06 June 2018
Memoria Press Classical Composition Review
I’m always excited to share with you products from Memoria Press! The
last few weeks my son has been learning a lot with Classical Composition I: Fable Set and Classical Composition II: Narrative Set, and the Classical Composition Accelerated I: Lesson Plans. We received a physical copy of the
sets and the lesson plans.
Memoria Press is a family run business for Classical Curriculum since 1994. They offer curriculum from Preschool to High School. They offer several subjects like language arts, Latin, science, history, geography, full grade sets, and many more subjects. This is an amazing Classical Christian homeschool curriculum.
I felt like I was stepping out of my comfort zone in my homeschool trying these Classical Composition Sets. I’m glad I did because sometimes the thing you don’t think you need ends up being exactly what you needed. The Classical Composition sets are based off the Greek progynasmata approach of teaching. The teaching was used in schools some 1,500 years ago. It created some great teachers and speakers throughout history. The progynasmata approach to learning helped many well-known men to be proficient speakers and men that have stood out throughout history.
If I had to give a brief description of what Classical Composition is, it would be, “You are taking a story and reconstructing it in your own words.” You are still keeping the main context of the story but, are re-working the story in your own words. This is nice if you have a student that complains about not knowing what to write about when you hand them a piece of paper.
Classical Composition Accelerated I: Lesson Plans
This comes in both a digital and print format. It’s only 9 pages but covers both the Fable and Narrative Stage schedule. The Fable and the Narrative are laid out in their own separate schedule. It’s broken down Monday through Friday and then by week. The Fable Stage is 18 weeks and the Narrative Stage is 16 weeks. Doing both of them is a total of 34 weeks in all. The schedule plan clearly states what you are doing and gives you a place to mark it off when you’ve completed the lesson. If you’re not doing this as an accelerated pace you can purchase the Classical Composition schedule for each individual set.
Memoria Press is a family run business for Classical Curriculum since 1994. They offer curriculum from Preschool to High School. They offer several subjects like language arts, Latin, science, history, geography, full grade sets, and many more subjects. This is an amazing Classical Christian homeschool curriculum.
I felt like I was stepping out of my comfort zone in my homeschool trying these Classical Composition Sets. I’m glad I did because sometimes the thing you don’t think you need ends up being exactly what you needed. The Classical Composition sets are based off the Greek progynasmata approach of teaching. The teaching was used in schools some 1,500 years ago. It created some great teachers and speakers throughout history. The progynasmata approach to learning helped many well-known men to be proficient speakers and men that have stood out throughout history.
If I had to give a brief description of what Classical Composition is, it would be, “You are taking a story and reconstructing it in your own words.” You are still keeping the main context of the story but, are re-working the story in your own words. This is nice if you have a student that complains about not knowing what to write about when you hand them a piece of paper.
Classical Composition Accelerated I: Lesson Plans
This comes in both a digital and print format. It’s only 9 pages but covers both the Fable and Narrative Stage schedule. The Fable and the Narrative are laid out in their own separate schedule. It’s broken down Monday through Friday and then by week. The Fable Stage is 18 weeks and the Narrative Stage is 16 weeks. Doing both of them is a total of 34 weeks in all. The schedule plan clearly states what you are doing and gives you a place to mark it off when you’ve completed the lesson. If you’re not doing this as an accelerated pace you can purchase the Classical Composition schedule for each individual set.
Classical Composition I: Fable Set
My son enjoys reading fables; I wasn’t sure how he was going to react to this program. I knew that it would be challenging and if your son is like mine he doesn’t enjoy writing that much.
For the Classical Composition I: Fable Set I received the Student Book, Teacher Guide, and the Instructional
DVD.
In the Fable Stage you are looking at the fables by using the words in the story differently but, still holding true to the message of the fable to draw out the main point of the fable. You will be going over 20 of Aesop's Fables.
Instructional DVD
There are 4 DVD’s in this set. The instructor on the DVD is Dr. Brett Vaden. The DVD is optional to use and the same material is in the Teachers Guide. However, I believe that the DVD is worth the investment. The teaching is clearly taught and presented nicely and easy to comprehend. It tells you when you need to pause and work on your workbook. I don’t feel that the DVD should replace you as a parent helping your student. Some students may thrive on the DVD and be able to work independently after some guidance after a few lessons. As a parent I think it would be more beneficial to help them at first to develop their own narratives and paraphrases.
