: listening, speaking, reading, and writing, with an emphasis on comprehending what they hear and read. Students encounter grammatical concepts in context and focus on using those concepts rather than simply learning about them. As students’ comprehension of Latin increases over the course of our Latin program, the ultimate goal is for them to be able to access the literature, culture, and great ideas of Western Civilization in the language in which most of those ideas were originally developed. 

This is done through: 
• Latin instruction should follow comprehensive input methods as much as possible; teacher will speak slowly, engage in unceasing repetition of phrases, and keep speech at a level where students comprehend what is said
• Introduce new Latin structures using conversational topics anyone might want to use in a language: hopes for the future, what students enjoy doing, daily routines, etc
• Students develop scripts that are used to learn and repeatedly practice grammatical structures
• Employ spaced repetition of grammatical structures and phrases by practicing a structure every day for two weeks, every other day for two weeks, once a week, then once a month until students have become fluent in using the structure
• Use circling to give students the repeated practice they need to learn a target concept (usually 70-150 repetitions are necessary);

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Colquitt Christian Academy's Mission is to provide an academically challenging program, to create a love of learning in every student, to instill the habits of success in every student, and to prepare the student to be a responsible and productive member of the community.

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