integration

One of the biggest differences between CC and other educational models is integration. We integrate all 6 seminars together throughout the day. Now you know why we have only one tutor covering everything. Here's how it works.

Let's say the entire class read a book over the past week. I will use Call of the Wild as an example here, although that is not read until the Challenge 1 year. During our literature hour, the class would discuss the book together, trying to find information relating to numerous fields. The goal is to become proficient with the dialectic stage of the trivium. The trivium is the three stages of learning and the foundation of a classical education. Students would contribute and add information to the white board, and it might look something like this:
Geography: show a map of Alaska and Canada, learn the name of the mountain range at the border, number of provinces total, Klondike region characteristics, weather in this region...now the book starts to make more sense!
Writing: bitter, brutal cold (alliteration example), Buck became a monster (metaphor), "Can a dog really become man's best friend? (exordium example).
Science: review biomes and decide which one is here (tundra or forest), discuss life cycle, species of animals in the story
Latin: canis, 3rd declension noun, masculine here although typically feminine since it ends in "s", i-stem noun because both nominative and genitive cases are two syllables. Cave canem! ("Beware the dog" is literal translation)
History: 1876-1916 gold rushes, time of great turmoil in the US, assassination, Industrial Revolution, Carnegie, Swift, Vanderbilt, etc., growth of socialist movement, author Jack London used this story to flaunt his beliefs in transcendentalism and socialism.
Timeline: students can draw a timeline on the board or a piece of paper to get a picture of when the events of the story took place in relation to other historical events.
Math: how much money was budgeted per trip? per dog? Gross and net profit from the excursions? What was rate of return on each sled dog?
Apologetics: author was fully supportive of Evolutionary Darwinism, what in story validated and did not validate evolution, what does Bible say about story's events. Proverbs 12:10, Genesis 1:28

As you can see, this is a lot of information, more than just retelling the story to each other. Reading comprehension has been mastered by this level and the focus is now on dialectic discussions using an ANI chart. (covered in another post).

By fully integrating each strand together, students will receive the benefits of the dialectic stage of the trivium, namely the ability to ask questions, sort, compare, contrast, and practice using all the knowledge they have accumulated over the past 12 yrs of life!