Course Length: Six weeks
2024 Schedule: Tuesdays with Joel Baker at 10 am CST/24pm UK
About Summer Courses at Dreaming Spires
Our summer classes are great for homeschoolers who are preparing for high school in the US or exams in the UK, a chance to sample a subject before doing a deep dive for the coming year.
All courses will meet an hour weekly for six weeks. There will be the usual reliance on living books and some homework to ensure good participation, and at the end a certificate will be awarded.
About Spotlight on French: Summer French Club
Our six-week Summer French Club will have a little bit of everything for the student who can already hold a conversation in French. We'll be reading French short stories, listening to French songs, discussing both, mainly in French, and lots of free-flowing group conversation in French, and perhaps a few word games. Basically, it’s French 3 class in miniature but without grammar teaching, narrations, exercises, drills or deadlines. This is open to current students of French 2 and French 3, alumni of those courses from previous years, and those who have not had the great fortune to do French with Dreaming Spires.Who Teaches Summer French Club?
Joel Baker, known to students as Maestro B or Maître B, lives in Somerset, England with his five children whom he has been educating at home for the last 14 years. He is a linguist with a passion for delight-led learning, specialising in Romance languages, speaking and teaching French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. After completing his degree in Spanish and Portuguese at King’s College London in 2006, he trained as a secondary school teacher of French and Spanish, taught at a prep school in Dorset, was employed as a youth worker and ran café language classes for adults for several years. He joined Dreaming Spires in 2017 and currently teaches French 1, 2 & 3 and Spanish 1, 2 & 3, as well as IGCSE crammer courses in French and Spanish. Outside Dreaming Spires, Joel gives private tuition and coaching, including for the US college AP exams, and he conducts GCSE speaking exams at an international school. He also works as a barista-missionary in a nearby Christian café project! See all courses taught by Joel