Scripture, History & Letters
Bible reads Acts and the Epistles, Medieval History & Literature surveys the world from Rome to the Reformation, and Logic & Composition II advances formal argumentation.
Bible: Acts & Epistles
Students will gain an appreciation for God’s church by sustained and disciplined inquiry into the early history of the church as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles and the pastoral epistles including: Hebrews, James, 1 & 2 Peter, 1-3 John, and Jude.
Students will examine the early history of the Kingdom of Christ in this world, by doing the following:
Debate different Medieval interpretations of the text through writing exercises of Confirmation and Refutation and oral exercises of the formal dialectic
Become familiar with the medieval and classical practice of
ars dictaminis and appreciate insights able to be gained from scripture by attending to its rhetorical genre
Find events in the text on geographical maps, and observing the change of maps over time
Locate events in the text on a timeline and memorize Geneva Academy timeline for class
Memorize the Nicean and the Chalcedonian Creeds and recite or sing them as a class and individually
Applying biblical concepts learned in class to real world situations, so that they will be prepared to apply them to unpredictable situations later in life
Engage in a sustained inquiry into a conflict in early church history, as seen in a research paper based in the reading on early church history
Pray these scriptures through the adoption of a habitual practice of morning and evening prayer, modeled on Lectio Divina
The student will academically study the same passages they pray, so that God’s Spirit will form both the head and the heart for lifelong love of God’s Word.
Students will engage in a yearlong close reading of a teacher selected book on early church history, analyzing the doctrinal debates leading up to and resulting from the Nicaean/Chalcedonian orthodox heritage.
Medieval History & Literature
Students will gain an appreciation for the cultural and material life of medieval civilization, from the time of the Julio-Claudian dynasty to the advent of the Reformation with specific attention given to the Carolingian renaissance and the rise and decline of the Holy Roman Empire and the Crusades
Students will gain an appreciation for the literature of medieval civilization from time of the Julio-Claudian dynasty to the time of the Reformation with specific attention given to the literature of medieval Europe
Students will engage in sustained and disciplined inquiry into medieval civilization by doing the following:
Debate different historical interpretations of events such as the Crusades through writing exercises of Confirmation and Refutation and oral exercises of formal dialectic
Find events in the text on geographical maps, and observing the change of maps over time
Locate events in the text on a timeline and memorize Geneva Academy timeline for the class
Apply insights from historical research to real world, so they will be prepared to apply them to unpredictable events in life
Explore different fallacies of historians and historiography (selections from David Hackett Fischer’s Historians’ Fallacies)
Students will spend extended time developing close reading skills in primary source historical material including but not limited to:
Church History, by Eusibius
Rule of St. Benedict, by Benedict or Nursia
Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammerer
The Ecclesiastical History of Britain, by Bede
The History of the Kings of Britain, by Geoffrey of Monmouth
Primary sources related to the Crusades
Magna Carta and related documents
Selections from Domesday Book and Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and other primary source documents
Teacher will also draw from resources including but not limited to Jackson Spielvogel’s Western Civilization: A Brief History Vol 1 to 1715 and R.H. C. Davis’ A History of Medieval Europe
Students will engage in sustained and disciplined inquiry into the literature of medieval civilizations by close reading and debating the interpretation of great works of literature in the primary source, including but not limited to the following:
Confessions, by St. Augustine
Beowulf
Song of Roland
Saga of the Volsungs
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Divine Comedy: Inferno
Shakespearean classics, such as Henry 5 or Macbeth
Ivanhoe or Adventures of Robin Hood
Selections from Canterbury Tales
The teacher will also draw from European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, by Ernest Robert Curtius and other resources
Logic & Composition II
This course will advance the craft of argumentation in composition, with an additional emphasis on mechanics and grammar. Students will learn the fifth and sixth stages of the progymnasmata (preliminary exercises), which are common topic and encomium/invective/comparison. Additionally, students will be challenged to develop finer uses of syllogistic arguments and figures of rhetoric. They will also memorize some of the historical creeds of the Church.
A successful student who finishes this course should be able to:
Write compelling argumentative essays against groups of wrongdoers using the common topic form.
Write short biographies on historical figures.
Compose arguments of praise or condemnation against historical figures.
Incorporate syllogistic reasoning into written work.
Identify sentence parts and parts of speech.
Identify and correct errors in spelling, grammar, and writing mechanics.
Identify given figures of rhetoric and incorporate them into assigned paragraphs.
Diagram simple, compound, and complex sentences that include prepositional phrases, modifiers, gerunds, infinitives, and participles.
Recite from memory the following historical creeds: Apostle’s, Nicene, and Athanasian
Texts
Classical Composition by James Selby
Daily Grammar Practice 8 by Dawn Burnette and Judith Holbrook
The Apostle’s Creed
The Nicene Creed
The Athanasian Creed
Variety puzzles by Penny Press and Dell