VP Lit Guides

[Targhee]

Have you used them?

 

Which books?

 

Can you recommend them? Why or why not?

 

Are they on-target for grade-level? Advanced? Flexible?

 

 

There are a few books that I want DD to read next year that aren't part of the Lit program we are using, and two of them have VP lit guides: From the Mixed of Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and The Hobbit

[TXMary2]

:bigear::bigear:

[littlebug42]

I haven't used the VP teacher's guides for those however, the Scholastic teacher express store has a downloadable guide for From the Mixed Up files for only $1 through the end of this month that looks pretty good. I just purchased the VP guides for fairy tales and the one called More Favorites and they have some good questions and activities in them but not too much in the way of literary analysis if that is what interests you.

[plain jane]

I have the From the Mixed up Files... comp. guide from VP and we are going to be starting into it in March. It includes some full color art cards for the kids to use to play a game which would integrate art appreciation with the book. That is one of the reasons I chose to buy this book guide from VP. I really like this idea and while the cards are nothing fancy, they're nice to have and I think will make a great addition to the study of the book.

 

My experience with VP comp guides is they are more about straight comprehension rather than critical thinking, like the Progeny Press guides. This can be either a pro or con, depending on what you want out of a lit. guide.

 

This particular lit guide looks to have a bit more. There is also a section where they must find similes used by the author in each chapter, a page for the student to find improper grammar usage (by one of the characters) in the book, and a couple puzzles for the child to solve.

 

It seems to be one of the more "involved" VP guides, and I like that. I wasn't too impressed with some of the others we tried (Misty of Chincotegue among others). There are only about 5 comprehension questions per chapter so it's not too overwhelming. The Progeny Press guides can get pretty intense.

 

HTH

Edited January 15, 2011 by plain jane

[Targhee]

Thanks for the comments, littlebug and plainjane. I hear mixed things about VP all the time. I wasn't aware of the scholastic or progeny press guides, so I will go look at those as well.

[StephanieF]

We've used the grade 2 ones and I really like them. The idea is to read a chapter and answer the comprehension questions. At this stage the questions are purely comprehension which is all you could expect a young child to do but they teach them to write in complete sentences and also go back over the chapter if they aren't sure of the answer which is a skill in itself.

A lot of them are shown in detail if you click on the VP site it goes through to google books to give quite a long sample which should help you compare them.

 

Jain-I'm doing the grade 3 ones next yr and saw your comments about Misty. I was thinking of using some of the grade 4 guides for a grade 3 student do you think that would be ok? I was going to buy the Mixed Up files one too but do it with a 3rd grader

 

Stephanie

[Annabel Lee]

I used the First Favorites Vols I & 2 when ds9 was in 1st grade. It was just comprehension, but he learned to look up the answers himself in the book and it doubled as penmanship at the time. There were some neat activities throughout, his favorite was making and eating Nate the Great's special pancake recipe. I owned & then sold some VP guides for later grades, but I held onto the ones for Laura Ingall's Little House books for use later this year.