Hopefully, you've read my post about what Tapestry of Grace is generally all about.
Now, let's discuss what the different learning levels mean within our family.
We have been using Tapestry of Grace for the past 4 years. You would then think, that we should be through the whole cycle and back to Year 1 this year. Well, I took the author's advice, and with little ones, we took the curriculum at half pace for the past 4 years. That means that we took 2 weeks to complete each 1 week of curriculum. It was wonderful that way, it allowed us more time for hands on projects, it allowed me to focus on math and reading, it allowed me freedom to deal with pre-schoolers that weren't interested in sitting still for much time...and now, this year, we're coming up to the regular pace. We are on Year 3 this year, the Nineteenth Century. I have a rising 4th grader, a rising 2nd grader, and a Kindergartner this year.
In Tapestry of Grace terminology, I have 1 that is in Upper Grammar, and 2 that are Lower Grammar.
If you remember from my last post, I said there were 3 levels of learning. These are the Grammar stage, the Dialectic Stage, and the Rhetoric Stage.
The Grammar stage is the early elementary level. Students are learning facts, stories, and the basic feel of how History and all of the Humanities fit together. Tapestry breaks the Grammar stage into 2, Lower and Upper. Lower Grammar students need a parent to read aloud to them, and to help them find the main point in their reading. The time that they move to Upper Grammar is when they are not only independent readers; but, can read their selections, on their own, and come back to you having comprehension of the main point of the lesson. That usually happens in the third or fourth grade. This is also usually when you start working on their writing and reporting. Before this, they are mostly verbalizing what they have read, maybe drawing a picture, or writing a main sentence.
In the Dialectic stage, they are asking all of the questions, 'arguing' view points, and tying to make things make sense. This is also called the Logic stage in other Classical curricula and roughly equates to the Middle School/Junior High years. I do not have a Dialectic student, so you can read more about this stage, or hear about it in the Foundational Videos available on the Tapestry of Grace website - http://www.tapestryofgrace.com/llc/training/foundational.php
The final stage is the Rhetoric stage, and again, I do not have one; but, this stage equates to the traditional High School years and is the time when you have Socratic discussions and opinions are being formed. This is when a child is wanting to express themselves, to persuade others about what they believe, they are cementing their ability to communicate both in the written and in the oral format. Again, one of the benefits of the chronological, classical model, is that your student has seen all of this information 2 other times, they aren't learning "new" information so much as looking at it in a new way, figuring out what they think about it, and learning to express that belief system separately from a parent or a teacher. It is hard to form an opinion, if you haven't ever learned the information before. I certainly remember learning absolutely "new" information when I was in high school, so, getting to the level of analysis and opinion forming didn't really ever happen. We were still just in 'receive and answer' mode.
Alright....now, we can get on to how I schedule our year, coming up next in Part III.
http://whateveristrueandnoble.blogspot.com/2012/08/review-tapestry-of-grace-part-iii.html
I wrote an "update" and have more pictures of how we do things now, with a Dialectic student in the mix, in this blog post - http://whateveristrueandnoble.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-bit-about-scheduling.html
An update with adding in a Rhetoric student can be found here.
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