Teacher Guide
The Teacher Guide is a spiral bound book. My favorite as you don’t have to fight keeping the book open. The Teacher Guide is essential to properly teach your student the curriculum.
In the front of the book is a grading rubric that is broken down in six parts: Handwriting, Basic Mechanics, Content, Style, Amplification, and Optional Grammar Requirements. The rubric also breaks down grading points for that would be essential for different grades.
The introduction explains the reasoning behind its method. I really appreciated the “Definition of Terms” that breaks down each phase of the writing process in the set along with some other terms in the workbook.
The Teacher Guide mirrors the Student Book with showing you what the student page looks like along with the answers. There are several features in the Teachers Guide that I really appreciate. The vocabulary used in the book has the meaning along with an example. It tells you what to say to your student. It does a real good job making you feel confident as the teacher.
The Appendix is where you find, “Figures of Description with Examples. There is an article on “Introduction to the Progymnasmata.”
Student Book
Student Book is also a spiral bound book. It has some of the same features that the Teacher Guide does with explaining the process and “Definition of Terms” The story is in the Student book for you to read. There are twenty lessons in all.
My son enjoys reading fables; I wasn’t sure how he was going to react to this program. I knew that it would be challenging and if your son is like mine he doesn’t enjoy writing that much.
In the Fable Stage you are looking at the fables by using the words in the story differently but, still holding true to the message of the fable to draw out the main point of the fable. You will be going over 20 of Aesop's Fables.
Instructional DVD
There are 4 DVD’s in this set. The instructor on the DVD is Dr. Brett Vaden. The DVD is optional to use and the same material is in the Teachers Guide. However, I believe that the DVD is worth the investment. The teaching is clearly taught and presented nicely and easy to comprehend. It tells you when you need to pause and work on your workbook. I don’t feel that the DVD should replace you as a parent helping your student. Some students may thrive on the DVD and be able to work independently after some guidance after a few lessons. As a parent I think it would be more beneficial to help them at first to develop their own narratives and paraphrases.
Teacher Guide
The Teacher Guide is a spiral bound book. My favorite as you don’t have to fight keeping the book open. The Teacher Guide is essential to properly teach your student the curriculum.
In the front of the book is a grading rubric that is broken down in six parts: Handwriting, Basic Mechanics, Content, Style, Amplification, and Optional Grammar Requirements. The rubric also breaks down grading points for that would be essential for different grades.
The introduction explains the reasoning behind its method. I really appreciated the “Definition of Terms” that breaks down each phase of the writing process in the set along with some other terms in the workbook.
The Teacher Guide mirrors the Student Book with showing you what the student page looks like along with the answers. There are several features in the Teachers Guide that I really appreciate. The vocabulary used in the book has the meaning along with an example. It tells you what to say to your student. It does a real good job making you feel confident as the teacher.
The Appendix is where you find, “Figures of Description with Examples. There is an article on “Introduction to the Progymnasmata.”
Student Book
Student Book is also a spiral bound book. It has some of the same features that the Teacher Guide does with explaining the process and “Definition of Terms” The story is in the Student book for you to read. There are twenty lessons in all.
So what does a typical lesson entail? Each lesson is meant to be used over a two week time period. We followed the Accelerated schedule from our schedule but used both programs simultaneously.
Day 1: Fable-You start out by reading Aesop’s Fable out loud together. We would go over the vocabulary to make sure he comprehends the words. Write down examples of recognition, reversal, and suffering in the workbook. He would then highlight examples of recognition. Reversals will happen in each fable once. You may need to lead them to the correct reversal. This was the hardest for my son to identify. Suffering was by far the easiest to find as he had to identify physical and emotional suffering in the fable.
Day 2: Variations Part I-Sentences are given and my son has to come up with several synonyms for the words in the sentences. He would work with paraphrasing with words and sentences. He would look for three to four words from a sentence. Which may be difficult and you may need a dictionary or thesaurus to aid in this process. After he established the words he would rewrite the sentences.
Day 3: Outline the fable. My son would create an outline in the student book for the fable. (The Teacher Guide has an example outline for your reference.)
