Michael Clay Thompson: Vocabulary, Elementary Program - Series by Royal Fireworks Press

Building Language provides an introduction to Latin stems as the bases for much of the English and Spanish languages. Using the analogy of the arch in architecture, the book explores the Roman roots of our buildings and of our language. Ten lessons introduce important Latin stems, providing an intellectual key for young students to understand that big words aren't necessarily hard. It rejects the specious confines of teaching age-graded vocabulary.

This is the vocabulary precursor to Caesar's English I and II.

Building Language Sample Pages pdf file

Teacher manuals for the curriculum always contain the student book, plus extra pages for instruction, answers to questions where applicable and suggestions throughout the text for teachers to implement.

This has all the answers to the quizzes and activities in Caesar's English I Classical Education Edition, together with extensive implementation strategy and advice.

Parents should note that this teacher manual is not usable by students as it has too many pages for the binding to withstand normal student handling. The student book is bound in two parts to make it easier to handle and also to make it possible for the parts to be read repeatedly without danger of the binding coming apart. 

Classical Education Edition (In Two Parts)

We are excited to announce that our new Caesar’s English I Classical Education Edition is now available. 

We are proud of this Classical Education volume.   It is the best we have ever done.  Our 25,000-image photo gallery of the ancient world—which we have built recently—has engendered in us a new level of creativity.  A principal aim of this new Edition is to give children wide-ranging insight into the ancient world and its contributions to our lives.

We were so enthusiastic about the new edition of Caesar's English that we created a book that is too large to be handled easily by children.  We ultimately decided to publish the student book in two parts of 192 pages each.  We also kept the original, one volume standard edition, to which we will soon add new photographs and change the cover.

Michael Clay Thompson has re-designed the volume to reinforce the entire language arts curriculum; every strand of the curriculum is revisited in each of the twenty lessons. 

The vocabulary component is based on the Latin stems and lists of Nonfiction Words made from the stems as well as lists of Advanced Words and Classic Words.  There are Caesar’s Analogies, Caesar’s Synonyms, and Caesar’s Antonyms.  And there is Caesar’s Word Search. Vocabulary is loaded into all the activities and there are new vocabulary terms added to the stem lessons: five new words in each lesson.

The writing component is ever present in each lesson with numerous examples of how the great writers have used the vocabulary words.  Specific writing activities include Caesar’s Paragraph where the exercises parallel Paragraph Town, the writing book at this level, as well as Caesar’s Rewrites where the students rewrite the sentences of great authors.  Also included are sections entitled Who Is That Writer? in which there is a short introduction to a major author whose work has been used in the examples.

The lessons have been divided into quarters to reflect the four levels of grammar analysis.  Through every set of five lessons a different level of grammar analysis is emphasized, so the first five are devoted to the parts of speech, the next five to the parts of the sentence, lessons xi to xv to phrases, and lesson xvi to xx to clauses. 

The poetics are enhanced by a poem written by Michael in every lesson.  Using the vocabulary words of the lesson, his poems offer the students a perspective on the Roman world through the eyes of one of its denizens.

Insight into the Roman world is provided by a more than 80 full-page photographs of Roman sites and artifacts. 

It includes:

• Many more vocabulary-loaded, reinforcement activities than in the original edition, including a Word Search in each of the twenty lessons

• An increased concentration on the links between English and Spanish.  Caesar’s Spanish highlights the Spanish cognates of the English vocabulary the students are learning.  Myriam Thompson has translated some of MCT’s poems into Spanish, and bolder type is used to emphasize the cognates.   She also wirtes about the importance of Iberia to the Roman world and provides biographies of some of the Roman emperors born there. 

• Added perspective on the feminine experience in Rome: MCT says: "We have tried to pay some attention to this dimension of the text. There are images of Roman women, there is a poem from a mother's point of view, there are images of jewelry that Roman women wore, there are poems about art and culture.  The difficult thing about looking at Roman history is that most of the famous names are men, and most of the famous events are battles or assassinations (think Caesar).  But we have tried to give a bit of a rounded perspective".

• A ten-part biography of Julius Caesar using the words from the vocabulary lessons.  

• Thomas Milton Kemnitz has provided fifteen essays on Roman buildings, the use, styles, and making of columns, the Roman use of concrete and its importance, Roman roads and streets, the Roman handling of water including aqueducts, lead pipes to houses and fountains, and the Roman baths.

You can read more about the background to these books and how they fit into classical education in two News items: The Roman links and the Ancient Greek link.

Caesar's English I has twenty lessons, each introducing five new stems with an introductory Latin Stem List and the following learning activities:

Latin Stem Talk; Latin Stem Analogy; Advanced Words, Classic Words, Who's That Writer; Latin Stem: English and Spanish; A Roman Fact; and a Latin Stem Word Search game.

There is also, as an alternative, an enhanced and expanded Classical Education Edition, of this book, which comes in two parts, with an Implementation Manual.

Caesar's English II: the latest edition has many wonderful photographs to enhance the understanding of Ancient Rome. It has, besides all the elements in the first volume, a heavier emphasis on the relationship between English and Spanish.

Each of the twenty lessons also includes five new stems and five review stems from volume I. Students are challenged to fill in the blank in a sentence by a famous author using stem words. Each lesson has a grammar example of the use of one stem word.

Caesar's English II Sample Pages pdf file