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History of the Ancient World


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Hello,

 

If you've used this(SWB's History of the Ancient World) for your high school history, what do you think?  Are there samples online of the study guide?  I looked at TWTM website, but didn't see a link for samples, but  not sure if I just missed it or not.  What is the overall workload like? 

 

Thanks.

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Amazon has samples. I spent quite a bit of time looking at samples there last night. :) The book was so engaging I didn't want to stop reading. I look forward to the answers to your other questions, and if I can ask one more...

 

Does the study guide give suggestions for essay topics?

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Ok, thanks! Amazon definitely has samples!

 

Another question, though...how do you pace this?  There are 85 chapters.  In a 36 week school year, we'd be looking at 2-3 chapters per week.  The chapters don't look that long, so is this reasonable? 

 

Also, with SOTW, we always added additional history reading.  I feel like that is still necessary in that I like to read more than one version of history.  I'd love to know how others use this book and what your high school history looks like with it.

Edited by tmstranger
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This is our 2nd year in the series. We cover 2-3 chapters in the book, but this year my ds only does 1 chapter in the workbook. I had to balance his workload and physics and algebra 2 are sucking up a lot of time. As it is, the reading and writing of one chapter works out to 5 hrs a week for ds. I feel fine calling that a credit.

 

There are short answer questions for each chapter; quite good questions, in fact. They could be adapted to be essay questions just by requiring a longer answer.

 

We are happy with the series. It is a similar format to a few of my undergrad history and international relations classes....using a text instead of a textbook and using definition, short answer and the occasional essay questions.

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We're using it this year.  In fact, I am reading Chapter 15 right now.

 

We try to cover 3 chapters a week.  We have some short weeks so in the end it works out to 2-3 per week.  Dd does do sections 1-3 of the study guide for each chapter.  The section 3 questions can be used for essay writing.  

 

Dd also reads from and writes about the Great Books list as closely to the history timeline as I can manage as part of her English/History block of 2 credits.  This includes referencing other spines and timelines as she researches the book she is reading at any given time.

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Sorry to have so many questions!

 

Thank you so much for those who have responded so far.  My son is in 8th grade, so I'm trying to get together a rough overview of what HS *could* look like. 

 

I revisited TWTM 4th edition to see her recommendations, and it looks like she suggests HOTAW in 9th followed by BOTH HOTMW and HOTRW in 10th.  How is this even possible?  It just sounds like so much.  I guess for transcript purposes, I could write it the way she suggests, but schedule the 3 books over 2 years figuring 1.5 books each year? 

 

Is this how others have done it? 

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We used this last year. We did 3 chapters a week. Dd answered most of the section 1 and 2 questions orally as we covered the material in a socratic discussion type of format. Writing it all would have been way too much for her as she is dysgraphic. Every other week I had her pick from several of the section 3 options of the chapters we had covered and had her expand on it. 

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We used the History of the Ancient World and the Medieval World, one per year, along with the study guide but also included videos from The Teaching Company (The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World and a couple others) to supplement then read works for Literature to go with each era (mostly from The Bedford Anthology of World Literature corresponding to the time period being studied). Dd generally did 2-4 chapters per week.

 

I have all the materials to do the same with the Renaissance but dd is now doing DE and getting her history credits through the college. 

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I know she's working on another that she recently posted about on Facebook.  I do not know the estimated publication date, though. 

 

My biggest thing is that I only have FOUR years of high school, and in these THREE books, I only get through 1453.  At a rate of one book each year, we'll miss all of modern history. 

 

TWTM seems to suggest book 2 and 3 during year 2, but that seems like so much, and I'm not sure it's doable for us.  On the other hand, I really like the books and SWB's style, which is what we're used to.  I don't know what else I'd use...

 

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I agree on books 2 and 3. I posted the same question here 2 yrs ago when I was getting ready for 8th grade. So what we have done is Ancient World in 9th and are doing the Medieval World in 10th. Then we will do the Renaissance World in 11th. Then we will pick up with her American History and Govt. recommendations in 12th grade. I know she has other books listed for those.  If we miss some years in between, I am not going to sweat it. She will continue on with the Great Books reading and writing history summaries on them with each reading ala WTM, so that will likely pick up some of the missing years. 

 

We don't use the study guides. We just do as in WTM. I have the 3rd edition. In it she has them answer 4 questions on each chapter, so my dd reads 1 chapter a day and answers the 4 questions for her notebook. I actually photocopied the 4 things she is to answer straight from WTM and taped to the front her her history binder. Those are her daily notes. This actually only happens 2-3 times a week too. So the Ancient World was read over the summer too, but SOTW was always like that for us. We could never finish in a "school year." Then she reads the great books. For each book she reads the appropriate section from The Well Educated Mind and does a history context page on it before she starts the reading. She uses the Timelines Book that WTM recommends and a history encyclopedia to read up on bits from it to write her one page paper there. Then after she finishes a book she is to write a page or two on it for the great books section of her notebook. 

 

I am requiring one history page a month. So if she isn't in a spot where she is currently writing a history context summary of a book, then she takes the notes that she writes up from the History of the Ancient World (this year the Medieval World,) and picks a topic to research more and then writes on that. She uses an online encyclopedia and our history encyclopedias for that. Or she can check out a book on that topic. Last month she was finishing up the History of the Ancient World from 9th grade, so she wrote her summary on Spartacus's revolt. This month she is well into the History of the Medieval World and just finished reading Beowulf, so for her history context paper, she wrote about what was happening around the time Beowulf was recorded. 

