News

11/21/09 Tutoring is now available online with the use of Skype.  We have several experienced tutors for Classical Composition lessons who will set up schedules for you depending upon your particular situation.  These will normally be for one hour, one to five times a week.  The cost is $25/hr.  Please email us to set up your tutoring.

8/10/09 I will be at Tall Oaks Academy until Friday 8/14 so order received between now and then will be shipped on Friday or Saturday. Thank you for your patience.

8/04/09 We have updated and remodeled our website and are working through the details at this point. Please let us know if you find broken links or errors.

6/28/06  I will be on vacation starting tomorrow and will not be back until July 10th.  I will fill all orders the week of July 10th.  If you are interested in a summer workshop in KC the dates are as follows: The one day workshop will be July 31st, the three day July 24th-26th, and the five day July 17th-21st.  All workshops will run from 9-3 and be held at Whitefield Academy.  Email me at jimselby@everestkc.net if you plan to attend.
 

6/12/06 With the exception of one senior who did not realize he needed to sign up specifically for the essay portion the entire senior class qualified with their essays.  The scoring assessed by two graders giving scores from 0-6 with 6 being a perfect score.  A total score of 8 is needed to earn a qualifying mark.  For the writing section 100% of our seniors taking the test (the senior who did not take the test did not realize he needed to sign up for it separately) qualified for writing. This compares to a local, well-regarded school district who had only 51% of their students who took the test qualify! Both the ACT and the SAT have begun to assess the writing abilities of graduating high school seniors due the high percentage of college students enrolled in remedial writing classes. Essays are scored from 1-6 with a 4 demonstrating competency. For more details click here.

Two readers read the essays and their combined score gives the student a score
from 0-12.

These remarkable results are a testament to the hard work of our students and a curriculum that ensures if a student works diligently they will be successful in their education. The combination of our writing program (the Progymnasmata 4th -9th), which includes three years of Rhetoric (Advanced Communication Skills 10th-12th), and our reading program (the Great Books approach) is achieving our desired goal of 100% success for our graduating seniors.
 

3/13/06    Due to the confusion of distinguishing between the figures of description Dialogismus and Sermocinatio we will begin revising the curriculum to eliminate Sermocinatio and replace where it appears in the exercises with Dialogismus.

7/10/04 Whitefield Academy’s seventh, ninth, tenth and eleventh grade class scored exceptionally well on standardized testing for writing ability.  (The eighth and twelfth grades at Whitefield did not take specific standardized writing tests this year.  Beginning next year all grades through the eleventh will be tested specifically for writing).  All these grade levels were on an accelerated timetable for completing the Progymnasmata.  The eleventh grade had completed the program in two years while the seventh through tenth grade had completed most of the program in three years. In the fall the tenth and eleventh grade took the PSAT.  The eleventh grade consisted of a class of five and had two students score in the top 1% nationally for writing skills.  The tenth grade consisted of a class of sixteen and had nine students in the top 10% nationally with two in the top 1% nationally for writing skills.

In the spring our seventh and ninth grade took the ERB CPT4.  The seventh grade consisted of sixteen students and the ninth grade consisted of thirteen students.  The ERB tested for Writing Mechanics and Writing Concepts and Skills.*  (The explanation of these categories is directly below).  For Writing Mechanics the seventh grade had twelve students in the top 12% nationally, eleven of these were in the top 7%, nine of them were in the top 4% and five were in the top 1% nationally.  For Writing Concepts and Skills the class had ten students in the top 20% nationally, six of these were in the top 10%, three of them were in the top 5% and one was in the top 1% nationally.

For Writing Mechanics the thirteen ninth graders had all thirteen students in the top 20% nationally, twelve of these were in the top 9%, eight of them were in the top 3% and six were in the top 1% nationally.  For Writing Concepts and Skills the class had ten students in the top 20% nationally, seven of these were in the top 7%, six of them were in the top 4% and three were in the top 1% nationally. 

*Writing Mechanics consists of two major categories that include I. Spelling, Caps and Punctuation; and II. Usage. Under the Spelling, Caps and Punctuation category students are tested in five specific areas that include 1) Recognizing misspellings of commonly used words; 2) Recognizing errors in capitalization; 3) Recognizing errors in punctuation for dialogue, quotations, titles, and possessive forms; 4) Understanding the correct use of the comma, semicolon, and colon; and 5) Recognizing sentences in which all elements are correct. 

Under Usage students are tested in six specific areas that include 1) Recognizing errors and effective expression at the sentence level, including sentence-boundary and modification errors; 2) Identifying sentence types, including simple, compound, and complex; 3) Recognizing errors in verb from and tense, including problems with subject-verb agreement and parallelism; 4) Recognizing appropriate transitions between sentences or ideas; 5) Recognizing errors in diction; and 6) recognizing sentences in which all elements are correct.

Writing Concepts and Skills consists of four major categories that include: I. Organization; II. Purpose, Audience, and Focus; III. Supporting Details; and IV. Style and Craft.  Under the Organization category students are tested in four specific areas that include 1) Recognizing effective and logical organization in a piece of writing; 2) Understanding and recognizing various organizational strategies; 3) Identifying thesis statements, topic sentences, and conclusions; and 4) Recognizing effective transition between ideas, sentences and paragraphs.

Under Purpose, Audience, and Focus students are tested in two specific areas that include 1) Recognizing the role of the audience within varying contexts and draws logical conclusions about the intended audience for a given passage; and 2) Understanding how the purpose for and focus of a piece of writing help determine the kind of information included and the style and tone of the piece.

Under Supporting Details students are tested in three specific areas that include 1) Drawing conclusions based on supporting details in a passage or determining their stated or implied purpose within the context of the passage; and 2) Making judgments about the relative importance of supporting details to the passage as a whole; and 3) Recognizing effective and relevant details to support points make in a piece of writing.

Under Style and Craft students are tested in two specific areas that include 1) Identifying rhetorical features that contribute to the overall precision and style of a piece of writing; and 2) Identifying the author’s tone or voice in a piece of writing.