What are you doing/have you done for 7th grade literature? Goals?

[SJ.]

Up until next year my child has outsourced literature through a homeschool program at a local charter school. Next year we are on our own for literature. The current plan is to read books, both fiction and nonfiction, across history and science. But what about formal literature study?

 

I would love to hear what you are doing as well as the books your child will be reading. Also, what are your objectives for 7th grade literature.

 

Thanks!

[Zoo Keeper]

Listen to SWB's Literary Analysis audio, and then make your own reading lists based on what strikes your fancy from the list at WTM site or pick from Ambleside Online's lists (anything from year 4-7 might work for jr. high age, AO years do not equal grades), or poke around the lists at Sonlight, Build Your Library, or Classical House of Learning...

 

 

 

 

[Farrar]

I did very different things for my two boys. They have different needs.

 

For Mushroom:

Goal: Read more. He's just not a fast reader. And he just needs to read more. So I required more free reading time. It's been hit or miss. He does assigned reading about his study topics for school so he got in a good bit of nonfiction. He also wanted to do a topic about fairy and folk tales so he read a whole bunch of those and we did some short readings about literary archetypes and the purpose of fairy tales - he had a lot of rewrite the fairy tale type assignments. I required him to do two "household reads" - Sounder and A Long Walk to Water. So, both were short. I also had him do our one short story a month (I'll make a list below...). And we do regular poetry teas and went through some of the MCT poetry stuff a second time. We still read aloud some and do audiobooks together in the car. We discuss those together and they're usually meaty. Some books we've done have been the Seeds of America series and Stargirl.

 

For BalletBoy:

Goal: Learn literary terms, read more challenging literature, learn to answer longer questions about literature (as in, not just to write a review, which he can do, or answer factual questions about the book, but to write a paragraph about something like why did so and so do this, what examples were there of his decision making process?... he's still struggling with it).

 

I assigned him a short list of books in addition to his free reading time. I used the Glencoe lit guides to have him do questions and various other short response writings for the books. He did the one short story a month with us and poetry teas with some of the MCT poetry review. Of course, he also got read aloud to and listened to audiobooks with us. He also has been doing Figuratively Speaking.

 

BalletBoy's books:

Sounder

A Long Walk to Water

The Wednesday Wars

The Time Machine

Call of the Wild

Crash

 

Household short story list:

"A Sound of Thunder"

"To Build a Fire"

"The Tell-Tale Heart"

"Seventh Grade" by Gary Soto

"The Circuit" by Francisco Jimenez

"Hearts and Hands" by O Henry

"The Rules of the Game" by Amy Tan (this is actually just an excerpt from Joy Luck Club)

 

Ack... I'm forgetting the others... BalletBoy totally had like three more books and they both had another two short stories! It's blurring together too. Did we read "The Mustache" this year or last?

 

[tmstranger]

My 7th grader this year was given a list of required books to read.  He could read most of those at his own pace.  At the end, we discussed them and used questions based off of SWB's notes.  He did one Memoria Press guide for one of those assigned books just to have a different, more structured discussion. 

 

We are also reading together (well, I read aloud as a family) some of the classics from TWTM book list for this year, so we can discuss those as we go.

 

Beyond that, he has assigned free reading time each day and he reads every night at bedtime.  He reads a ton. 

 

For 8th grade, we are picking it up a little with more structured work.

[Lori D.]

We went with Lightning Lit 7 and also did Figuratively Speaking as a supplement/exposure to literary elements, and then practiced looking for the literary elements as we read in LL7. Our goals for 7th grade:

1. gently introduce gentle formal literature study and beginning literary analysis

2. start moving into gentle/beginning classic literature

 

We did LL7 aloud together, which helped make the transition into the step up of classic Lit., and allowed us to discuss while in the midst. LL7 is written directly to the student, so would be easy to do mostly solo by the student.

 

To go with our History (separate from the Lit.), I also had them solo-read a book they would pick once a month from a stack I had pre-selected that went with the particular focus of study for that year. And then of course, other required non-fiction and fiction reading daily for History during our school hours.

 

Free reading was on their own time, and was their own choice -- hence "free" to choose to read or not. When DSs picked up books for free time reading, it was mostly things like non-fiction magazines, or mysteries, or series like Harry Potter, Ranger's Apprentice, Percy Jackson, or Artemis Fowle. ;)

 

By high school, we totally were DIY with our formal Lit. studies.

Edited April 24, 2017 by Lori D.

[deerforest]

We really enjoyed Mosdos Jade for 7th. We also used Figuratively Speaking, which was fine, but I felt it was a little light. We're using Oak Meadow English 8 for 8th. 

[2_girls_mommy]

Different things for both of mine just because of their reading abilities in 7th grade. 

 

With my odd we did the Classical House of Learning Literature blog. In 5th grade she did the logic stage ancients readings all on her own. It is a list of about 16 books and has assignments for each that we did together. She did the entire program. 

 

For 6th and 7th grades, we slowed down and she did the logic stage middle ages reading list over the 2 years, 8 one year, 8 the next. 

