CiRCE Academy-Lost Tools of Writing

[retiredHSmom]

Has anyone had a child take this class?  Did you like it?  What where the time expectations each week? Are there any teachers to be avoided or one who is especially good?  My son hates writing and I am hoping that this class will help him figure out what to write.

Edited July 13, 2017 by Tania

[TarynB]

My son just finished taking LToW1 with Circe (2016-17). Renee Mathis was his instructor. I'd definitely recommend her based on our experience. (Camille Goldston is another instructor who has had positive reviews here on the board.)

 

Mrs. Mathis is kind and encouraging, with excellent control of her classroom, high standards for her students to meet, and a gift for imparting appropriate tools to her students so they can meet those standards.

 

Her students base their essays on "should" questions derived from books they've read, i.e., should X have done Y? She requires the books be good, classic books, from a list that she provides or other books that are approved by her in advance. (anything by Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, Jack London,Shakespeare, Hemingway, etc.; books like To Kill a Mockingbird, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Red Badge of Courage, The Hiding Place, Redwall series, Scarlett Letter, etc.)

 

I'm going to copy here some info that I posted on another thread a few months ago - parts of it won't apply to your situation though so just skip those (http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/643577-time-required-for-lost-tools-of-writing-or-writing-with-skill-level-3/):

 

My 9th grade son is taking Lost Tools of Writing 1 online in a live class through Circe Institute this year. The live class is one day per week for 60 minutes. For about the first half of the first semester, he spent an average of around 45 minutes to 60 minutes per week on the assignments outside of class. It was not very time-intensive. By December, the time required went up to around 60-90 minutes outside of class, most weeks, but sometimes less depending on where they were at in the essay-writing "cycle". Now that the second semester is almost over, he's spending around 2.5 hours per week on the assignments. He typically does the assignments over one to two days per week.

 

So it has been a very gradual ramping up in time spent, and not overly taxing at all. (Granted, I'm not the one teaching it, but I don't see why it would take a high schooler longer than a year to get through LTOW1.)

 

FWIW, DS is doing well in the class - his teacher has consistently provided meaningful and positive feedback about his work, so even though he still doesn't spend more than 3 to 3.5 hours per week (including the live lectures) at this point in the year, I don't think he's slacking.  : )

 

After the first semester, realizing that DS could easily handle more writing instruction/practice, we enrolled him in an additional composition class that covers other types of academic writing and he's had no problem at all keeping up with both writing classes, plus a lit class, during his scheduled block of time for "English" each week. So I think if you wanted to supplement LTOW1 with parts of another writing program in the same year that would be do-able.

 

LTOW1 teaches persuasive writing, of the writer's own thoughts (as opposed to researching and paraphrasing or quoting another author's thoughts). And it really is just as much a system for teaching deep thinking, and constructing and defending an argument, as it is a writing program. We'll be moving on next year and not taking LTOW level 2, but I'm happy with the deep thinking and writing invention skills he's learned with LTOW1. Next year we'll be focusing more on polishing his essay skills (because they can always be improved) and writing research papers. Literary analysis will also be another area to continue to work on.

 

 

Also, some other pertinent details that I gleaned and saved during my research prior to enrolling, that I found to be accurate in our experience:

 

Post #65 in this thread: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/515067-the-aops-of-writing/page-2

 

 

From your signature, it appears your son is 17 . . . would it bother him to be in a classroom of mostly 9th and 10th graders? (My son said that kids' ages didn't really come up much, but still.) And what writing program/curricula has he done in the past? LToW can seem overly simplistic until you get further into it. So I wonder if LToW might seem too basic to him at his age? Just something to think about. I do feel it is a great curriculum for teaching how to generate ideas of what to write about, which can be applied to any type of writing, which seems to be what you're looking for. HTH.

 

 

Edited July 13, 2017 by TarynB