How the Make the Most of CC’s Challenge 1

Welcome to our Challenge 1 Page!

Economics, The Taming of the Shrew, debate, physical science, 21 literature books, and Latin adjectives all make Challenge (Ch.) 1 memorable and challenging. Here are some tips, downloads, and lessons learned from when we worked through the year.

This page is part of our series on how we homeschool with Classical Conversations. 
Check out a full list of all the resources on our main CC page here.

Table of Contents for This Page

  1. How to Grade Ch 1
  2. Logic (Math)
  3. Grammar (Latin)
  4. Research (Science)
  5. Reasoning
  6. Exposition
  7. Debate (Social Studies)
  8. Artsy Fun
  9. Other Resources

I know there’s a lot of information here, but I’m going to try hard to use headings and bold lettering to make it easy to scan!

Please know that my youngest completed Ch 1 in the fall of 2025, so I may not be up-to-date on anything new!

Help Contribute!

If you have some suggestions or additional samples of student work you’d like me to add here, please send them to me at: Julie (at) RidgeLightRanch.com

And now for some legal stuff

I try to use affiliate links whenever possible. So, if you use one of these links I may get a few pennies from it. However, the cost to you will be the same. I promise that I never choose what to suggest to you based on the benefit I might receive from it. You can learn more about our affiliate policy here.

Classical Conversations has asked me to tell you that “References to Classical Conversations do not constitute or imply endorsement by the company.” I’m guessing you knew that, but now we’re all on the same page.

Five Common Topics- Circle Sticker

I’m assuming you already read about how we do Classical Conversations and about how we do Challenge, where I cover:

I also want to remind you to also talk with your CC Director. This page is one mom’s advice and each CC group does things a little differently.

Now let’s move on to the Challenge 1-specific material!

Heads Up!

There are several (5!) projects all due on week 29/30: Individual Event (3-5 minute recitation), 10-15 page science research paper/presentation, Shakespeare project, Cost of Living project, and Stock Market presentation! Sit down with your student and develop some interim deadlines for each of them so they don’t sneak up on you!

How to Grade Challenge 1

I cover all the general information about Grading in Challenge on my general CC- Challenge page. I hope you’ll read that first!

For most students, Challenge 1 is their freshman year of high school. Since high school means transcripts, this might be the first year you’ve started formally grading. If so, please be sure to sit down with your student and explain what this spreadsheet is for and what it measures (it doesn’t exactly measure learning, as I mentioned in the Grading in Challenge segment)!

Within this Excel spreadsheet are two tabs- one for each semester. Each Subject below has some additional details on how I grade that subject. Since this is an excel file, you may need to right-click and choose “save as…” in order to open the file.

Note: Which documents the students annotate and summarize in Debate is usually assigned by the tutor, so yours may differ from ours!

Please keep in mind that CC’s curriculum has shifted in a few areas so you may need to update other things as well, but at least it’s a good start!

Challenge 1 (9th Grade) Grading Plan Spreadsheet (updated 08/2024)

1. Logic (Math) Strand

I have a lot to say about Logic-Math and most of it applies to all the Challenge levels, so I’ve moved that info to a separate page. I hope you’ll check it out:

Saxon Math

2. Grammar (Latin) Strand

Again, I have a lot to say about Latin and most of it applies to all the Challenge levels, so I’ve moved that info to a separate page. I hope you’ll check it out:

Latin in CC-Challenge

Pacing for Ch 1 Latin

Week 1 has you reviewing the first unit (lessons 1-6, 83 exercises!) of the purple First Year Latin book. We reviewed 1-2 lessons per day for the 4 days, spending about an hour on it each day.

Then, the first semester of Latin covers the first 2/3rds (through Unit 8 or Lesson 29) of the purple First Year book. This is what you covered in Challenge B, just twice as fast. Then in the 2nd semester, you cover the last 1/3 of the book. So now you’re learning new material at twice the pace as last year, which was twice the pace as Challange A!

My older son and I rewrote the whole Latin schedule to work faster during the first semester and slower during 2nd semester. I appreciated the pace, but he did not like being so far ahead of the class! He’s very people-oriented (extraverted, competitive, all that…) so we ended up slowing down and falling back to the pace set in the CC Guide. Oh Well.

