We're following a "classical approach" to literature and history, much like the WTM: ancient, then continuing chronologically from there. I was wondering if people had some good suggestions. I sometimes struggle to come up with good writing prompts and want to be sure I'm having reasonable expectations. We're in the middle of ancient literature and ancient history now, and I'm also thinking ahead to next year, though we have a ways to go. I'm mostly thinking of a weekly writing assignment to accompany a time period or piece of literature rather than a research paper. At least for us it seems better to stick to limited topics, such as a single or two works of literature, and avoid topics requiring internet research since that can be a huge time sink (although fine for a research paper). My goal is to practice writing while analyzing history or literature, and move beyond primarily writing assignments primarily for the sake of teaching writing. A lot of our literature is in the Norton Anthology of World Literature, and I do have the useful accompanying book Teaching With the Norton Anthology: World Literature; there are a few writing suggestions there, but I could use a lot more. I'd prefer not to buy a "course guide" for history or literature with worksheets or short exercises -- really just looking for writing prompts that won't end up being a research paper . Does this make sense? Suggestions for writing prompts? (One or many.) Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I've been picking up older editions (Classic edition and Pegasus edition mostly, but I also have one in an even older "Cardinal Newman Edition") of the Adventures in Literature texts from Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. I'm pretty sure this is a text that I used at least one of my high school years. I like them because they have pretty good literature selections, some intro material that places the work into its time, comprehension and study questions. It looks like they go in the following order: Adventures in Reading Adventures in Appreciation Adventures in American Literature Adventures in English Literature (ie, British lit) I am starting with Adventures in Reading as a basis for teaching literature and critical writing. I may spread this one out over the course of a year and a half, supplementing with some of the longer works that we're picking up in TOG (like Gulliver's Travels). So it will end up being Freshman lit for one son and 8th grade for the other. I haven't seen a teacher guide yet. I'm not sure how much it would add, but they do seem to be available on Amazon used. FWIW, I did preview a newer edition at a used book store. I think this is the Pegasus edition. I wasn't impressed with this one, which filled many more pages with illustrations, sidebars and other graphics. It also had far less "English" literature because every section also had a lot of parallel world literature. (There is a place for that within comparative lit, but it seemed like the overall result was to lose a lot of what I consider major works of British lit that I'd like my kids to have encountered.) I thought these might be good options for folks looking for literature texts.

I'm not sure if I should put this here or on the chat board. It relates to high school, but it may be more of a commentary/vent about homeschoolers in general. So, I've been planning on doing a high school lit club to for the literature part of high school English. (She is doing a couple of BraveWriter classes and some other writing for the composition portion.) I had done this with my older kids and it worked fairly well, provided I had other students/parents who were treated it as a priority. I've never been a fan of "you must study these books because ... the powers that be, in their Ivory Towers, have deemed them great." I've usually tried to keep things interesting while including some books that have depth and still make a slight nod to those "top 100 books to read before college" lists. I really need to do a group for this for a few reasons. 1. I am way out of my league when it comes to literature. Don't get me wrong. I love to read, and I love to discuss books. But I just don't see things the way English majors see things. 2. We need something to keep us accountable so that we don't let things slide. A real risk since I am kind of burnt out at the end of my homeschooling journey 3. Dd, who is attending high school part-time, learns best when she has other people on the journey and she wants to continue to have ties to the homeschool community. Dd15 wants something meaty this year. She has her own list of what she wants to read before graduating high school and many are on those top 100 lists. We looked through some Great Courses courses and decided to do some American literature using Great American Best Sellers as a base (adding and subtracting where we see fit, substituting films and maybe adding poetry.) I had let people know a few weeks ago (before deciding on anything) that I was planning on doing a group and am only now getting around to the planning part. I had discussed this plan with a friend who had expressed interest in having her high-school-aged son join us. But, I feel that she is pressuring me to only include books her son is "interested in." I know this boy and his interests are pretty limited and I feel like this will water down what we do this year. Dd wants to be stretched. Partly because she feels somewhat inadequate compared to what she hears her high school friends are doing (probably perception only because I hate the English department at our local, highly regarded high school.) And partly because she has an intellectual curiosity that I want to encourage. Part of me wants to say "Hey, we have different goals. You do your thing, I'll do mine." But, I have my doubts about how many people would be willing to join us, partly due to the fact that the available pool of homeschooled teens tend to come from very religious, conservative homes and their parents don't approve of people like me who don't only hang out with evangelical Christians (and I'm certain that they would not approve of my book list not that it is terribly offensive - much milder than our high school, but has some meaty and difficult topics.) And partly because the rest of them are so independent that it is like herding cats (feral ones at that) to get them all on the same page. Any advice/commiseration?

