High School at Paideia Fellowship Homeschool Community

Are you curious to see what a Classical, Charlotte Mason Inspired, High School Humanities class looks like? Well, let us take you on a tour of how we do things in High School at The Paideia Fellowship Homeschool Community. This video tells about the program and below is the outline of how each year in high school is patterned at Paideia Fellowship Homeschool Community.

P.S. If you are local to the Charlotte area in North Carolina and still looking for a high school solution for your student, the community does still have a few spots left. Learn about the specifics for this coming fall and spring at paideiaacademics.com/highschool.

Paideia Fellowship is a one-day-a-week homeschool community. We align ourselves with a Good/Great Books style humanities program, which means the ideas and the literature lead. Practically this means that more time will be spent on the literature and in coaching writing and reading skills. History will be present for sure, but there may be shorter discussions or class time devoted to specific historical topics. Whenever possible the class will seek to see the common thread of ideas woven through both the history and the literature and respond to these ideas with writing, discussion, and other projects or activities.

The high school class, along with the rest of the homeschool community lives through a 4-year cycle. Ancients, Medievals/Renaissance, Early Modern, Modern/American. Each year great books of literature are selected that help us enter into the imagination of that time. Living history books are chosen according to each time that will further support this endeavor.

Literature

Students in high school engage with the Great Books of Western Civilization. Students are led through how to read and think deeply about the books. Students learn how to use an annotating and highlighting system along with commonplacing to support deep reading. Students write papers and have discussions about the books. Here is an example of what we study in literature in one year. This is our real list of reading for this coming school year.

Summer Reading:

• Bulfinch’s Mythology or something similar
• A Story of the Golden Age of Greek Heroes, by James Baldwin
• The Children’s Homer: The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy, by Padraic Colum
• The Aeneid for Boys and Girls, by Alfred J. Church

Reading for the School Year:

• Cupid & Psyche myth
• Orpheus myth
• The Iliad
• The Odyssey
• The Aeneid
• Selected poems, art, and music that speak to and answer the literature and history we are reading.
• Selected Essays that comment on how to read and on the common human questions and experiences read about in the literature.

History

History work will include reading living books, essays, speeches, and poetry, a variety of written assignments, class discussions, century notebook work, and three- four projects over the course of the year. For example, here is the book list for the high school class during the ancient year humanities class.

• The Book of the Ancient World by Dorothy Mills and the Bible, Genesis – Numbers  (optional, but strongly recommend to be read at home on off weeks)
• The Book of the Ancient Greeks by Dorothy Mills
• The Book of the Ancient Romans by Dorothy Mills
• Church History in Plain Language, by Bruce Shelley (Section of the book that goes along with Ancient times)
• Selected speeches from The Iliad, Mark Antony’s speech in Julius Caesar, selections from Plato, Isocrates, and Cicero.
• Selected poems, art, and music that speak to and answer the literature and history we are reading.
• Selected essays that comment on the common human questions studied throughout the year.

Composition/Language Arts

Within the classical tradition, at this stage, language arts instruction grows to include the direct study of rhetoric and advanced recitations. Both of these elements will be utilized and integrated with the history and literature studied each week. For rhetorical studies, we have chosen to use The Lost Tools of Writing by the CiRCE Institute Level 1 and Level 2. This program, better than any other I have seen, leads the student in the art of discovering truth and coming up with what to write about, arranging thoughts and research in the most fitting way, and writing and saying things in the most eloquent and appropriate way. In addition, The Lost Tools of Writing leads students in thinking contemplatively about what they write.

Books Used:

• Lost Tools of Writing Level 1 or 2
• English Grammar Reference
• Logic Reference (Level 2 only)
• Selected articles or book selections on rhetoric and the art of writing (Level 2 only)

Nature Study

During the afternoon, high school students learn to observe, reflect on, and study the natural world through nature study and object lessons. Nature study and object lesson are one part of a complete Charlotte Mason science course of study. You can learn more about the full scope of a Charlotte Mason science curriculum at the Sabbath Mood Homeschool website. Students are coached in observation and nature journaling skills. High school students will be presented with object lessons throughout the year and will be challenged to see more relationships in the natural world by considering these objects in the context of their habitats.

Books Used:

• North Carolina Wild Places: A Closer Look
• Law’s Guide to Nature Journaling & Drawing
• Various Feild Guides and Nature Study Resources

Theater

In theater, students are immersed in the last two cannons of rhetoric: delivery and memory. Students learn to read poems, literature, and original Shakespeare plays out loud with poise and meaning. Each student will be required to memorize lines, poetry, and a selection of commonplace entries from their literature classes. Each theater hour includes theater games, articulation or oratory activities, and reading practice to strengthen oratory and performing skills, and reading through a Shakespeare play over the course of a semester. During the last half of the spring semester, students learn and practice various practical arts by helping put on an end of year production. Students will learn about staging, makeup and costumes, props, refining their memorized parts for performances, scheduling, organizing an event, and many other skills related to putting on an end of year event.

Books Used:

• Julius Ceasar, by William Shakespeare, Folgers Edition

If you would like to learn even more about our High school Class, visit our Community’s high school page, which also lists out answers to several Frequently Asked Questions about the high school years.

Expanding wisdom, extending grace,

Jennifer Dow