Day 4: Narration-from your paraphrasing and not the original fable. You can choose whether to have the student do this orally or written. Afterwards you can revisit the original fable and make correction. We usually did it orally.
Day 5: Correct and Improve -the student’s narration. Since we do it orally, there is nothing to correct as we talked about the correction. This gave us a chance to catch up doing both programs at once also.
Day 6: Paraphrase 1. Little Man would refer back to his outline and write out the description in a sentence format.
Day 7: Paraphrase 2. You rewrite the fable, but this time you will be starting from the end and writing it backwards. My son didn’t like this so I let him write it the other way. This was confusing to him. He would tell me orally the story backwards.
Day 8: Variations Part 2. This day he changes the words in two sentences and rewrites the sentences in different ways.
Day 9: Final Draft. Little Man then picks out one of his paraphrase to write neatly on separate paper.
Day 10: If the final draft had errors, it will need to be rewritten. We didn’t do this since we had two going at once. I would mark the paper and we would talk about it. If we just where doing one at a time I would have had him do this.
Classical Composition II: Narrative Set
The Narrative set you are introducing your student to some masters of stories, speaking and writing throughout history like quotes from William Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, and even the great Master Himself from the scriptures.
You may be
wondering what the differences between the Fables Stage and the Narrative
Stage? One thing my son picked up was that it’s the source of writings from the
Bible, mythology, and stories throughout history. Since the sources aren’t just
fables it’s a bit more challenging than the fables. The Fable Stage you
identify three elements (Recognition, reversal, and suffering.) Now you are
adding some more elements to identify with a total of nine elements to create
your unique narrative story. The Narratives are also a bit longer than the
Fables also and a bit more complex than the Fables. Fables your building your
writing style while with the Narrative Stage you are more engaged in in
learning how to convey the story using written communication.There are a few components different within the paraphrasing and variation that give this a bit more complexity.
For the Classical Composition II: Narrative Set I received the Student Book, Teacher Guide, and the Instructional DVD.
Instructional DVD
The lessons are taught also by Dr. Brett Vaden. There are 6 DVD’s in this set. I really like the DVD’s using them with the set. They are a nice addition to enhance your study.
Teacher Guide
The layout is similar to the Fable Teacher Guide and has all the same features. This is also a spiral bound workbook. I’d like to stress again that I feel that this is essential to teach the program.
The Appendix is basically the same format as the Fable Teacher Guide. The grading rubrics are in the back of the book rather than the beginning of it, “Figures of Description with Examples, and your “Introduction to the Progymnasmata.” A feature that is added to this Teacher Guide is that it has a “Figures of Description with Examples” which is a nice reference with gives you some helpful examples to refer to.
Student Book
Without sounding repetitive with the day to day schedule I’m going to go talk about the differences of the lesson between the Fable and Narrative. The layout and style of the workbook is basically the same as the Fable Set. There are 20 lesson in all.
Instead of indentifying the three components like you would in the Fable Stage (Recognition, Reversal, and Suffering.)You have nine Components for the Narration Stage-You are looking for Recognition, Reversal, Suffering, Agents, Action, Time, Place, Manner, and Cause. The stories start out smaller and become more advanced throughout the workbook. You are still working on your assignment using an outline, paraphrasing, variations, and a final draft.
How did I use these in my homeschool?
These programs I have been using with my 7th grade son who is 12 years old. We have been doing this at an accelerated pace. For most if you choose the accelerated pace you start out with the Fable Stage and work through it for 18 weeks and then you transition into the Narrative Stage. For the purpose of this review we worked on both stages for the last several weeks.
For the first two weeks I decided to just do the Fable Stage and lesson 1 to get ourselves comfortable with the format doing a complete lesson. Each lesson began with watching a video. I would follow along in the Teacher’s Guide with him. After my son got a feel of what was expected of him he was ready to add on the Narrative Stage. He started out working on both stages the same day. He found that the Narrative Stage got a bit more complex after a few lessons and decided that one day he would work on the Fables and the next day he went to the Narrative. Overall, my son spent anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour on a lesson depending on what the lesson entailed.
My son didn’t care for the pace we did this in. After I told him that this isn’t the normal schedule to work them one after another he relaxed. He liked the Fable Stage the most during this. He already understood prior how to make an outline and how to change up words while writing a story. I think doing them both at once made him feel a bit overwhelmed some days.