I need some advice/discussion/alternative ideas about how to "do" literature. Not what to read, or how many books, but the actual mechanics. What does a lit/English class look like at your house? My kid is only a 7th grader, but she is definitely ready for more than just reading a book and having the basic Logic-stage discussion and writing about one of the WTM Lit Analysis questions. I'm experimenting with different things, and reading up on different philosophies of how to teach lit, but I'd love to hear from some of you about how you do it. We don't do any worksheet-typed stuff for lit, and I'm not interested in doing that - no end of chapter or end of book comprehension questions. We talk about the books, I know she's read them, so I don't need anything like that. My goal is for us to be having deeper discussions about the books, and for her to write about them. I realize I can (should be able to?) do this without a curriculum. But I have been trying out various study guides to try and help me deepen the discussion beyond the very surface level. And so far what I've tried hasn't worked too well. We tried a couple of the Garlic Press lit guides, and it was just too much - overkill - for one book. We also tried LLLOTR (just the chapter notes) and a similar home-made guide for The Hobbit. I look at some of the Progeny Press guides, and the depth of questions they contain really appeals to me. But - this approach, discussing after each chapter or every few chapters, really doesn't seem to work for us. It breaks up the story, it bogs down, it makes the book into a chore rather than a joy. Not what I'm trying to accomplish! I was reading MCT's parent guide for one of the lit trilogies and it was reminding me that if our lit study practice results in *less* love of reading and literature, we are failing. So, I need to do something different. If you use lit guides, how do you use them? If you don't use lit guides, how does lit disucssion/writing work at your house? I guess I should go back to the basics - read the book to the end, have a discussion, have her write a paper. Do your students write about all the books that you study in lit class (I'm not talking about independent reading, just books you read and discuss together). I have the idea that this is the right way to go about it, but then my dd is also doing writing assignments from a writing program, as well as writing in history and science, so it feels like too much writing to write about every book and to write weekly in the other subjects, too. There is also the issue that my dd is just learning to write essays this year, so getting assigned to create and execute a thesis-driven essay is actually a pretty huge task for her, and it takes time. So writing assignments keep lagging behind the reading, and we're getting behind ourselves. Do we just let writing about some books go? If your student does writing across the curriculum, are they writing in all their classes at the same time, or do they alternate? Do you alternate intentionally/on a schedule, or some other way? Reading back through this post, it sounds muddled. I guess what I'm basically looking for is advice on two things: 1) How to step it up in lit studies without killing the joy 2) How to manage writing across the curriculum assignments - quantity, pacing, subjects, etc. ETA: I'm asking here on the HS board because I'd love to hear about what you did in junior high to get ready for high school, as well as what you are doing now in high school. I always do better at planning when I see where I'm going in a year or two, as well as where I am now.

I'm leaning towards using Stobaugh's World Literature and American Literature for high school. There are recently revised editions (2010-2012), so the previous (2005) edition is super cheap. So I'm just wondering if it's worth the extra money to buy the most current edition? Anyone know what has been changed? Thanks. Ashley

Mainly focused on the era from Civil War - present? I know this has been discussed, but I can't find the right threads with this search function.

I found a cool resource for literary periods and analysis. A Guide to the Study of Literature The page from this site for the whole course (Emergence of Modern) has a syllabus, writing guide, sample essays, sample midterm and study guides for some of the authors studies. This page by the same prof has even more examples of essay assignments and sample essays.

We use TOG. Pride & Prejudice was assigned. I figured my ds would balk. He did. To compromise I let him dump the book and we ordered the movie from Netflix - the miniseries actually, with Colin Firth. (Sigh.) Anyway, he hates it too. He says (rather dramatically I might add) that he would rather shoot himself than have anything to do with this book or movie. In fact, he is now CLEANING HIS BATHROOM WITHOUT BEING ASKED, rather than watch the DVD. He is a voracious reader - almost always has his face in a book. There are only a few other books in his lifetime that he has acted this way about and I have let him off the hook. I want to let this go, to save both of us the agony, but I am feeling guilty. He's a guy and a future science major, do I really need to press him on this?