3. Research (Science) Strand

Exploring Creation with Physical Science (Apologia)

We really enjoyed this strand! The students cover a primer on Chemistry, Physics, Earth Science, and a few other topics, all from a Christian worldview. Every 2 weeks the students read a new chapter of the book, and complete a Study Guide quiz and a Chapter Test. In class, students discuss the concepts, complete experiments, and write in their lab journals. At home, students write the lab results into formal lab reports.

The Big Science Research Paper

The 10- 15 page Science Research Paper that’s due in week 29 is a little unique in its length and breadth. I’d love to see them do something like this every year of high school but my understanding is that they don’t do any really long research papers again until Ch 4.

CC has a “Research Paper – Parent Guide” free download on CCConnected that you at least want to look through. It has a suggested schedule for breaking the work down into manageable chunks. I think the key is to try to have a rough draft by week 25 so you have time to edit!

Some kids have trouble wrapping their heads around how to aim for a 10-page paper, so you might instead assign a “20-paragraph paper.” This could be 3-4 sub-topics, each of which is essentially a 5-paragraph essay, plus an overarching Intro and Conclusion to the paper. If you’re familar with IEW, use their super-essay model.

SAMPLE! Here’s my older son’s research paper. He was adamant that he wanted to research the “History of Alchemy” as his topic. It’s a little unconventional, but I decided it was the research process that was most important for this topic. I think it turned out to be very interesting!

What to Purchase for Research (Science)

  • Exploring Creation with Physical Science (Summer 2024 update: They’re publishing the 4th edition in June and most communities will be using it, so ask your Director!)
    • Student Textbook: by Viki Dincher (Published by Apologia). You can purchase it as a traditional paper book (softback, full color) or the Kindle version. Be sure you’re using the same edition as the rest of the class!
    • Solutions and Tests Manual- Unless you plan to skip all the tests, you need this! Be sure to photocopy the tests if you’re going to use them for a younger sibling!
    • Optional: Student Notebook– We did not buy this with my older son, but we know better now and will be buying it for my younger son (and we bought the Student Notebook for my older son in Ch 2), Others have told me that it has the weekly labs all typed up and will save your child tons of writing. It basically allows them to focus on doing the labs instead of copy work. It also guides students through HOW to take notes, which is a very helpful skill! Check out how Apologia describes it here.
    • Optional: Audio version of the Apologia textbook – We really enjoyed having this to listen to as well. This allowed me to keep tabs on what my son was learning, even if he was completing most of the work on his own. Apologia had it on sale at Audible over the summer, so maybe watch for that.
    • Optional: Free extras on Apologia’s website. You’ll need to create an account. Then you’ll need to type in the code that’s near the beginning of the textbook to unlock the “book extras.”
    • Optional: Paid Extras on Apologia’s website. They have self-paced video lessons and live online classes available for purchase. (Also watch for an email or check their website closer to the start of school. Last year I saw an offer for one free year of video lessons that line up with the science curriculum.)
  • Lab Journal: Your student can use just about anything for their lab journal. We used a graph paper composition book ($2-4 depending on sales) and it seemed to work great. If they have the Student Notebook (mentioned above) they might not need a lab journal at all.
  • Optional: The Students Lab Report Handbook by John D Mays. CC also recommends and we bought it but didn’t use it. My undergraduate degree is in science, so I could walk him through setting up a basic lab report without the book. Hopefully, we’ll use it in future years. Honestly, I didn’t put a lot of emphasis on lab journals and reports this year- I hope to next year, but I don’t want my son to hate science because of lab reports (a definite possibility for some).

What Goes in the Binder?

  • Notes from the book
  • Study Guide Quizzes and Chapter Tests
  • Typed lab reports
  • handouts
  • Research paper parent guide (available free from CC)

How to Scale Back Research (Science)

There are several ways to either scale back the workload or just make things a little easier. Here are some ideas I’ve seen work. Pick what seems like it would best help your student to learn:

  • Allow your student to handwrite notes on a 3×5 note card to use during his test
  • Allow your student to complete the tests open-book style
  • Complete the “On Your Own” questions and the Study Guide together verbally instead of writing it all out (this can backfire for some kids who learn best by copying out the definitions and answers!)
  • Skip a few of the formal lab reports (I think we only ended up doing 2 formal lab reports each semester?)
  • Shrink the big Science Research Paper from 10 pages to 5 pages.

