Throughout your career as a homeschooling teacher, you need to assess your child’s mastery of the three skills of the classical trivium (language, thought, and speech) so that you can make necessary adjustments to your customized homeschool curriculum. Weaker areas need more time while skills that have been substantially mastered are checked off the to-do list. Let’s look at the race car analogy again.
The Vehicle
An Indy Car driver does not learn to drive in an expensive race car. He probably drove his Daddy’s tractor, dirt bike, or old beat up Chevy around the farm before he was invited to drive a million dollar vehicle. Simple concepts precede complex concepts.
We use different vehicles for different purposes. Indy Cars are made to travel on a wide oval track, Formula One cars travel on tight European city streets, and good ‘ole boy stock cars are made for intentional frequent crashes! Mountain bikes have fat tires forscaling rocky uphill terrain. Racing cycles are lightweight with thin tires for speed and manueverability on pavement. Gargantuan cruise ships carry loads of vacationers while shrimp boats are perfect for fishing and hauling seafood. So, too, there are different purposes and rules for using language, thinking critically, and communicating effectively. Whether you are transitioning to authentic classical homeschooling from the public school paradigm or just beginning the homeschooling journey, you need to decide what basic rules of operation you want to teach your child for each particular skill.
What content will you teach your children?
Now if you were expecting me to lay out a full “scope and sequence” for teaching the trivium, I’m sorry to disappoint you. When I go to home school curriculum fairs and see the words “scope and sequence,” my eyes glaze over, and my brain goes numb. In my opinion, scope and sequence is a phrase invented by professional educators to intimidate home school parents into thinking they need experts to tell them what’s best for their children!
Besides, anyone who tells you what to teach by grade level is advocating a public school model, not a classical model. Remember you just need to focus on the big picture: teach three skills! You don’t need a 12 year plan, and in fact, you need frequent pit stops to reevaluate progress, so I suggest you develop a short-term home school curriculum. Personally, I like to reevaluate progress about every 10 to 12 weeks, and I always end up adjusting the course as a result to better meet my goals.
The Skills
In my experience, there are six specific language abilities that every literate home school scholar needs to master: (1) how to read, (2) how to spell, (3) how to write, (4) how to punctuate and capitalize, (5) how to use proper grammar, and (6) how to decipher unfamiliar vocabulary. Use my Road Map to Mastery of Reading Skills to add or subtract content from your personalized homeschool curriculum.
Seven primary thinking abilities require mastery by the literate home school child including (1) how to arrange data according to systems, (2) how to solve problems, (3) how to structure and analyze arguments, (4) how to use the scientific method, (5) how to analyze literature, (6) how to research a topic, and (7) how to listen. My Road Map to Mastery of Thinking Skills will help you decide on appropriate content for the thinking portion of your personalized homeschool curriculum.
Finally, I believe there are five communication skills, both oral and written, hat every literate homeschooled child needs to master before moving on to the Socratic Paideia of the high school years: (1) how to maintain a conversation, (2) how to write a paragraph, (3) how to take notes, (4) how to write advanced compositions, and (5) how to give a speech. Adjust your custom homeschool curriculum by using my Road Map to Mastery of Speaking Skills.
Teaching Variety
Each homeschooling family will teach content differently. Let’s take an example. Learning how to research and develop arguments are two components of critical thinking. These skills can be taught in various ways. For instance, my husband, David, is an attorney who often finds himself before a federal judge. Learning how to research and debate a national or international resolution meets my husband’s criteria for teaching research skills, developing an argument, listening well, and giving a speech. Consequently, participation in our local debate club is mandatory for the Lockman kids! Whereas, your husband may be an engineer who believes research is best learned in a lab setting and communicated in a research paper. Tailor the content and methods to best meet your family’s abilities and preferences. Your personalized homeschool curriculum will uniquely meet the needs of each child unlike the canned curriculums that you find with homeschool vendors.
This is so helpful! I love how it’s “at-a-glance” and categorized very simply. Thank you!!
Thanks so much for your encouragement, Christie!
Diane
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