Great Books Question

[Jeanine in TX]

What is the best way to read original great books with your child? We are just getting started, and I am a little unsure how to proceed.

 

Should my 7th gr dd read the Odyssey silently to herself and then we discuss each chapter later? Or, should we read it aloud? What are the advantages or disadvantages for each method? What is most realistic and/or enjoyable for two people (her and me)?

 

By the way, I feel comfortable discussing the book. I have read it and watched the Teaching Company lectures. I plan to use questions from TC's course guidebook for her weekly essay assignments.

[Nan in Mass]

We like reading aloud together. It goes more slowly that way, but a lot more discussion happens if you are both in the same place at the same time and can comment on things as you spot them or they occur to you. It is cozier. You build a common body of knowledge and inside jokes together. You develop a shortcut language. One person will say, "Like the door in Gilgamesh" and the other person will say, "Yah."

-Nan

[FloridaLisa]

What is the best way to read original great books with your child? We are just getting started, and I am a little unsure how to proceed.

 

I'm not sure there's a best way, but rather a preference. We both read aloud and read independently. Some books are great to read aloud because you can do voices and curl up together. I read Beowulf aloud, but then had my kids read a section on their own because I wanted them to get a feel for the poetry and the alliterations.

 

And then we read other works independently, coming together once or twice a week to discuss. It's usually a time factor for us -- we can get through a book more quickly when we read it on our own.

 

Lisa

[HeatherInWI]

We alternate. I have two who are working on the same books, so some days we read aloud together and discuss at the time and other days I assign a certain number of pages and then we discuss them later. Given a choice, they prefer reading it together so that any questions or ideas can be discussed right away. Also, if it's a book that's particularly hard to "get into", I often read the first chapter or so aloud to them to help suck them in. (And then there are the books that I detested in high school, and know that they will likely detest, but we have to read them anyway because they are "classics". Those, I just empathize with them.)

 

Heather, who really doesn't like Hemingway!

[Nan in Mass]

We skip those. : )

[Nan in Mass]

I probably should add that mine do some reading on their own, too - reading for social studies and natural history. The way great books worked with my older one was that the older one, the youngest, and I spent 4 years doing from ancients through the middle of the 1800's aloud together, which we counted as three years of great books on his transcript, and spread out over the same time and as summer reading, the older one read some science fiction, which we counted at the fourth year of literature. There were a few works that he listened to on tape by himself: Gilgamesh, The Aeneid, Huck Finn, and David Copperfield. We read the great books in chronological order except that whenever I was feeling bored or we only had a few days before vacation and didn't want to start something new, we did some poetry or a Shakespeare play. We recruited my mother or my husband for any plays, divided up the parts, and did a reading. I got extra copies from the library. We worked on a year of storytelling, which didn't appear on his transcript, and then did a year of writing, which also didn't appear on his transcript. Then he did a semester of speech and a semester of composition at the community college junior year. That showed up as a fifth year of language arts. He did a year of vocabulary which didn't show up on his transcript anywhere. We didn't do any grammar. We covered that during Latin. Don't be afraid to be creative with your scheduling.

-Nan

[Lori D.]

Here are two great past threads on doing The Great Books; the first includes several more really great past threads on this topic:

 

What are the benefits of doing a Great Books study vs traditional route

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=115693

 

Questions about how you do literature with high school (aloud or solo reading)

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=131961

 

 

Enjoy your literature journeys as a family! Warmest regards, Lori D.

[JennW in SoCal]

I want to give a plug for listening together to audio versions. I've read aloud many a book over the years, but have grown to love having someone else do the reading for us while we read along in our own copies. A good narrator can really break all those clause-clogged sentences into natural sounding phrases. And the more we've listened to these works, the more comfortable we are with the language of them, so tackling them independently isn't such an issue any more. We also can listen in the car so can make use of the long drives to outside activities.

 

Personally, I wouldn't have a 7th grader read the Odyssey independently. Read it together or find a good audio version of the translation you've chosen.

[Georgia On My Mind]

I like to both read independently and read aloud with my 9th grader. It depends on the book and the subject matter and our schedule. We are reading The Red Badge of Courage and we have found that reading it aloud together has given the 9th grader a chance to reflect on the thoughts of the main character and the wonderful literary elements in this book. We also read Scarlet Letter together aloud because of the subject matter. She read Little Women independently with discussion. Some books are better read alouds than others for entirely different reasons. Some I thought she would love to have read aloud, she asked to read mostly independently. We have read mostly Great Books for the last two years and now she loves reading all kinds of literature. She is loving Henry in The Red Badge of Courage and that has surprised me. I have always thought this to be a great boy's book when I was in the classroom. I guess I was wrong. Play it by ear at first and you will find the rhyme and reason for your student. (No pun intended.)