I picked up a couple Stobaugh books last week. I have both the teacher and student editions of British Lit and the teacher edition of Literary Analysis. Has anyone used these, who can give me some feedback, tips, suggestions, even warnings? For the Literary Analysis book, it seems like the texts are all outside texts (Call of the Wild, Uncle Tom's Cabin, etc). What is in the student book? Are there explanations of things like the literary terms that the student is supposed to write about (for example naturalism). If I don't get the student book, are there other books that would be good companions? EX the Norton Essential Literary Terms book. Has anyone used the Stobaugh lit books and then done AP exams?

Situation 1. DD13 wants to do LL LOTR next year for English. This is supposedly a year-long course, I looked at the samples, descriptions, schedule. However, it seems to include only one work, i.e. it deals only with Tolkien. I am outsourcing English and she will be supervised by a tutor, however, tutor being like-minded, she also feels this LOTR inadequate amount of reading for the whole academic year, particularly in light of the fact that DD pretty much read it all once already so we are looking into additional readings. What have you found to be good supplementary readings for this course, which would somehow "logically" fit in? I would like to keep it as "English" as possible as it makes little sense to have her go through the type of readings that I normally would / will group with the chronological order of Italian and world readings in Italian. DD13 is a strong reader with a good command of English, though literature is not one of her favorite subjects. ALSO, how much time weekly LL LOTR generally takes? Situation 2. This year DD14 had a relatively loose, mishmash year regarding English: she read fairly difficult and diverse readings, but not really structured by any particular logic (mostly British literature this year - two Shax plays, Byron's poetry and Childe Harold, one Dickens, Milton's Samson - and some Yiddish and German works in English translation, some poetry, as well as her own free readings which I allowed her to group with "school" readings as I did not want to sweat this particular area this year). This kid LOVES reading. I need some sort of general idea of what to do with her English next year. Neither she nor I function well without some sort of a structure and some organization of material. I do chronological literature tied to History for Italian (which includes non-Italian readings too, though whenever we stumble upon something English in the upper years we intend to read it in English), and now we are still "finding ourselves" as to how to organize English. For now, I think I should favor the approach of thematical readings or readings organized by national literature, i.e. the way it usually done (you know: British literature, American literature, Some-theme in literature with mostly English spine, etc.), rather than applying WTM approach to English too. So I have a question, being that she already pretty much started "British literature" and feels it would be fine to continue with that by "rounding" it into a course, and also to have a break from the 2-year Ancients cycle she is trapped in for history, classics and Italian, how do I go about organizing that into a reasonable unit which she can complete next year? What do you find are important works to cover and is there a good spine you can recommend (not that we absolutely need one, but just in case you do know something good)? I talked to her as to what she wants to do, but she is generally undecided, has no particular focus and would like some general structure that would be mostly chronological. So... suggestions, experiences? Her tutor has a "you decide, I teach it" policy. Thank you in advance. :)

If you follow the classical cycle, and had to compete only one "year" of high school literature in the cycle, which would you choose. We use TOG, so if that's your spot, I'd love to hear from you. I'm thinking the "years" are: Ancients, Medieval/Renaissance, Early Modern, Modern My thoughts are to limit our literature studies for a math strong kiddo to one year and 1 credit. Then, if there are some Must Reads, we'll just pick 1 or 2 and read them over the summer w/o actual analysis assignments. Thank you!

I know this would be a rough estimate but how many books would you say a typical high school student should only read their books (for literature, history, philosophy,etc.) and discuss them with you? How many should be used for writing essays and studying more intently? Or a little of both for all of them? Also, would you vary this for each grade or keep the standard the same? From the WTM I read that the student does mainly this with each work for literature: Book Context Book Notes (which is mostly studying what type of work it is-genre-and how to read that type) Read the book Conversation with you Writing assignment Would you do this with every book in each grade or vary this? Also, for history would you do all the work for it plus have writing assignments on speeches and documents? I'm trying to get an idea of how much reading, writing and study of a book is needed. I know that some of this has to vary according to the student and family, but just some ideas of what others are doing would be very helpful. My dd will be in 8th next year and while I am raising the bar for her again, I want to do so gradually and fairly and based on where we need to be in 12th. I can then adjust this down with the end goal in mind. (Hope that makes sense...:lol: Hope any of this makes sense...)