Please purchase ONE registration for ALL of the Schola Alta (7th-12th grade) Lit/Comp I students in your family.

Please Note: This NON-REFUNDABLE registration does not guarantee enrollment in a licensed Aquinas Learning Center. Please contact your director to apply and pay center tuition for a seat in her classroom.

This registration provides one family with unlimited access to our Cycle 1 Lit/Comp I Course for one school year, in addition to continuing education for primary educators, a private forum for member families, and exclusive discounts for the purchase of partner materials.

The Aquinas Learning Literature and Composition Lost Tools of Writing I Class or Lit/Comp SA I brings students together to socratically discuss literature and poetry as well as learn the art of writing.

The focus in Literature will be on reading, identifying, and discussing the major themes of the books we will be reading, annotating for literary tools and devices, and most importantly, discussing the ethics of choices made by the characters in a story – always pulling out from a story the questions of whether or not protagonists in the story “should have” or “should not have” acted in a certain way. Students will be expected to annotate their books and also to keep a florilegium (journal of beautiful flowers) where they will rewrite beautiful quotations and phrases from the books they read.

Students will read Gilgamesh the Hero (McCaughrean), Tirzah (Travis), Tales of Ancient Egypt (Green), The Odyssey (Homer, Fagles tr.), Galen and the Gateway to Medicine (Bendick), The Eagle of the Ninth (Sutcliff), Saint Helena and the True Cross (De Wohl), and Julius Caesar (Shakespeare), "Horatius at the Bridge (Macaulay), “Ozymandias” (Shelley), and “Power of Love” (from Antigone by Sophocles).

In Composition, students will be using Lost Tools of Writing I to practice and develop skills in Invention, Arrangement, and Elocution for thinking about and writing a persuasive essay. After having drilled IEW’s “dress-ups” in the Prima years, Alta I students will practice using these elements of style appropriately in their writing. Additionally, students will learn new elements of style to apply to persuasive essays (Lit/Comp I), expository essays (History), and saint biographies (Catechism). Practicing grammar at the “point of need,” students will revise rough drafts edited by their parents and final drafts edited by their mentors.

Please note: This registration does not include the cost of materials or the cost of tuition paid to an independently owned and operated center using the AL curriculum.

Shortly after completing registration, member families will receive a getting started guide with instructions for ordering materials with members-only discount codes and access to the Lit/Comp I course site. Full course materials will be uploaded and launched a couple of months before the start of the school year.