Writing & Rhetoric Book Book 7 Student: Encomium & Vituperation Program

Program Overview:  The Writing & Rhetoric series emphasizes fluent reading, careful listening, models for imitation, and progressive steps. It assumes that students learn best by reading excellent, whole-story examples of literature and by growing their skills through imitation. Each exercise is intended to impart a skill (or tool) that can be employed in all kinds of writing and speaking. The exercises are arranged from simple to more complex. What’s more, the exercises are cumulative, meaning that later exercises incorporate the skills acquired in preceding exercises. This series is a step-by-step apprenticeship in the art of writing and rhetoric.  The full series is 12 books that will train students over 6 years, starting in grades 3 or 4.

Book 7: Encomium & Vituperation is a one-semester course for grades 6 or 7. This book continues the development of the art of persuasive writing and oration. In addition to guiding students through the writing of their own essays of praise and criticism, this book also leads your students step by step through a research project about a fascinating person. While students are learning about a remarkable life, they will also be learning how to learn. This research is achievable and the natural next step as students gain the skills of reading a variety of texts on a research subject, taking notes, creating an essay from these notes, and citing their sources. In addition to practicing skills they learned in earlier books, students will learn to:

• Discern the main idea
• Use hyperbole and thesis
• Incorporate background and supportive detail
• Understand the difference between the genres of biography and autobiography
• Note the good and poor qualities present in a person or event
• Contrast different behaviors after weighing their merits
• Craft effective conclusions that encourage readers either to emulate or avoid specific behaviors
• Learn to write a research paper in all its parts, including making notecards, outlining, integrating sources, and citing sources

The student edition is a consumable book.  Answer key not included.

If you are not teaching multiple students, we suggest you purchase Book Set 7. It includes one student book along with the teacher’s edition (answer key, teacher notes, and explanations), and Mp3 audio files (to help engage their sense of hearing and listening).

Placement: In Writing & Rhetoric, placement is based on the student’s current experience in writing. The publisher first suggests looking through the table of contents included in each of the free Writing & Rhetoric samples (found on the individual product pages). Reviewing both the table of contents and the sample lessons will help you determine a good starting level for your student. They encourage parents to download and print the sample chapters of the textbooks (student book) to assist in determining placement. Other suggestions are:

• If you have a student in 4th–7th grade and are considering Writing & Rhetoric, the initial identifier of placement is to evaluate whether your student can acknowledge the 5 W’s (who, what, when, where, why) in an essay or is comfortable writing 6-paragraph essays. If not, we recommend looking at Book 3: Narrative II. Starting here will provide review from the first 2 books in the series, as well as more age-appropriate material with longer stories and more thoughtful questions in the lessons.
• If your student is confidently working through the 2 skills mentioned above, we would then suggest looking through Book 5: Refutation and Confirmation. In this book, students begin to support a cause or refute it. This is the beginning mark of persuasive writing (pre-thesis work) and helps them to begin research for an idea they will support in an essay.