Reading/Literature

[Laura Cook]

Hello! I am new to these forums and TWTM. I have very young children but am already looking forward to the future for what we might want to do. I have been sifting through catalogs and websites (so much fun!) and I ran across many reading and literature curriculums. Do we need to do something like this or can we just read good books? Would we be missing something vitally important if we choose not to use a reading curriculum? I remember using programs like this in public school. That is where I learned about the parts of a story, protagonist, antagonist, comprehension, etc. The kids at school either hated them, loved them or just didn't care. I loved them, mostly because I used it as a jumping off point to find more whole books to read! I LOVE to read and it is one of my deepest wishes that my children will LOVE to read as well. Are there other books that would cover the same sort of information using a whole book and not an excerpt? Thanks so much for taking the time to read this! :001_smile:

[Jayne J]

Now, I'm not there yet either, so take this for what it is worth, but...

I think reading comprehension type books are only really necessary because PS teachers cannot talk to their students one on one to see if they really understand what they are reading. My feeling is that if you bring these things (protagonist/antagonist/motivation/parts of story etc) into conversation with your children as they go about their literature reading, a formal study isn't really needed. And if you talk to your children as they are reading, ask them questions and listen, you can probably gauge their understanding very easily. The rest is just vocabulary (what is a protagonist?).

The caveat is that if your children will be taking standardized tests, they should have some practice with reading comprehension type exercises.

[MIch elle]

We use CLE (Christian Light Education) readers only in grades 1-3. My oldest used CLE reading program for grades 7 & 8 with the workbooks (lightunits). I'm very glad he did CLE reading to prepare him for high school English literature.

 

I highly recommend CLE reading with the lightunits in grades 4 & up. See samples and scope & sequence charts at clp.org Do a board search to read all about CLE reading.

[Carol in Cal.]

I read to her from the beginning, and promised her that even when she learned to read I would still read to her. She is almost 13 (gasp) and I'm keeping my word. When she was young, at the end of each chapter I would summarize what had gone on before when we started a new reading session. So she learned to summarize very naturally. At some point I gradually shifted that responsibility over to her, and she started that verbally.

 

We also discussed books that we had read together or that we had both read when we drove around in the car.

 

I participated in a Junior Great Books coop with her through about 6th grade, and so there was a fair amount of guided inquiry involved. It was good for her to have that discussion available to her.

 

In about 5th grade, I bought a book called "Figuratively Speaking" and started to use it as an outline to teach literary terms. In 6th I organized a middle school literature group that met monthly to discuss a literary work each time. For our first meeting, I used Rafe Esquith's summary of literary terms applied to the movie "Wizard of Oz" to teach the main ones, and then added more of them each month. Since we just included them in the discussions, the retention was good. We also started to use the logic stage questions from TWTM to study other works.

 

I hoped to do LLLOTR this year, but so many other opportunities came up that we didn't get very far with it. However, although there is a lot more to it than this, it does include a gentle introduction to literary terms, and so that might be a decent fallback if you don't want to spend a lot of time on them earlier in your homeschool career. Also, Reading Strands has a pretty decent list that introduces a lot of them.

 

I try to walk a fine line between using this material to enhance understanding and enjoyment of literature and beating it to death. In general, I don't think that we analyze more than about 1/4 of the reading that DD does. I want her to be free and able to love reading. When she starts coming to me and saying that she wants to talk about a book in a literary way more often, I'll up it. I'm not holding my breath, though.

[NicA]

I am also new to all of this! My daughter is 3 1/2, and this fall we are going to try out Sonlight P3/4. It is basically just reading a lot of stories that I already wanted to buy anyway. It seemed like a good way to get started with homeschooling without being overwhelming for her.