Please purchase ONE registration for ALL of the Schola Alta (7th-12th grade) Lit/Comp II students in your family.

Please Note: This NON-REFUNDABLE registration does not guarantee enrollment in a licensed Aquinas Learning Center. Please contact your director to apply and pay center tuition for a seat in her classroom.

This registration provides one family with unlimited access to our Cycle 1 Lit/Comp II Course for one school year, in addition to continuing education for primary educators, a private forum for member families, and exclusive discounts for the purchase of partner materials.

The Aquinas Learning Literature and Composition Lost Tools of Writing II Class or Lit/Comp SA II brings students together to socratically discuss literature and poetry while learning the art of the Judicial Address. In addition, high school students will practice writing college application essays and business resumes.

The focus in Literature will be on reading, identifying, and discussing the major themes of the books we will be reading, annotating for literary tools and devices, and most importantly, discussing the ethics of choices made by the characters in a story – always pulling out from a story the questions of whether or not protagonists in the story “should have” or “should not have” acted in a certain way. Students will be expected to annotate their books and also to keep a florilegium (journal of beautiful flowers) where they will rewrite beautiful quotations and phrases from the books they read.

Students will read The Iliad (Homer, Fagles tr.), The Lost Aeneid (C.S. Lewis), Antigone (Sophocles, Fagles tr.), The Trial and Death of Socrates (Plato, Jowell tr.), Quo Vadis (Sienkiewicz, Kuniczak tr.), Callista (Newman), King Lear (Shakespeare), Inferno (Dante), “Destruction of Sennacherib” (Byron), “Adonais” (Shelley), and “Prometheus” (Byron).

In Composition, students will use the Lost Tools of Writing II to practice and develop skills in Invention, Arrangement, and Elocution for thinking about and writing a Judicial Address. At the Alta II level, students will continue practicing grammar at the “point of need,” by revising rough drafts edited by their parents and final drafts edited by their mentors. In addition, mentors will provide feedback on style to help students write both eloquently and concisely, as appropriate. Alta II Lit/Comp students will also practice writing college essays, business resumes, and writing responses to Socratic questions discussed in some books.

Please note: This registration does not include the cost of materials or the cost of tuition paid to an independently owned and operated center using the AL curriculum.

Shortly after completing registration, member families will receive a getting started guide with instructions for ordering materials with members-only discount codes and access to the Lit/Comp II course site. Full course materials will be uploaded and launched a couple of months before the start of the school year.