How to Grade Research (Science)

I graded the Apologia Tests and Formal Lab Reports. I gave completion points for completing:

  • Study Guides (which my son completed on his own and then we graded them together)
  • Lab Journal Preparation (This is their first year prepping for labs, so I like to assign some points for the prep work)
  • Lab Reports

4. Reasoning (Formal Logic) Strand

This strand shifts drastically between 1st and 2nd second semesters:

A. Traditional Logic I (Memoria Press)

After putting a lot of time into understanding Cannon Press’s Logic in Challenge B, I let my son do this entirely by himself. He said it was pretty easy and did great on the quizzes and tests.

  • We purchased 5 things: I gave my son the Text, Workbook, and Answer key (only includes answers to daily exercises from the text, which he wrote out in the Workbook).
  • I held on to the Quizzes and Tests, and Teacher Key (answers to daily exercises, quizzes, and tests). So we didn’t really need the “Answer Key.”
  • This kit of the 4 things we needed would have been ideal.
  • We did not try the DVDs. (My son doesn’t like learning from a video, so I didn’t bother. Maybe I’ll try them with the next kid.)

B. The Taming of the Shew

I still don’t fully understand how this passes for “Reasoning,” but it was a very welcome reprieve during the more intense 2nd semester! (Don’t worry about 2nd semester Reasoning not being rigorous enough- Debate is like two full subjects, so your students will still have plenty to do!)

Students read Taming of the Shrew several times and get a really solid feel for the story. Then they each pick a “Shakespeare Project” to complete. There’s a LOT of room for creativity in this project so the students seemed to really enjoy themselves!

CC recommends a specific copy of The Taming of the Shrew, but on a recommendation from our director, we purchased the No Fear Shakespeare version of The Taming of the Shrew. My son liked it better and used it in class. he said it wasn’t a problem that most of the other students were using a different version. The CC version has line numbers, so just be sure to get a version with line numbers and your student should be able to stay with the rest of the class with no problem!

CC also recommends Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb. We never used it a single time, but I do see that it’s on the book list for Challenge 3, so maybe we’ll use it then?

What to Purchase for Reasoning

  • Traditional Logic 1 by Memoria Press Textbook, Workbook (consumable), and Answer Key
  • Taming of the Shrew. Talk with your director and choose the version you like
  • Optional: Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb.

What Goes in the Binder?

  • Random handouts and notes

How to Scale Back Reasoning

  • After the Canon Press Logic in Challenge B, this Memoria Press Logic was an easier strand for us. However, if your student is struggling with the logic, consider completing the exercises and/or quizzes with your student and then let them complete the tests on their own.
  • The 2nd semester Shakespeare didn’t really have much to work on at home- just don’t let the Shakespeare Project sneak up on you, especially if your student needs a costume!

How to Grade Reasoning

  • For the 1st semester, we used the Memoria Press quizzes and tests.
  • For the 2nd semester, the only grades were for participation and the Shakespeare project.

5. Exposition Strand

Lost Tools of Writing (LTW)- American Literature

In Challenge 1, students are back to writing a paper every three weeks, like in Challenge A and the 1st semester of Challenge B. However, this year they are also reading additional books during the “off” weeks. They read 21 books in total- just for Exposition! Fortunately, many of them are available on audio on library apps, LibraVox, YouTube, or Audible. If you’re so inclined, you could read or listen to the books that they do not write papers on over the summer.

Most of the information I have about LTW applies to A, B, & 1, so I moved it (including the free downloads) all over here:

Lost Tools of Writing in CC-Challenge

As with Challenge B, students go back to Essay 2 when they begin Challenge 1. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this and I’m tempted to have my younger son begin Challenge 1 with Essay 6 or 7… I’ll let you know if I try it!

Later in the year, the students write a few comparison essays. I think it’s best explained by telling students that they are writing a persuasive essay with their ‘should’ statement being that the two things are similar or different.

