A Dramatic Reading of "The Antigone" at SVCS

Last Thursday night was Open House at St. Vincent's School. My seventh and eighth grade Western Civilization: Greece classes performed a dramatic reading of The Antigone for the visitors and parents who attended. A good time was had by all, and the students did a fine job.

I am actually quite proud of our Western Civ course. This year the seventh and eighth graders are studying ancient Greece with me, with two and a half hours of class time devoted to the subject each week. (Next year the same grade levels will study ancient Rome.) So far this year we have read The Odyssey and The Antigone together, as well as having regular lectures on ancient Greek history and culture and introductory lessons in classical Greek language, with an emphasis on English vocabulary building. (All my students learned the Greek alphabet by the end of the first week!) Today we start reading Hesiod's Theogony together. In the spring term we will read portions of Plato's Republic and Apology and Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, as well bits of Herodotus and Thucydides. There will also be a unit on ancient Greek art and architecture.