 

My current 7th grader is working throught the logic stage ancients list now. Just because she is a slower reader with some dyslexic tendencies, she is going at a much slower rate. She has finished about half of the list this year. Most of them she has read on her own, but I have read a couple of them aloud to her instead.  We won't get to all on the list before we move on to middle ages next year, but we have gotten a decent chunk of them, and we will continue over the summer to get about 3/4 before we move on.

 

We have also done a Memoria Press lit guide for a Shakespeare play, but not in 7th for either child. We did it when one was in 6th and one was in 8th grade. It goes really deep, deeper than I would like on every novel. It would kill the reading joy, but to do one every once in awhile I think is good. 

[Soror]

7th grade was either this year or next....

 

This year we did BYL7 I didn't like their lit assignments. Mostly he just read the books and we talked about the some. Half-way through the year we did Teaching the Classics(with the Jill Pike syllabus that had some short stories to work through the concepts with) and at the end of the year we started Figuratively Speaking.

 

our list last year was mostly the BYL 7 list-

 

Next year we will be doing a program I found from a WTMer that I massively tweaked(replacing books that I didn't like or we had already done).Some books we will just read others we will be doing various amounts of analysis, some written, some oral.  We will be continuing with Socratic discussion ala Teaching the Classics and Figuratively Speaking  using short stories and picture books for examples. 

 

We do poetry time as a family. Ds will read plenty of other books for history and science as well.

 

Next year tenative list---(I might make some changes, it is on the easy side I know but we have some books that we've missed- I wanted to hit fantasy. We've done Hobbit as a RA a few years back but we are using the Garlic Press guide this time and going deeper, anyway easier books but we are going more in depth). I might take out Harry Potter and The Hero and the Crown. I thought about covering Frankenstein via the Grimly GN and then reading the original and To Kill a Mokingbird

 

Tuck Everlasting

The Hero and the Crown

The Giver

Harry Potter Order of the Phoenix

Esperanza Rising

Nimona- graphic novel

Sherlock Holmes(3 stories)

4 wks on poetry specifically

Short stories- The Golden Key & Smith of Wooton Major

Hobbit (with Garlic Press guide)

 

I haven't made my list of the rest of the short stories we will cover.

History/Science books-

Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, True Adv. Charley Darwin, Code Talkers, Rocket Boys, Hidden Figures, Seashell on a Mountain, Carry on Mr. Bowditch, Longitude, and more i haven't got that nailed down yet.

 

[tmstranger]

We're using Oak Meadow English 8 for 8th. 

 

This is what we're planning for next year, too. We've already read one of the books, and my son hated it, so I'm not making him read it again.  Instead, we'll take that time to cover a Shakespeare play. 

 

He's excited about the rest of the books on that list, so that will make it fun!

[Momto6inIN]

For 7th we have a long reading list that she had to read every day from. When she was done with each book she had to write a short summary paragraph with a sentence or two of evaluation included. She also did 2 Progeny Press lit guides.

Next year in 8th will be the same and adding Figuratively Speaking.

 

Sent from my Z988 using Tapatalk

[MerryAtHope]

We used a lot of Sonlight books and did not do any formal literature study. I continued to read-aloud to my kids, and we discuss literary elements informally (I might note my love of a certain description and re-read it so my kids could appreciate the artistry that the author used, or we might talk about elements of foreshadowing, or we might just discuss what interests or amazes or intrigues us while we read). For their readers, we discussed what interested my kids, and I asked questions based on what they said. We might have very brief discussions, or we might have a longer, meatier discussion. When needed or important, we discussed the historical backdrop of a reader or read-aloud, or information about the author and the author's time-period, but only as it might enrich the book.

 

Sometimes I chose a section from a reader or read-aloud for copywork and taught both literary elements and some mechanics through that--here's an example for elementary ages.

 

My goals were to continue to foster a love of reading, to expose them to a variety of genres and authors, and to broaden their cultural and historical knowledge. I don't use literature guides until high school (and then only sparingly) and openly confess that I've never met a literature guide that I loved--I typically pick and choose questions to pull from them. I would like to meet a literature guide that I loved though!

[StillStanding]

Lightning Literature 7 and 8 are very good (because they were so good we also tried their high school level of American Lit. but it was a disappointment. It was just a list of reading comprehension questions and writing assignments. I wanted my child to learn literature analysis and how to write literature analysis papers. Windows to the World does this well).

https://www.hewitthomeschooling.com/Materials/mLightningLit.aspx

[SilverMoon]

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Edited July 12, 2022 by SilverMoon

[Penelope]

I use lists similar to TWTM logic stage lists, plus some others of my choosing. I don't entirely tie reading to the history cycle.

 

I try to alternate books that are less difficult with those that are more so. For things that are really a stretch, like Shakespeare or books where there is a lot more to chew on, we might read some of it together, where we take turns reading aloud.

[Momto4inSoCal]

We are using Lightening Lit 7. We went through figuratively speaking this year and we might go back through it again.