British Lit options: Sonlight? LLATL? others?

[StaceyL in Canada]

I'm still trying to figure out whether or not to run a co-op class on British Lit for next year. Son #3 will be grade 10. He's a strong reader, but still not terribly analytical. So--a few questions:

 

1) Am I correct in thinking that LLATL Gold is meant as only a semester study? (I had previously thought it was a year-long study). Has anyone ever combined it with LLATL Gold American for a year-long study? Or would you just add a bit to LLATL Gold British for a one-year course?

 

2) And what about Sonlight? It seems to be very intense--we could never cover that much material in a year. But if you have used it, did you like it? How much were you able to cover? Are the notes helpful? Is the guide worth the cost? Would you recommend this program?

 

3) I know Hewitt offers several one -semester British Lit courses, but I'd have to buy several guides in order to pick and choose the novels/ plays to cover (I'm sure we don't want to spend an entire year, or even an entire semester, just on Shakespeare.) .

 

I would appreciate any advice based on your experiences with different programs of study. Even with my own background in lit, I always feel overwhelmed regarding the possibilities for high school level lit courses. Of course, we could always "wing it", using SparkNotes or something--but I'd so much rather not have to track down all sorts of info myself this time around! Thanks.

[Karen in CO]

I pieced together my own thing for British Lit., but for things already made, I'd probably choose Sonlight. I heavily used their list of books as guidance when I was working through my plan. I bought the LLATL Gold, and didn't really find it deep enough for us. Had I known at the beginning of the year what I would have to do to make a deep British Lit. course, I would probably have just gone with Sonlight.

 

Here is my reading and resource list. It is heavily based on my own and my son's preferences. And I really like the Hewitt for British Medieval time period. I wouldn't have been able to come up with my own for that period that was as good as theirs. I just didn't think that it was enough for even a whole semester's work for my ds. It did give us a great foundation for moving into later works.

 

The whole year, I felt like I should have some overall guide that gave me more information so that I wasn't constantly looking for the links to connect it together and put it in perspective. Doing my own thing let me choose the themes that I wanted to address and use literature that really could speak to my son.

Edited July 25, 2009 by Karen in CO

[StaceyL in Canada]

Thanks for the input. I saw that you included Literary Lessons from the LOTR as only a part of your British Lit study. I taught from that curriculum a few year ago in a co-op class; I'm not sure the students could have gone through the program in less than a full academic year, given the various side units. . Is your son a voracious reader? I actually was considering trying to combine LL from LOTR in one semester (I know it is possible) with some more British Lit to round out the year, but that would involve cutting back to some extent on the side units. And frankly, I'm just not a die-hard Tolkien fan and am not really all that keen on going through LOTR again. Are you going to slot in the medieval and Renaissance lit during your LOTR study, or after?

 

It's so hard to nail down what to cover--sigh. I wish I could compare all the curriculum guides out there, but who could afford that? : ) So many books, so little time.

[Karen in CO]

[quote name=StaceyL in Canada;1095738Is your son a voracious reader? Are you going to slot in the medieval and Renaissance lit during your LOTR study' date=' or after?

 

It's so hard to nail down what to cover--sigh. I wish I could compare all the curriculum guides out there, but who could afford that? : ) So many books, so little time.

 

Yes, he is way out there on the voracious reader scale. I still felt that I should have had him read more with this set of works. We did the Hewitt first, then started the LotR study and I combined the Beowulf units from both of them together. Then we continued with both of them until we finished. He finished the LotR right about mid year. I had originally planned to just use those two, but once I started, I realized that it wasn't enough for a full year for him.

 

After Christmas, we did a Shakespeare study with Hamlet as the focus mainly because it is my favorite and I was on a tragic hero type of thinking. And Hamlet is great for discussing Renaissance values and personal codes of conduct.

 

Milton was the most difficult for us and followed Hamlet. We again talked about values, choice, will and how Milton's work was critical of the values of his day.

 

Next we did Frankenstein. Again, it was not only a nice break from poetic forms, but it was an excellent vehicle to discuss the growing view of what it means to be a human and what does free will and choice mean to a person and to the society of the time. here we also compared the views and roles of women at the time - all the way back to Grendel's mother, the Green Knight's wife, Hamlet's mother, Eve and whoever that chic was in Frankenstein ;)

 

In all of the works we compared things like how free will, sin, and choice were portrayed and how that was relevant to the world of the time. How they changed over time in the works, especially things like heroism and what it means to be human.

 

Then we hit Coleridge and again the theme was evil, choice, and humanity.

 

Hmmm, then we jumped up to Dickens. Again with choice, good and evil. We even looked for a more modern definiton of a hero.

 

And since I still had more year left than books - we read Follett and compared the character's actions to characters in stories that were actually written during that time. We also just enjoyed comparing his more modern descriptions to the way that Dickens described people and places. And we talked again about the idea of a hero and good/evil and free will and choice.

 

I think that had I started out planning this much, I might have done it differently, but as it turned out I was able to add more excellent books as we went that naturally lent themselves to finding this definition of what it means to be a human and how that idea has changed over time.

 

Hmm, so what was your question?

[StaceyL in Canada]

Thank you again--very helpful thoughts. I like your thematic approach to these works across time. Could I ask how old your son was when you covered all this? I recall reading The Pillars many years ago, but can't imagine handing that to my grade 10 son (lots of graphic, explicit scenes, if I recall correctly).

 

I've been mulling over just where to start with British Lit, and am tempted to go back to Beowulf again. Here's what I'm tentatively thinking:

 

--Beowulf

--a bit of Chaucer (And some info about the development of the English language; when we did LL form LOTR, we took a class to watch an excerpt from The Story of English on British dialects. Sadly, our library no longer has these tapes. Wonder if I could find them on DVD?)

