Three stages
Classical teaching follows how children think: first facts and songs, then questions and arguments, then writing and speaking well.
Latin chants and first vocabulary
Phonics, reading aloud and handwriting
Stories, songs and memory work
Number facts and counting by groups
Children move on to the dialectic stage when their teacher and parents agree it is time.
Logic: how to find the weak step in an argument
Latin grammar and first translations
Books read and talked over around a table
Science notebooks and proofs in mathematics
Students move on to the rhetoric stage when their teachers and parents agree it is time.
Writing and speaking to persuade
Longer works, read and argued in seminar
Latin reading
A year-long project shown to families
Sample levels.
Seminar
Once a week the dialectic and rhetoric classes sit around the table with a teacher. Everyone has read the same chapter. The teacher asks a question, and the students answer each other, point to the page and change their minds out loud.
The reading list is the school's own, and the head of school gives it to families at a visit.
One book at a time
Every student speaks
The teacher asks more than she tells
Subjects
Each subject runs across the three stages, deeper each year.
Chants and vocabulary at first, then grammar, then reading.
How to state a claim, give a reason and find what is missing.
Stories, poems and longer books, read aloud and discussed.
From copying a good sentence to making a case in writing and speech.
Facts, then procedures, then the reasons behind them.
Observation, a notebook and simple experiments.
One story told in order, with maps and a timeline on the wall.
Drawing, singing and an instrument, together once a week.
Classes
Every grade band has three days with its teachers and two at home. Class size is for the lessons on school days.
Kindergarten to grade 3
Songs, chants and stories. Home days are short.
Grades 4 to 6
Logic and discussion begin.
Grades 7 and 8
Longer reading, writing and speaking.
Sample programs.
Book a visit day, or ask a question first.