Language Arts

Our Language Arts curriculum intends to engender a love for beautiful expression, whether written or spoken, and a love for the beauty of that thing which is beautifully expressed, for only in a love affair with beauty will students passionately seek to find and elegantly express truth. That love affair is ignited, in primary and middle school, when teachers model the structure and elegance of the English language.  We “model” such expression in a number of ways:

• The Telling and Retelling of Fables and Fairy Tales
• Phonics
• Poetry Memorization and Recitation
• Dictation and Copying
• Rigorous Grammar Curriculum

St. Theresa Catholic School self consciously guides students along the threefold path of the medieval curriculum of education called the Trivium. The Trivium consists of the 3 liberal arts (grammar, logic and rhetoric) that are the focal points of education for children during the primary, middle and high school years. Through the study of grammar, children begin to see the relationship between words and the structure of that relationship. In studying grammar we believe students develop intellectual habits which prepare them to move beyond words to the ideas and things that words signify; in short, knowing grammatical structure prepares students to see the structure of thought. We, therefore, introduce students to Logic in the 8th grade. As they move on to high school, we believe that our students will be well prepared to continue on in their acquisition of logical thinking. We also believe that the pronounced aesthetical component of our pedagogy will serve as a great precursor to their future rhetorical training. The goal of our Language Arts program is to develop young men and women who love the truth and who are able to persuasively communicate truth to those around them.