Preview of The American Odyssey K12 for 8th Grade History

[Ms Brooks]

• This book is big and heavy. More pages than either of the three volumes of The Human Odyssey. 1024 pgs. including index.

 

• 41 chapters from prehistory to 2008. Contents include primary source documents and historical close-up of an event.

 

• Ch. 1 overview: Key questions begin the chapter. Inset boxes with maps, images, or interesting sidebar information. Some boldfaced vocabulary words defined on same page. No end of chapter questions.

 

• All chapters follow the same pattern. Primary source documents are woven into the chapters e.g., diary/journal entries, observations, narratives, etc.

 

• Historical Close-up-deeper investigation of an event-"What Happened in Salem and Why?" "The Iran Hostage Crisis-Why?"

 

• Chapters are long and dense. This would be a good choice for a strong reader with good summary skills. Key questions at the beginning of the chapter could be used to assess comprehension.

 

• Using this book will take some planning to compete in 9-10 months. More challenging than A History of US. 

[Momto6inIN]

We're planning on it for high school USH. It is way too in depth for my middle schoolers, so we'll probably stick with History of US for them.

[SilverMoon]

K12 considers American Odyssey to be an 11th grade text. I think they use their World History after the Human Odyssey series.

 

I used the Landmark History of the American People with lots of supplementation on my last round through middle school American history.

[redsquirrel]

Yeah, it's a big book and used for late high school in K12.  I actually really like the book, but maybe not for a 7th or 8th grader.

 

Of course the Human Odyssey books are used in K12 for late middle school-early high school and here they are generally used for years 5-8.

 

 

[Laurel-in-CA]

I was going to use it for 8th, thinking it followed on A Human Odyssey vol. 1-3, but when I looked at it I decided my dd wasn't ready and I wasn't ready to make her do it.

 

We're doing a year of civics in 8th grade, and we'll save American Odyssey for US history in high school.

[MinivanMom]

For those of you who have seen the book in person, do you think it would be too much for an 8th grader that really loves history? I'm talking about a student that reads adult history books and biographies for fun (Alison Weir & Antonia Fraser-level books).

[Momto6inIN]

For those of you who have seen the book in person, do you think it would be too much for an 8th grader that really loves history? I'm talking about a student that reads adult history books and biographies for fun (Alison Weir & Antonia Fraser-level books).

 

I do think a motivated 8th grader could do it, it's certainly not beyond my 8th graders' reading level or anything like that.

 

But there's just so much info there that I'm not sure there would be room for much else if you're using that as an 8th grade history course - at least not for people like me, who don't want to spend more than an 45 minutes to an hour a day 4 days a week on history in 8th grade. Maybe you spend more time than that with a history loving kid and so would have a different focus and amount of time to spend. But a kid who reads biographies and such for fun might find using just a textbook kinda boring, even though IMO it's a pretty well-written and interesting textbook.

 

Just my 2 cents. :)

 

[Ms Brooks]

For those of you who have seen the book in person, do you think it would be too much for an 8th grader that really loves history? I'm talking about a student that reads adult history books and biographies for fun (Alison Weir & Antonia Fraser-level books).

 

This is a meaty book, but I do not think it beyond an 8th grader with good reading skills. Reading is not the hard part. The challenge is how to frame the chapters so topics can be discussed or written about so that reading does not become a passive activity. As I said in my overview, there are questions at the beginning of each chapter that could be answered by the reader. I am going to use this with my 8th grader because I found A History of US too busy on the page. 

[Luckymama]

For those of you who have seen the book in person, do you think it would be too much for an 8th grader that really loves history? I'm talking about a student that reads adult history books and biographies for fun (Alison Weir & Antonia Fraser-level books).

We used it in dd's 8th grade year. It was an excellent history year :)

 

I added in a number of documentaries, most of which were from the PBS American Experience series. We watched some online and some we checked out from our library.