LTW Journal 9/20

I accidentally deleted my LTW post from yesterday!  What follows is my rewrite, hopefully a bit more succinct and coherent! 

Yesterday we began the Arrangement portion of Lesson 2.  It was time to group all the kids' affirmative and negative ideas into groups according to kind.  Using the practice essay issue, the girls made five groups and used the most 'telling point' in each as the main proof. Then they selected the three strongest supporting point in each as subproofs.  They discarded the two weakest groups.  They also had to decide which side of the issue they would argue.  Here are Mariel's groups (we worked together while Aravis worked on her own):

Issue:  Whether Boromir should have taken the Ring from Frodo.

(She chose the negative, so her thesis is:  Boromir should not have taken the Ring from Frodo.)

% Boromir was angry and irrational.

i)  Boromir was under the Ring's spell
ii)  Boromir was concerned with saving Gondor
iii)  Boromir was a spoiled, favored son

#  Frodo was idealistic

i) Frodo sacrificed a lot
ii) Frodo cared for all of Middle Earth
iii)  Frodo was chosen by the Council and the Ring

+  Authorities knew the Ring should go to Frodo

i) The Ring was hypnotic
ii)  The Ring was too powerful for anyone
iii) Aragorn knew the Ring needed to go to Frodo

Interesting note:  Mariel discovered not just one, but three of her ideas on the affirmative side were actually negatives!  So she moved them over.

Also during this process, Mariel and I noticed that the arguments are only as good as the ANIs.  We could only work with what we had.  Then came the resolve to make better ANI charts in the next essay cycle.

One thing I really like about this curriculum is the way these needs emerge rather than being foisted upon us before we realize their importance.

I am very happy we are using an issue from LOTR.  Every time we talk about it we go deeper.  When Mariel said that Boromir was only concerned about Gondor, Aravis and I realized he was a nationalist, and there followed a brief discussion on LOTR as political commentary.  Tolkien was a genius.

Their homework assignment is to go through the same process using their actual Lesson 2 ANIs-- the political issues they chose during Lesson 2 Invention.