If your student has taken Lost Tools of Writing level 1 before but has not quite mastered or understood all the elements or the flow of the curriculum, this course will give your student the command and confidence to address the full curriculum and be ready for Level II in the future.

We will review the 5 Common Topics and their usefulness: how to use them and place them in the ANI chart.
We will review the skill of sorting and work through strategies that set your student up for more success
We will review and work through parallelism to ensure your student knows how to altar their prose or add to their proofs sets of similarly structured phrases or clauses.
We will go through each essay from Essay 3 to 8 and address the skills associated with every lesson.

This will set your student up for success when looking into LTW Level II course work and beyond.

This is not a formal writing and editing course. This is a course on high school rhetoric.
Your student will need to be proficient in understanding and constructing complete sentences, as well as in formatting documents in a word processor.
Students need to have mastered recognizing the eight parts of speech in a sentence and how they function as subjects, objects, the various types of verbs, and phrases and clauses, as well as applying basic editing and formatting skills.

Parents may need to assist with editing and formatting.

Assessment in this course will focus only on the lessons taught in LTW Level I.

Student Expectation: Students will need enough time in their schedules to:

• watch the films multiple times
• take notes
• complete film forms
• complete weekly writing lessons within an 8-day cycle.
• spend about the same time they would spend reading a high school literary assignment
• complete 1 LTW Level 1 lesson per week.

Course Objectives:

1. Review and master five Topics of Invention
2. Review and master arranging the formal elements of a persuasive essay
3. Review using schemes and tropes
4. Review writing parallelism in persuasive essays
5. Practice rhetorical thinking skills.
6. Learn how to "read" good films.
7. Make good observations, then ask good questions

Course Set-up: Students have 4 days to turn in their first draft. I offer corrections within 48 hours. They have until midnight the day of the next class to submit their final corrections. Once an assignment is closed, work will not be accepted. I offer 20 points per lesson. 2 points off for late work, 5 points off for each element not included, and 1-3 points off for items not corrected before the assignment closes. LATE WORK IS NOT ASSESSED.

Course Prerequisites:
Students should:

• have taken LTW Level 1 covering at least essays 1-5
• Have a working knowledge of the function of the eight parts of speech in a sentence and the skill of parallelism
• Be able to write complete sentences and paragraphs.
• Be familiar with verb tenses.

Younger or inexperienced writers can prepare for this course by taking the LTW Level 1 writing course, which covers the 5 Common Topics and the skills of sorting and crafting parallelism.

A strong recommendation for Lost Tools progression is to take the Level 1 course twice, before proceeding to Level II, so that all the foundational elements through Essay 8 are well understood and easily applied in a student's composition.

Films*
Your student will watch for discussion and writing throughout the year:

• The Wizard of Oz
• Dir. Victor Fleming
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1939
• Friendly Persuasion
• Dir. William Wyler
• Allied Artists Pictures, 1956
• The Patriot
• Dir. Roland Emmerich
• Columbia Pictures, 2000
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
• Dir. Frank Capra
• Columbia Pictures, 1939
• 12 Angry Men
• Dir. Sidney Lumet
• United Artists, 1957
• Frequency
• Dir. Gregory Hoblit
• New Line Cinema, 2000
• It's a Wonderful Life
• Dir. Frank Capra
• RKO Radio Pictures, 1946
• Hoosiers
• Dir. David Anspaugh
• Orion Pictures, 1986
• Field of Dreams
• Dir. Phil Alden Robinson
• Universal Pictures, 1989
• Mr. Roberts
• Dirs. John Ford, Mervyn LeRoy
• Warner Bros., 1955
• Gone with the Wind
• Dir. Victor Fleming
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1939
• A Man for All Seasons
• Dir. Fred Zinnemann
• Columbia Pictures, 1966
• The Searchers
• Dir. John Ford
• Warner Bros., 1956
• Secondhand Lions
• Dir. Tim McCanlies
• New Line Cinema, 2003

*All films are selected for narrative clarity, moral seriousness, and suitability for discussion in a Christian classical rhetoric context. Some films may contain content that your family is not personally comfortable with. Families are encouraged to review films in advance using their preferred resources for critique and disclosure. Neither Kepler Education nor Cheryl Floyd is responsible for individual family viewing decisions, which remain under parental authority and discernment. Films cannot be substituted.

Two end-of-semester projects are offered as a form of assessment and celebration, where your student has the opportunity to combine their observations and creativity and present a submission to the class. These are worth 50 points each.

Curriculum Texts:

• Lost Tools of Writing, 5th Edition, Student Workbook, published by the CiRCE Institute

Film notation hand-outs given in class