Edited January 22, 2010 by Georgia On My Mind

[Nan in Mass]

One more thing - We take turns reading aloud. The one doing the reading feels more free to stop and comment, so it is nice to take turns. The one doing the reading usually stops occasionally and summarizes, also. I never conciously taught my children to do this. I didn't even realize I did it until I heard my children doing it when they read aloud. Recently, I listened to my mother read a story to my 3yo nephew and figured out why I do it GRIN. "So the bunny got stuck in the tree. Ooh - I wouldn't like that, would you?" Reading aloud abilities vary in my family from choppy and having to backup and reread a few words every sentence to smooth, but everyone has a fairly high vocabulary and little trouble understanding complicated sentences. I was careful never, ever to comment on the choppy reader's reading and I guess it paid off because to my surprise, he consistently volunteered to do the reading aloud in his CC composition class. Since he was the only volunteer, he was always picked. He did lots of reading aloud in that class. The prof. was a little surprised at first when he stopped and summarized every few paragraphs and added in asides, but he praised him for it. (He was very excited by my son's choice of college and wrote him a glowing recommendation.) Although I'm happy to do the reading-aloud myself, I am glad we took turns. The ability to read aloud smoothly is something that takes practise, and seems to have nothing to do with how well one reads to oneself. It is a useful adult skill. It is hard to listen to someone who is learning to do this, but worth it in the end, I think.

-Nan

[Ester Maria]

We don't read aloud (never quite got into it when they were younger either; IF we read aloud, those are small excerpts), we always read independently. Sometimes it's the entire work, sometimes we break it into several pieces and then handle piece by piece.

[AuntieM]

Since DS and I are both fast readers, and I have three other students to work in, we read silently, separately. However, we do have another "great books" family to schedule discussions with, and that keeps us on track. It also provides for differing insights. I highly recommend doing it that way, if at all possible.

 

I did hear a great recommendation, though, for using audiobooks to help move some reading along. In particular someone mentioned Homer read by Sir Ian MacKellan.

 

Frankly, I think that in starting with Ancients (because we are doing it chronologically), we start with some things that are just waaaay different in style than we are accustomed to reading. I have heard some say that they start later and go back to the Ancients at the end, a course that is understandable.

[Nan in Mass]

Just to present a different view... I like doing ancients first. The content is easiest for my boys to identify with, and the writing feels more removed and so is easier to deal with emotionally. And so much later literature builds on the ancients.

[AuntieM]

And so much later literature builds on the ancients.

 

Thus our decision to do the ancients first. But for some, if it's a choice between saving ancients for later and throwing in the towel, I'd recommend saving them for last.

[lllll]

What is the best way to read original great books with your child? We are just getting started, and I am a little unsure how to proceed.

 

Should my 7th gr dd read the Odyssey silently to herself and then we discuss each chapter later? Or, should we read it aloud? What are the advantages or disadvantages for each method? What is most realistic and/or enjoyable for two people (her and me)?

 

By the way, I feel comfortable discussing the book. I have read it and watched the Teaching Company lectures. I plan to use questions from TC's course guidebook for her weekly essay assignments.

 

If she's only in 7th grade, I think I'd have her read the Logic or Grammar stage version of the Odyssey (don't remember the names) before digging into the Rhetoric version. That would help her grasp the overall scheme of the book. An outline, so to speak.

Edited January 23, 2010 by ksva

[Jeanine in TX]

Thank you for all of the great suggestions, especially in regards to how much time this will take. Taking turns reading and periodically summarizing were also very helpful.

 

I have read a children's version of the Odyssey to her twice (1st & 5th grade). She recently reread it herself to make sure she remembered the details of the story. Next week, we are going to try reading the Fagles version aloud. Hopefully, it will go well.

[Nan in Mass]

One other thing LOL - go ahead and try to pronounce the names correctly at the beginning, but don't fuss too much over it. It isn't worth getting hung up on. We have been known to occasionally rename someone with an easier name that looks like the hard one.

[profmom]

:lurk5:

 

You can find free audios for public domain books at http://www.librivox.org.

[Nan in Mass]

I download the foreign ones for foreign language practice (for me).

[Carmen_and_Company]

We do all three, read aload by taking turns, read silently, and listen to MP3s or CDs of hard to get into selections. Discussion follows each reading session. Even with Taz in college, he still enjoys reading and discussing selections for college course work. And since Storm's charter school uses TWTM as their curricula outline, reading together and family discussion is recommended.