THIS IS AN AUDIT-ONLY COURSE!

This version of the MCT Level 1 course is appropriate for those students who cannot attend the live class meetings or who do not wish to turn on their cameras during the live class meetings.

Students who take this course will not join the weekly class meetings. Instead, each week there will be a video recording posted on the course website for the students to watch of that week’s live class meeting with Michael. Students who do the homework can submit the grammar assignments to Michael to be graded.

THIS IS A TWO-SEMESTER COURSE.

Welcome to MCT1, the Island Level of the MCT language arts curriculum, a deep introduction to grammar, vocabulary, writing, poetics, and literature. In Sentence Island, the writing book for this level, students will be taken to a new world where they will meet the beloved Mud the Fish and a host of other creative characters. They will learn grammar in Grammar Island, as well as the building blocks of our vocabulary in Building Language and the fundamentals of poetics in The Music of the Hemispheres. During the second semester, students will read Michael’s Mud Trilogy of novels.

Students in this course will get a strong foundation in the language arts that is thorough and sophisticated and yet simple and comprehensible. Even without the live classes, this is an experience that students will remember for years to come.

Dates: The week of August 18th to the week of December 15th, 2025, and the week of January 12th to the week of May 11th, 2026
* Note that there will not be a class meeting—and therefore a recording of it—every week. Michael gives a small number of breaks during the semester to allow students to immerse themselves fully in the work.

Student Expectations: Students who do the assignments must use a keyboard (no handwritten assignments), but the assignments are not required.

Assessment: If they wish, students can submit the grammar assignments to Michael to be graded and returned to them by him.

Materials: Students will need the Level 1 texts: Grammar Island, Practice Island, Building Language, Sentence Island, and The Music of the Hemispheres, as well as the Mud Trilogy novels: The Rescue at Fragment Crag, The Red Tide, and The Green-Face Virus.

PURCHASE THESE BOOKS AS A PACKAGE HERE.