 

Hope that helps. It is how we are doing our best to follow WTM history/great books around here. History is one area that since the beginning has just gone the best for me and been the simplest when I do WTM ways.  I don't get hung up on if we finish a book or not, and we do lots of rabbit trails. We have a ton of history/art projects going on this year. Other years we don't and just stick to the books. But WTM gives a simple enough framework. 

 

I don't see how both books could be covered in a year, unless it was reading a couple of chapters a day, every day, and we just don't have that kind of time for it here. 

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I know she's working on another that she recently posted about on Facebook.  I do not know the estimated publication date, though. 

 

My biggest thing is that I only have FOUR years of high school, and in these THREE books, I only get through 1453.  At a rate of one book each year, we'll miss all of modern history. 

 

TWTM seems to suggest book 2 and 3 during year 2, but that seems like so much, and I'm not sure it's doable for us.  On the other hand, I really like the books and SWB's style, which is what we're used to.  I don't know what else I'd use...

 

Looking at this from the other end of high school, we really like SWB's style also, but didn't have all the books available.  For older dd, only Ancients was available.  We used what we could of SWB's books, and then switched to other things.  In our case, we switched over to dual enrollment classes.  We were okay with holes and/or overlaps in our timeline since we'd already gone all the way through in earlier grades.

 

An important thing to me is that my kids not be averse to picking up and reading her future books "just for fun" as they come out, continuing to learn throughout their lifetimes.  As a matter of fact, younger dd was reading the newest of the books (doing homework) during a rehearsal one day, and an older non-student person in the cast (adult in their 30s) started talking about how he had recently bought and read the same book  -- he assumed that she, too, had just picked it up as fun, leisure reading -- dd got living proof that these don't have to be relegated to "textbook" status, and that people really do like learning new things even after they graduate.  :laugh:

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We are also going to move on to american history and government using other materials....  My son knows his history.  What I'm asking him to do is recognize patterns in history, understand the background to the current events of today, and analyze a book to be able to effectively answer short answer questions.  In other words, I am less worried about content and more concerned with analysis.  Does that make sense? That's really what I think the high school years should be about anyway---honing those analytical skills because the foundation of content is already there.

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We don't use the study guides. We just do as in WTM. I have the 3rd edition. In it she has them answer 4 questions on each chapter, so my dd reads 1 chapter a day and answers the 4 questions for her notebook. I actually photocopied the 4 things she is to answer straight from WTM and taped to the front her her history binder. 

 

Would you mind sharing what these questions are?

 

I just passed my 3rd edition on to our local library after I upgraded to the 4th edition.

 

We are currently using the study guide but it is very laborious and I'm not sure it is the best fit for my dd.

 

Nevermind!  I found the four question in my edition.  I was thinking of something else entirely.

Edited by skimomma
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Would you mind sharing what these questions are?

 

I just passed my 3rd edition on to our local library after I upgraded to the 4th edition.

 

We are currently using the study guide but it is very laborious and I'm not sure it is the best fit for my dd.

 

Nevermind!  I found the four question in my edition.  I was thinking of something else entirely.

I guess not all questions, but these are the 4 things: I am not putting word for word as I don't want to be breaking and rules.

 

1. list of important dates

2. names of 2 or 3 important individuals in the chapter

3. 3 or 4 events that stand out from the chapter 

and 4. 2 events, people, or ideas you'd like to investigate further. 

 

So it is very similar to logic stage, but just straight recorded in list form instead of a separate timeline. Then when she chooses something to write from these, she has a starting point. 

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  • 3 years later...
On 10/27/2017 at 9:49 AM, tmstranger said:

REALLY helpful information everyone!  If anyone else uses this series for high school, I'd love to hear from you, too!! Thank you so much.

We have used HOTW Ancient History this past year along with the student workbook and it's been very challenging!! My oldest (9th) has enjoyed the book, but said the amount of writing (as described in the workbook) takes so much time that it's harder to get other work done so we are going to follow the other advice mentioned above (answering the 4 quest. from SWB and writing one paper for the month). She has really enjoyed the cartography and is doing well making her own maps so we will continue that portion! My ds (8th) started it this year but much slower so he could get a jump start on high school since the books are so long. I would recommend following the advice from SWB and skipping the large portion of the workbook (or not buy) and just tracing the maps (the directions are in the workbook however). I hope this helps!

 

Also, SWB mentioned she is working on Modern History of the World. However, with each book needing a solid year, I wondered how to add in Am Govt and Economics. Here's my plan: 11th grade: just read the Renaissance book and do the maps (with little to no extra writing), and then add in an American Govt book; and do the same for 12th grade with Modern book adding in an Economics book. The Govt/Econmics are each 1/2 credit so broken up over a year they might not add too much time and work!!

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  • 7 months later...

Ok, zombie thread, but where in the world does SWB recommend only tracing the maps and not doing the analysis work for a high school level student? Source, please @KimBob
 

Fwiw, an update as four years have passed….Ds went on to university and was well-prepared for his coursework. My son in public school is getting little analytical work in high school social studies. We are coming back to this book and workbook to build up those skills with a summer mini-seminar. There’s no way I would settle for just having my kid read a chapter and trace a map. 

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