MCT LEVEL 4 Complete Homeschool Package - Package by Royal Fireworks Press

This is the first of our middle and secondary level, vocabulary-building, curriculum that is complex, demanding, erudite and witty. It provides internalized, maximum, meaningful, impact at the time students take SSATs and SATs. It is a program that heavily uses etymology, not memorization. Words are presented as a system of thinking, a way of building, analyzing, spelling, pronouncing, using and choosing words. The beauty of this approach is that students will know far more than the list of words encountered in this course, the tens of thousands of words which are not listed, but which are expressions of the system.

Lessons are intended as a weekly effort; all the succeeding volumes build on a cumulative basis from Volume I. Every test reinforces every list. Through constant review, ever increasing familiarity is built. This is a tremendously wonderful undertaking that combines learning and fun.

Volume I covers lessons 1-30 with 500 word stems, both Greek and Latin, followed by 250 words made of those stems. The term "stem" includes all word pieces: prefixes, suffixes, and roots.

Lessons include: Stems List; Sentence Page designed to show how example words should be used; nalogies Page which promotes thinking and prepares students for SSAT's and SAT's; Mystery Spelling and Mystery Questions to show and to practice how it is not just the word one studies that one knows; Notes Page or Stem Close-up that takes a closer look at the list of stems and highlights special points or adds information; Ideas that expand the brain's contact with the stems through activities of synthesis, divergence, analysis, evaluation, intuition, emotion and esthetics; Inventions that give the opportunity to create words just as scientists, writers and others do; and Flip Side Tests which give the definition and ask the term.

Excellent for preparing students for SAT’s and SSAT’s

Here is a vocabulary building curriculum like no other. It is a system which heavily uses etymology not memorization. Words are presented as a system of thinking, a way of building, analyzing, spelling, pronouncing, using and choosing words. The beauty of this approach is that the student knows far more than the list of words encountered in this course; he or she knows the tens of thousands of words which are not listed, but which are expressions of the system.

This vocabulary study is intended as a weekly effort, built on a cumulative basis. Every test reinforces every list. Through constant review, ever increasing familiarity is built. This is a tremendously wonderful undertaking that combines learning and fun for the students.

There are 30 lessons covering 500 stems, both Greek and Latin, followed by 250 words made of those stems. (The term “stems” includes all word pieces: prefixes, suffixes, and roots.) Each lesson’s makeup includes: a Stems List; a Sentence Page which is designed to show how example words should be used; an Analogies Page which promotes thinking and prepares students for SSAT’s and SAT’s; Mystery Spelling and Mystery Questions pages designed to be enjoyable activities to show and to practice that it is not just the word one studies that one knows; a Notes Page or Stem Close-up Page that takes a closer look at the list of stems and highlights special points or adds information; an Ideas Page that expands the brain’s contact with the stems through activities of synthesis, divergence, analysis, evaluation, intuition, emotion and esthetics; an Inventions Page that gives the student the opportunity to create words just as scientists, writers and others do; and Flip Side Tests which give the definition and ask the term.

We are very proud of this complex, demanding, erudite and witty curriculum.

This book supplements the Student Manual. It does not replace it.

This volume develops and expands the program even further and is built on a theme of understanding humanity and our existence. It shows how poets push language to its maximum in order to express those things about humanity that are most true, or difficult or subtle. Longer and more challenging poems are used as examples.

Topics included in the previous volumes are also here, but in more detail, also in addition:

Advanced Rhymes: half-double rhyme, elided rhyme, amphisbaenic rhyme, reverse rhyme, half-rhyme.

Advanced meter from monometer to octameter.

Stanza: heroic couplet, terza rima, villanelle, quintet, sestet, octet, submerged sonnet.

Figures of speech: metonymy, synecdoche, oxymoron.

Poets quoted include:Thomas Hardy, William Blake, William Shakespeare, Henry Longfellow, Algernon Swinburne, W B Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Lewis Carroll, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Burns, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Shelley, William Cowper, WS Gilbert, Thomas Wyatt, William Wordsworth, G J Chesterton.

Sample pages (pdf files): Table of Contents | page 5 |  page 47

 sample page (pdf file)

This is the homeschool parent's manual to accompany the new, Third Edition of Volume One Magic Lens, launched March 2011. It is now entirely based on four-level sentence analysis. This book is in black and white, whilst the student book is full-color throughout.

Grammar is an easily teachable subject because its concepts are so few and well defined and there are only forty or so terms to grasp to understand the elements of basic grammar.

It is the fundamental starting point for the MCT Curriculum which recommends front-loading language arts teaching with grammar. Then Vocabulary and Writing and Poetics can be added once the student has grasped the basics: Parts of speech, Parts of the sentence, Phrases, and Clauses.

This book accompanies the Student Manual (Order Code: 7901). It does not replace it. Homeschoolers need both.

The 4Practice1 Workbook provides an extra 100 practice sentences for four-level analysis.

The CD of 'Loops" is an optional extra for those who wish even more practice.

The upper grades of Practice Sentences make a breath-taking addition to the Language Arts Curriculum by Michael Clay Thompson.

The huge innovation is the extension of the method of four-level analysis, beyond grammar to vocabulary, poetics and writing. For this reason the advanced level volumes have been titled 4Practice. The intellectual demands are, of course rigorous, but what makes them so pedagogically compelling is their breadth of reference.

In 4Practice Volume I, Michael Thompson has produced 100 sentences about the ancient world of the Greeks and Romans. Each sentence uses vocabulary from Word within the Word I, complements the grammar learned in Magic Lens I and the poetic devices studied in Poetry and Humanity. Each sentence challenges students on points of grammar, vocabulary, poetics and writing, and the content of many sentences will propel students to reference works to understand the context. The focus on the ancient world emphasizes the importance of classical Greek and Latin to modern English.

The practice books have fully-annotated Teacher Manuals with the correct answers filled in and comments on the sentences.

The Teacher Manuala have the sentences with the analysis completed, and comments on Grammar and Writing, notes on words or stems from The Word Within the Word, and on elements of poetics encountered poetry texts. It all comes together.

Sample pages: Introduction page 5  / page  7  / Sentence 36 page 47