LOST TOOLS OF WRITING
Lost Tools of Writing is a high school-level classical rhetoric curriculum that teaches the art of the persuasive essay. But it is more than a writing program; it is at heart a thinking program. Students learn to ask questions about decisions made by literary figures using the common topics to help them gather and arrange ideas and information from which they are able to derive and express thesis statements and supporting points. These skills can be applied to every other kind of writing (and decision-making) they'll ever have to do.
Literature is read and discussed alongside, but Lost Tools is not a literary analysis program. However, by being introduced to the craft of clear, balanced, and well-structured expression of opinions about decisions made by literary figures, they’ll be well on their way to being more attentive and discerning readers, enriching both their future classes and their own reading life.
LEVEL ONE
Level One students build on the simple structure of a very rudimentary Essay One and add new elements to each subsequent one. The foundational rhetorical canons of Invention, Arrangement, and Elocution are practiced together through lively class discussion and written exercises and then incorporated into each essay.
In eight essay cycles, Level One students learn to invent, arrange, and write a complete persuasive essay consisting of an exordium, narration, division, thesis, proofs, subproofs, refutation, and amplification. Figures of speech are practiced and gradually incorporated into the essays, including parallelism, antithesis, metaphor, simile, alliteration, and assonance. Along the way, the building blocks of phrases, clauses, and sentences are considered, compared, and crafted, thus integrating a deeper grammatical sense into the art of wordsmithing.
Lost Tools of Writing Level One with Narnia will take a 30-week tour through both Lost Tools Level One and the entire Chronicles of Narnia, in which we will read, write about, and reflect upon characters and their decisions as well as C.S. Lewis’s masterful craftsmanship.
BOOKLIST:
The Lost Tools of Writing Student Workbook Level One
The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
Recommended Ages: 12 and up
Prerequisites: Some prior grammar and the ability to write a simple paragraph
Day and time: Wednesdays, 9:00 to 10:30 a.m. (Central time)
Cost: $595 (includes a nonrefundable $75 deposit paid at time of registration)