FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

1. What are the three problems of writing?

2. Who should use The Lost Tools of Writing™?

3. What is The Lost Tools of Writing™?

4. How do I purchase it? 

5. What about upgrades?

6. What makes The Lost Tools of Writing™ so powerful?

7. How else can I benefit from using The Lost Tools of Writing™?

New Questions to Soon be Answered

1. How will The Lost Tools of Writing help me integrate my subjects?

2. How will The Lost Tools of Writing help me improve my relationship with my children?

Send us new questions. Click Here.

When people communicate, they need something to say, they need to order their thoughts, and they need to express their ideas fittingly. Building on the works of Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian and others, The Lost Tools of Writing™ solves these three problems one step at a time, systematically, and, believe it or not, fairly easily.

Your students will begin by writing a simple, tedious, three point paragraph. By the time the year is over, they’ll be able to write a detailed, thoughtful, creative 9-11 paragraph essay, one that lays the foundations for every other kind of writing too. It includes the elements of narrative, description, debate rhetoric, and even poetry.

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The Lost Tools of Writing™ is designed for students in grades 7-9 with a basic background in grammar. Any high school student who hasn’t already mastered these materials needs to learn them as well, though older students can move through the materials much more quickly. For this reason, we recommend that every student from grades seven through twelve should master The Lost Tools of Writing™.

A few ambitious teachers have successfully used The Lost Tools with fifth graders and it has even been adapted to third grade with great success.

At the other end, college students benefit significantly from the way this program focuses their attention on core writing skills. The Lost Tools of Writing™ need to be mastered by freshman year in college.

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LTW is a classical rhetoric program that treats the writing process as the act of thinking and expression, while helping teachers master the classical approach to teaching. The Lost Tools of Writing™ includes

• A “hand-holding” duo bound teacher guide that explains the program in detail and describes each lesson
• Individual lesson plans (module guides) that we put in a three ring binder so you can add your own notes and support materials
• A student workbook with a full year’s worth of exercise forms, worksheets, model essays, and templates
• CD’s that introduce the program, explain the ideas behind it, and model how to teach it
• Free On-line support, including the CiRCE Institute The Lost Tools of Writing™ forum where dozens of LTW users get together to compare notes, share ideas and samples, and make (carefully heeded) suggestions for how to improve the program

In addition, you can participate in

• The Lost Tools of Writing™ workshops for schools or home school group workshops (and get this: these can be fundraisers instead of costs for your school or group!)
• The CiRCE Institute apprenticeship, the only way you can become a CiRCE certified master teacher.

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First, determine what you need based on how many students you will be teaching.

    You should purchase one complete program for yourself and
    one student workbook for each student in your class.

Second, click HERE to access our catalogue and tell us what we can send you!

    Click on the complete program button to purchase the entire
    package or click on the button that corresponds to the
    elements you wish to purchase.

Please allow 2 to 4 weeks for delivery of your The Lost Tools of Writing™ materials.

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If you purchased the first or second edition of The Lost Tools of Writing™, you can purchase the complete third edition at significant savings:
 

 To purchase an upgrade, click HERE

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This is a good question and its one we’ve pondered for quite a while. When we started teaching writing, we wanted to be classical, so we pulled out the classical books on teaching rhetoric (Aristotle, Cicero, etc.). We found that it worked with astonishing effectiveness, so we continued. Then we started to ask why it worked so well ourselves.

Here are some thoughts (and we’d welcome your input on this question!)

The Lost Tools of Writing™ is so powerful because

• We imitate the classical masters in the design of the program.
• It separates the three basic problems so students can focus on one at a time
  • What to write
  • How to order your thoughts
  • How to write
• It lays the foundations of creativity in discipline and coached practices
• It provides coached repetition for every skill learned
• The mode of instruction is classical and corresponds to the nature of the student
• It recognizes verbal skills as essential to all learning, not as a separate class. So it teaches students thinking skills that are universally applicable.
• It engages the students in dialogue so they are actively learning the ideas into their own minds. In fact, if you are familiar with John Milton Gregory’s The Seven Laws of Learning (which we recommend for your ongoing reflection) you will see that this program fulfills all seven of those laws over and over again.

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Believe it or not, you can turn The Lost Tools of Writing™ into a fund-raiser for your school while providing training for your teachers and raising your schools profile in the community, all in one fell swoop!

How? By hosting The Lost Tools of Writing™ workshop at your school. The fee to host a CiRCE Institute master instructor is so low that you can easily recapture it and make a significant profit by promoting the workshop to your community. 

How else can you raise funds while performing in-service training?

For details, contact us at (704) 786-9684. Don’t wait, because we can only do this a few times each year.

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