I really appreciate how well Memoria Press has laid out these programs. It is
repetitive and that isn’t a bad thing overall. Some kids may not enjoy that it
is repetitive. It does require a lot of writing.
My son said, “I don’t want to do both together.” “It is a bit challenging that way." "I think that the Fable one is my favorite.” “Finding the nine components in the Narrative Stage was hard with some of them.” He told me that he wouldn’t mind doing one at a time next year for school.” Once he finishes the Fable Stage he won’t have any problems transitioning into the Narrative Stage.
I would say that this was a surprising hit in our homeschool with my son who doesn't like to write!
Memoria Press has some other great products: New American Cursive 1, New American Cursive 2 (Scripture), New American Cursive 2 (Famous Americans), New American Cursive 3 (Famous Quotes), Traditional Logic I Complete Set, and Traditional Logic II Complete Set.
Social Media:
The Narrative set you are introducing your student to some masters of stories, speaking and writing throughout history like quotes from William Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, and even the great Master Himself from the scriptures.
For the Classical Composition II: Narrative Set I received the Student Book, Teacher Guide, and the Instructional DVD.
Instructional DVD
The lessons are taught also by Dr. Brett Vaden. There are 6 DVD’s in this set. I really like the DVD’s using them with the set. They are a nice addition to enhance your study.
Teacher Guide
The layout is similar to the Fable Teacher Guide and has all the same features. This is also a spiral bound workbook. I’d like to stress again that I feel that this is essential to teach the program.
The Appendix is basically the same format as the Fable Teacher Guide. The grading rubrics are in the back of the book rather than the beginning of it, “Figures of Description with Examples, and your “Introduction to the Progymnasmata.” A feature that is added to this Teacher Guide is that it has a “Figures of Description with Examples” which is a nice reference with gives you some helpful examples to refer to.
Student Book
Without sounding repetitive with the day to day schedule I’m going to go talk about the differences of the lesson between the Fable and Narrative. The layout and style of the workbook is basically the same as the Fable Set. There are 20 lesson in all.
Instead of indentifying the three components like you would in the Fable Stage (Recognition, Reversal, and Suffering.)You have nine Components for the Narration Stage-You are looking for Recognition, Reversal, Suffering, Agents, Action, Time, Place, Manner, and Cause. The stories start out smaller and become more advanced throughout the workbook. You are still working on your assignment using an outline, paraphrasing, variations, and a final draft.
How did I use these in my homeschool?
These programs I have been using with my 7th grade son who is 12 years old. We have been doing this at an accelerated pace. For most if you choose the accelerated pace you start out with the Fable Stage and work through it for 18 weeks and then you transition into the Narrative Stage. For the purpose of this review we worked on both stages for the last several weeks.
For the first two weeks I decided to just do the Fable Stage and lesson 1 to get ourselves comfortable with the format doing a complete lesson. Each lesson began with watching a video. I would follow along in the Teacher’s Guide with him. After my son got a feel of what was expected of him he was ready to add on the Narrative Stage. He started out working on both stages the same day. He found that the Narrative Stage got a bit more complex after a few lessons and decided that one day he would work on the Fables and the next day he went to the Narrative. Overall, my son spent anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour on a lesson depending on what the lesson entailed.
My son didn’t care for the pace we did this in. After I told him that this isn’t the normal schedule to work them one after another he relaxed. He liked the Fable Stage the most during this. He already understood prior how to make an outline and how to change up words while writing a story. I think doing them both at once made him feel a bit overwhelmed some days.
My son said, “I don’t want to do both together.” “It is a bit challenging that way." "I think that the Fable one is my favorite.” “Finding the nine components in the Narrative Stage was hard with some of them.” He told me that he wouldn’t mind doing one at a time next year for school.” Once he finishes the Fable Stage he won’t have any problems transitioning into the Narrative Stage.
I would say that this was a surprising hit in our homeschool with my son who doesn't like to write!
Memoria Press has some other great products: New American Cursive 1, New American Cursive 2 (Scripture), New American Cursive 2 (Famous Americans), New American Cursive 3 (Famous Quotes), Traditional Logic I Complete Set, and Traditional Logic II Complete Set.
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Other members of the Homeschool Review Crew are reviewing different items from Memoria Press so stop by and see what they have to say.
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