Scholé Academy’s pre-rhetoric courses are specifically designed for middle-school-level writing students. These courses are not designed for students looking for a college prep writing program. (If you’re interested in a college prep writing program, please explore our Rhetoric Alive! courses). The pre-rhetoric courses currently include Writing & Rhetoric 5, Everyday Debate and our Persuasive Writing class.

Writing & Rhetoric 5 is a one-year course focusing on Books 9 & 10 of the Writing & Rhetoric series. The Writing & Rhetoric 5 course is targeted at 7th–8th grade students.

The Everyday Debate and Persuasive Writing courses each run as one-semester courses, and are typically taken back-to-back in one academic year. Both Everyday Debate and the Persuasive Writing course are targeted at 9th-grade students who are familiar with both informal logic and formal logic (such as in our courses featuring The Art of Argument and The Discovery of Deduction texts). While the two logic courses are not required, the curriculum and instructor do assume they have both been studied. The Everyday Debate course provides opportunities for students to combine their interests, research skills, writing skills, and their logical argument construction within the arena of debate. The Persuasive Writing course examines selections from a wide range of scholarly texts and classical writers through the lens of Rhetoric’s Common Topics. We often refer to this class as “Rhetoric-lite.”

We seek to place students in the courses best suited to their needs, skills, and strengths. A gentle placement evaluation is required to help both parent and teacher make the best decision for your students. Our pre-rhetoric instructors will guide you through this process. Please review the Student-Parent Handbook for a more complete description of our our placement process works. 

“The supreme talent in writing is to make us forget the author in favor of the work.“

—H.S. Gerdil, The Anti-Emile