What to purchase for Exposition

  • All 21 literature books (see the CC catalog)- students will read them in the order they are listed in CC’s catalog. You do NOT need the same version CC sells. In fact, we mostly used a lot of thrift store finds and audiobooks from the library and LibraVox!
    • No, you don’t need CC’s Copper Lodge books, but some of their footnotes are handy!
  • The Lost Tools of Writing: Level 1 student and teacher books (hopefully you already have these from Exposition in Challange A or B)
  • Optional: CC recommends Words Aptly Spoken: American Literature. It looks helpful for Directors, but we never used it.

Where to Find Each Challenge 1 Book

My older son loves paper and Kindle. My younger son loves audio. So I made a list of where to find each book in assorted formats.

Generally, the free places are LibriVox.com or the App, the Hoopla App, and the Libby App. Check with your library and see if they support both the Hoopla app and the Libby app. The selection of books will vary on each app and at each library! (Some of these are also on YouTube, but I’m not a fan of listening to books there. I’m pretty sure whoever is posting them there is violating copyright law, so I don’t link to them, but I guess it’s a good last resort if you need it.)

We also love our Audible subscription! and Kindle Unlimited. I’ve *starred* the places where the books are included in these memberships for free

Here’s where we found all the books (I’m slowly filling in the links here!):

  • The Sign of The Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare
  • The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
  • The Call of the Wild by Jack London
  • Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes
  • The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
  • The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • “The Pit and the Pendulum” by Edgar Allan Poe
  • Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories by Herman Melville
  • Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot
  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
  • An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott
  • Harvey by Mary Chase
  • The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson
    • eBook: Hoopla – Kindle
    • Audio: Hoopla – Libby – LibriVox – Audible
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
    • eBook: Hoopla – Kindle
    • Audio: Hoopla – Libby – LibriVox – Audible
  • Born Again by Charles W Colson
    • eBook: Hoopla – Kindle
    • Audio: Hoopla – Libby – LibriVox – Audible
  • Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
    • eBook: Hoopla – Kindle
    • Audio: Hoopla – Libby – LibriVox – Audible
  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick by Frederick Douglass
    • eBook: Hoopla – Kindle
    • Audio: Hoopla – Libby – LibriVox – Audible
  • The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
    • eBook: Hoopla – Kindle
    • Audio: Hoopla – Libby – LibriVox – Audible
  • Self-Reliance and Essays on the Nature of Man by Ralph Waldo Emerson
    • eBook: Hoopla – Kindle
    • Audio: Hoopla – Libby – LibriVox – Audible
  • Walden: Or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau
    • eBook: Hoopla – Kindle
    • Audio: Hoopla – Libby – LibriVox – Audible
  • Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlfin
    • eBook: Hoopla – Kindle
    • Audio: Hoopla – Libby – LibriVox – Audible

How to Scale Back Exposition

There are several ways to either scale back the workload or just make things a little easier. Here are some ideas I’ve seen work. Pick what seems like it would best help your student to learn:

  • Listen to audiobooks instead of reading the books. (Is this even considering scaling back? It seems normal to me!)
  • Over the summer, read/listen to the books you don’t write papers on.
  • Write a short paper (I told my son to write all his essays with at least 500 words, so a shorter paper would be a nice break).
  • Combine two papers by comparing two books.
  • Skip writing papers on a few of the other books. You could write an outline of a paper or skip it altogether.
  • Read a summary or an abridged copy of a few books so you can still participate in the discussion in class.

What Goes in the Binder?

  • A copy of my LTW charts (explained on the Challenge A page)
  • A set of page protectors, one per paper, with the corresponding rubric in it. My sons can then quickly slide papers in a pocket without having to 3-hole punch them (apparently an arduous task). When they are finished with the paper, they turn in the whole page protector with the rubric, paper, and worksheets/brainstorming sheets.

How to Grade Exposition

I grade each paper using my LTW checklist as a rubric but send them back for revisions until they are A-level work.

6. Debate Strand

First, let’s talk about the name, “debate.” There are a lot of theories on why CC named this strand (aka subject) Debate. However, rather than retell them all here, I like to just think of this strand as “Social Studies,” and then it all fits.