--Shakespeare-maybe Hamlet (I like your idea of including R&G Are Dead)

--not sure about Milton; I read PL in university and it was slow going even then.

--some Austen--Emma?

--Frankenstein (even though my oldest son detested it when he had to read it; I think it's great for study)

--something by Dickens--was thinking of something not quite as challenging/ dark as Tale of Two Cities; maybe Great Expectations

--possibly C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet

--possibly P. D. James' The Children of Men

--and some poetry sprinkled throughout the year (did you cover any of Shakespeare's sonnets?)

 

Oh, but that still leaves out so much. Yet I have to consider the level/ abilities/ interests of the potential students too (including my son). Given this sort of list, would it be a good idea to get hold of Sonlight's Br. Lit guide for the sections on what I might cover?

[Karen in CO]

My son was had just turned 18 at the time we read this.

We skipped Austen because I don't like reading her (shhhh)

I think C.S. Lewis is a great addition and I think Out of A Silent Plant might be great with Children of Men .

 

We covered Chaucer in Hewitt and skipped Shakespeare's sonnets because we had studied many sonnets over the course of poetry in the previous years. We didn't add more poetry in because much of what we read was poetic already - Beowulf, Chaucer, Sir Gawain, Hamlet, Paradise Lost, Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. By the time we were to Shelley and Dickens, we were happy if we never read another line of British verse. We also covered the development of language in LLtLOTR. It was a nice little section and my son has a great interest in linguistics so this was good for us.

 

Since there were so many great things to choose from, I think having a set of themes helped me to narrow my focus and let me have something to use as a guideline for what to include. I think many of my ideas about the theme came from reading Bloom - he is a big Hamlet fan and I have read much of his commentary on it through the years so I knew that I would include that. So my theme choices kind of grew from my desire to include Hamlet and use the Bloom commentary.

 

 

I don't know about Sonlight's guide for you now. I would only use it instead of planning my own. If you already have ideas about what to include then I would just use sparknotes or pinkmonkey notes or something similar.

 

And PL is Slllloooowwwww. It was one of the more difficult things I have ever read - and its not my first time. I like having something to struggle with, but you can have a reat BL with out getting bogged down by it.

 

Great Expectations would be my first choice for a teen boy especially. Tale is awesome, but dark. I think it is best used in a history rotation for French Revolution.

[Julie of KY]

 

www.excellenceinliterature.com has a year long British lit study. It is intended for independent study and internet research and to be discussed with an adult.

[Michelle in AL]

I use and really like The Center for Learning Curriculum units. They have one for just Brit Lit and others for individual novels. The questions really have the class dig deeper than just your basic discussion ?'s.

 

Here's the web site: http://www.centerforlearning.org

 

I usually have the class break into groups of 4 and complete the handouts, this gets them discussing ideas with each other.

 

I would very carefully look at several examples before buying though. Some people don't like the style, I have several and have liked them all.

[StaceyL in Canada]

There appear to be two volumes on British Literature (I and II), but each one then has links to other studies on individual works (Beowulf, Macbeth, etc). So what is in the actual Br Lit volumes? Do you need those as well as the individual studies to cover any of the given texts? Or do you purchase one or the other?

[Michelle in AL]

I was confused by the same thing. I think they have some of the same exercises as the individual book guides, but I'm not sure. I've only bought the individual guides.

I have:

The Odyssey

The Once and Future King

Beowulf

Till We Have Faces

 

If you like them I'd call and ask. I would hope if you purchased the Brit Lit volumes you wouldn't need the individual units, but I'd still ask to verify.

[Michelle in AL]

Hi Stacey, I went back and looked at the sample from Brit Lit 1. The handout sample about "Heroes in Beowulf" lines up with the page #'s in the Brit Lit TOC. So I'd assume that would be a true sample from Brit Lit 1. The Brit Lit book looks to have a couple worksheets of discussion questions for each book, where as a novel unit would have 30+ handouts.

[Alyce]

they have a British Literature unit you might like 2) I put together my own. I picked the books I wanted and then found lit guides for them. I wanted more than summary notes so I didn't use sparknotes. Instead I looked at Progeny Press guides, SMARR (they sell their guides individually) and Glencoe Literature Guides (they are free and look pretty good) I ended up with guides for all but 4 books out of the 12 we chose. For those books I'll have him read them and then we'll just do oral discussion and perhaps some kind of report.

[Peela]

I have LLATL Gold American Literature and it has 36 lessons with 5 parts each for each day of the week. That looks like a year long course to me.

My daughter is enjoying it and getting a lot out of it.

[SusanAR]

I have the first vol of British Lit from the Center for Learning. Is there something I can check for you?

 

susan

[StaceyL in Canada]

Thanks--I was just wondering what the difference is between the larger volumes of British Lit (I and II) and the individual study units. Do the larger volumes cover all the same novels/ texts as the individual units, but in less depth?

[Michelle in AL]

Do the larger volumes cover all the same novels/ texts as the individual units, but in less depth?

 

It appears that way. In the Brit Lit volume you may have 3-7 exercises per novel. In the individual novel units you may have 30+. So which one you want depends on how much material you need. I generally cover 2 exercises in class. Most exercises are discussion ?'s that take about 15-20 minutes to complete. I cover a book over several weeks so I need more material. You could use the Brit Lit book as a jumping off point and gather other material on your own.

[StaceyL in Canada]

Thanks, Michelle; and thanks to everyone for the replies. I always tend to "overthink" these issues, but it's helpful to know what options are available.