Our Educational Model
The educational model in place at Chrysostom Classical Academy (CCA) engages a child in consonance with his frame. With a proper understanding of the Trivium, tutors can engage students by tapping into their God-given, innate abilities.
The Trivium embraces the three stages of student development; Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. Implicit in the educational traditions of Ancient Greece, the term itself was not coined until the mid 8th to 9th century. The Trivium is a part of the larger education model of the Liberal Arts and is appropriately placed in the K-12th years in Classical Schools. At Chrysostom we tutor according to the pedagogical guidelines of the Grammar and Logic arenas.
The Grammar Stage comprising of grades Kindergarten through 5th is not complex. During this time children are naturally curious, observing everything around them. Their ability to memorize is, simply put, astounding! By employing these observation and memorization tendencies your child will store up dates, Scriptures, grammar, mathematical facts, definitions, phonograms, Latin stems, etc.
At CCA, Primary Latin is introduced during the Grammar Stage. Thanks to their inquisitive disposition, children are open to language and don’t balk at the notion of rolling their tongues and experimenting with perfunctory sounds once encountered in another language. As Dorothy Sayers emphasizes, “The chanting of “amo, amas, amat” is as ritually agreeable to the feelings as the chanting of “eeny, meeny, miney, mo.”
As parents, expect individual and group recitations to be habitually practiced. Out of the overflow of this discipline, students will perform masterfully during speech meets and in class orations. This creates the foundation for the Logic and Rhetoric Stages.
Entering in 6th grade students begin what is known as the Logic Stage. In literature studies, students will advance from narratives and simple poetry to essays, while trying their hand at writing by forming critiques and arguments of their own. Speech Meet requirements become complex with dramatic recitations, essays, and debates performed. In the Logic arena, Mathematics transition from simple multiplication to more difficult algebraic formulae. In conjunction with the complication of literature and math, students will begin to formulate arguments of their own through the study of Logic itself and the rules of Rhetoric. Their Latin continues, and is strengthened by relying on the tools of memorization and recitation previously solidified in the Grammar Stage.
In essence, we must provide our children with the necessary armor to go out into the world. We believe this is best done through the use of the Trivium model. By understanding the frame of your child and the intricate design in which God has created him, you will see him thrive and conquer in his natural environment.
“For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.”
