What’s New for the 2022 Seton Curriculum?

While the changes to lesson plan formats have been a major focus for our Curriculum Development team, several new books and courses are coming out as of the beginning of June as well.

These changes affect a few grade levels, with 2nd Grade having the most updates.

The following is a comprehensive list of all of the significant changes you might want to be aware of.

First Grade

A new Geography Skills 1 for Young Catholics book is part of the History 1 course, replacing the Scholastic Map Skills for Today series.

Second Grade

Phonics 2 for Young Catholics (2nd Edition) is the latest release in our new Phonics series, which started two years ago with Phonics K. There is a completely new Phonics 2 workbook, but the course also has an entire game component. The board is durable material like a mouse pad and includes flashcards and plastic game pieces to move around the board.

Spelling 2 for Young Catholics (2nd Edition) is an entirely new book made to align with the new Phonics book.

History 2 is getting a new Geography Skills 2 for Young Catholics book.

Third Grade

There is a new Health 3 for Young Catholics coming out this year. It will be added to our Science 3 course and will become the basis for the 4th Quarter of that course, with the main text being completed in the first three quarters.

Early Church and the Fathers

This is an entirely new high school Theology course. It is ½ credit and is a default course in 11th Grade along with the Moral Theology course. It takes the place of the Fr. Laux Mass and the Sacraments course default, but the  Fr. Laux course is still available as an option.

The Early Church and the Fathers course is a mix of history and theology as it covers the history of the early Church. It also looks at the Church Fathers in-depth and explores the theological themes of their writings which, in turn, are the basis for much of our understanding of Sacred Tradition. I have been working on this course for a couple of years as project manager and editor with Frances Spear, the primary course author. (She did our popular Understanding the Scriptures course.)

While some sacramental theology is covered in the Fathers, we felt this course was more important than another course on the sacraments as the sacraments were already covered in extreme detail in the Catholic Doctrine course most students take in 9th Grade.

As with other aligned courses, Early Church and the Fathers could be done without the online materials, but the online course enhances it. That is especially true for this course because of the podcast lectures. The course text is an existing book by author Mike Aquilina, who also made a podcast covering most of the Fathers, and we have those podcast episodes present in the course.

Renaming English Courses

There are no significant content changes to English 10, 11, and 12, but those courses are renamed Literature and Composition II (English 9 had already been renamed Literature and Composition last year), Literary Interpretation, and British Literature, respectively.

Computer Programming

The course has been entirely changed. We shifted the programming language we teach from the outdated Visual Basic to the more common Python.