A quick English I (9th grade) course

[Laurie4b]

Ds (going to be a junior) got accepted into a public school program that is a hybrid of high school and community college. Problem was that we didn't do "English I and English II" but World, American, and Brit Lit. "American Lit" counts as junior level English III and Brit Lit as English IV. I counted World Lit as "English II" and could count "American Lit" as "English I" but would like to get ds out of the high school courses as soon as possible in this school because the schedule is much more rigid than when you're taking college courses. So we're trying to cram a minimalist English I into the summer.

 

Would this be enough for you to submit in good conscience as an English I course? (I'm trying to think: Not what is the best English 1 possible, but what is acceptable to call English I--KWIM?) He has had minimal Shakespeare, so I thought I would get in some of the lit we've skipped over the years. I'm putting in some deliberately quick lit readings because of time.

 

Blue Book of Grammar--complete

Vocabulary Cartoons--complete

Shakespeare: Watch while reading along 5 Shakespeare plays & discuss

Other lit: Animal Farm, The Giver, (either Brave New World or 1984), To Kill a Mockingbird

Writing: 10 essays (written in prep for the SAT)

 

Does that sound reasonable? Or is that too skimpy to really count? We could give it up now and just switch to American Lit=English I.

 

The only part ds hates is writing "stupid" essays. (He finds the SAT prompts to really be an obstacle. He's a deep thinker-type and writing a black and white essay that skim shallowly over an issue just bugs the patooty out of him. He keeps thinking of all the nuances that make his position in the essay not fully true. <sigh>) I chose to do that because his writing is good in general.

[Teachin'Mine]

That looks good to me!

[Laurie4b]

Thanks for weighing in!

[Chris in VA]

For a semester's credit (we did a summer semester with ds), we used Progeny Press' Poetry course and also read 50 Great Short Stories (that's not an exact title, but amazon has it and the accompanying study guide--the main book is edited by Martin Crane, so you can look it up that way). Perhaps you could do something like that--tho what you have seems fine.