Imagine a teaching tool that empowered the student to engage with each element of classical Christian education: reading, writing, critical and creative thinking, dialectic and Socratic engagement, artistic expression, physical movement in the classroom, and opportunities for organic discussion on virtue, vice, and Christ. A tool that can transform and reshape your students and classrooms. Let me introduce you to the Disputatatio Rota.

Sample Lesson: The Rota Disputationis (The Wheel of Discussion) is a dynamic, student-driven engagement activity that anchors students in the classical commonplace journal, wrapped in collaborative classical conversation. The Wheel creates an environment for the student to discuss, debate, review, and share their understanding of a text, idea, or essential question. The Wheel allows the teacher to move around the classroom to listen, engage, correct, and challenge the students while in the Wheel. Illustrative: Imagine a class of sixteen students who complete a common-place journal after reading Inferno Canto I. The commonplace journal will include text, image, and color. Eight students will position themselves around the classroom’s outer walls in a circle. The remaining eight students will find a partner. Students will share their journal page and discuss the text, teacher prompts, and journal content. The teacher, after 4:00 minutes, commands the students to “move the wheel.” Students on the inside of the wheel will rotate to the next student, and the wheel begins again. Students will repeat this process til they travel the conversational circumference of the Rota Disputationis..

Principles Illustrated: At Regents, our mission is to raise up wise and courageous servants of the Lord Jesus Christ who know truth, love beauty and practice goodness for the benefit of man and glory of God. The Disputatio Rota creates fertile classroom soil for full student participation to bloom, transforming discussions rooted in the reading of classic text, all captured in the beauty of the commonplace journal.

Member Benefit: This workshop is for the teacher. The Rota Disputationis creates a redemptive rhythm that anchors the classical school to its telos. The structure, requirements, and movement give the teacher space to improvise and incorporate their specific material into the wheel. There are countless assignment evolutions and grade-generating possibilities from this classical exercise. The most important benefit is The Rota Disputationis is a return to principles and methods that reestablish a more faithful paideia in our schools.

Chris Harris currently serves as a Rhetorical school teacher at Regents School of Charlottesville. He has fourteen years of Classical Christian classroom experience. His areas of expertise include commonplace journaling, creative communication for the classroom, and transformational teaching pedagogy. His current subjects include literature, rhetoric, history, and senior thesis. His passion is to inspire the next generation to be wise and courageous servants of the Lord Jesus Christ who know truth, love beauty, and practice goodness for the benefit of man and the glory of God. He holds Profession Certification from the ACCS and will have his Master Certification at years end. He attended the University of N.C.-Asheville and holds a degree in Communications. Outside the classroom, he loves spending time with his wife, Mellony, his son, Luke, and his daughter, Bryn. Luke is an officer in the USNA and Bryn is a recent graduate of the University of Virginia in Nursing. Luke and Bryn both graduated from Hickory Christian Academy in Hickory, N. C.