In Challenge 1, Debate is actually three separate things:

A. American Documents (1st Semester)

Students read from Words Aptly Spoken: American Documents, published by CC, which includes America’s most famous legal documents, speeches, essays, and poems. These are generally a higher reading level than their Exposition books (which are intentionally an easy read for most 9th graders). however, since these are all famous historic documents and speeches, they are almost all available in audio online. Our director made this great YouTube playlist with many of the readings.

I used to ask my kids not to write in their books so we can reuse them and then sell them on ebay. However, for this one, I took CC’s recommendation and encouraged my son to mark it up and annotate it. (Also, now that we do AZ’s ESA program, I’m not allowed to sell my books, so we usually donate them to our local homeschool co-op instead.) I cringe when I look at his book now because that’s not how I would do it, but I’m so glad he is discovering his own way and I’m happy to buy his brother a new copy!

B. Economics (2nd Semester)

Students read Whatever Happened to Penny Candy, complete the questions in the Bluestocking Guide workbook, and discuss it in class. Then Students read The Money Mystery and discuss it in class. Students also participate in a stock market simulation where they invest fake money and try to pick stocks that will result in a net gain! Lastly, students complete a Cost of Living project. This can all be really low key or you can dive deep!

This has been my favorite part of Challenge 1. I took several economics classes when I was getting my MBA and then I taught Economics at the University of Phoenix for a while. I love the subject and I’m always fascinated when I read more on it.

However, these Maybury books kinda blew my mind! It turns out that all my economics education was strictly from the Keynesian school of economics, which is mainstream, (kinda like atheistic evolution is mainstream in the sciences). The Maybury books are all from the Monetarist / Austrian School of Economics. WOW! Google “Austrian vs Keynesian economics” and you’ll see what I mean. For some extra insight and laughs, check out these two Austrian vs Keynesian YouTube Videos:

My son and I went through all the Bluestocking Guide questions verbally and had many great discussions. I even purchased another book by Maybury to read! Even if you’ve never read anything about economics, I think you’ll enjoy these books!

Cost of Living

Students also complete a Cost of Living Project for Debate. It’s essentially a budget. Most people complete it for when they first get out into the real world. There are a few nice little booklets on the Facebook groups and on CC Connected, but we just used excel. Here’s the Budget excel file we used. You can change the numbers to fit your student and then have excel spit out some pretty graphs! (I digitally removed all the names and graph titles for privacy, but you’ll probably want to add them back in.)

C. Debate (both semesters)

Throughout both semesters the students learn the ins and outs of a Team Policy Debate and then conduct one debate each semester. My sons were very motivated to do well at these types of events (public, competitive, and includes a teammate he doesn’t want to let down), so I stepped aside and let them each work on their own. It feels like a lot of work for just two debates, but they get to do more debates in Challenge 2!

What to Purchase for Debate

What Goes in the Binder?

  • Summaries from American Documents
  • Lots of Debate notes!

How We Grade Debate

  • For the 1st semester, I gave completion points for the Annotations, Summaries, Recitations, Debate, and the 1930’s Presentation, which are assigned in the Guide. Note: Which documents the students annotate and summarize in Debate is usually assigned by the tutor, so yours may differ from ours on the grading spreadsheet above!
  • For the 2nd semester, I gave completion points for the economics questions assigned, the Individual Events (recitations), the Debate, all the projects, and participation.

7. Now Let’s Add Some Artsy Fun!

Since I’m all about art and Ridge Light Ranch is mainly about helping you teach art, I wanted to include links to a few of our art-related resources that are especially great for this grade.

Since we’re studying American History, it would be fun to complete some American-themed art projects or projects that coordinate with American artists:

Also, I’m working on a full drawing video course called Anyone Can Learn to Draw. It’s available for pre-order now!

Anyone Can Learn to Draw video course description

8. Other Helpful Resources

Advice from Students and Parents

“Do lots of research for your science paper early!” -LA, Ch 1 student

“The IEW super-essay model made the research paper process so painless… We planned out in advance how many topics to write and I just nagged him every week to check the progress of each topic. Then a week to put in the super-intro and super-conclusion and smooth out all the transitions and viola! Where was this when I was in school?!” -AB, Ch 1 parent

Now it’s your turn! 

Let me know how you make the most of Challenge 1!

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