What are your Literature curric or "guided reading" high school recommendations

[74Heaven]

Hi, I did Lightening Literature Early 19th Century American Lit this year and I was incredibly unimpressed. There was very little guidance for me on literature themes, writing style, etc. It was mostly a bunch of comprehension questions.

 

I have now switched to going thru the books with the Cliffs or Sparksnotes as my TM and parent/child discussion.

 

I had hoped to find something like "Literature in a Can" to use for high school - due mostly to time constraints for me. I'm happy to read the book alongside my teens 80% of the time or more - but I need a resource (easy to use, pick up and go) to help me to lead discussion and to get the deeper meat out of the books we are reading.

 

I'd like to know what you use, how you do it and what you recommend, given my comments above.

 

(Btw, I had hoped to "do it w/o textbooks" but I am open to BJU or A Beka or whatever else is out there. I just know that I was very disappointed in Hewitt's Lightening Lit.) Thanks in advance

Lisaj - ljdeerparkATaolDOtcom

[Michelle in AL]

How about Omnibus? I don't think it addresses all the literary elements, but I like it so well, I'm willing to add that in. Writing is done by way of the progymnasmata (sp?) I love the comprehension ?'s & analysis.

[LisaNY]

Have you read The Well Educated Mind? It is an excellent resource for literature study, complete with questions for any book you are reading, categorized according to genre.

 

How to Read Literature Like a Professor is also a good resource, though you might want to read through it yourself first.

[74Heaven]

easier to grab and go. I am hsing 5 children and am busy 3 nights a week with activities outside the house. I find I am stretched thin for planning, extra reading and I struggle just to keep up.

 

I am not "against" Omnibus but a little worried at the time commitment and depth of the material. I'll look into the progymnasmata, I have heard of it but I don't know anything about it.

 

And I did read the Well Educated Mind (from the library) - but it sounds like it will be more work then I am hoping to do. (I will check it out from the library again though - thanks for the resource idea.)

 

Lisaj

[Lori D.]

1. Sonlight Curriculum

What about the level 530, British Lit.?

 

 

2. Individual Study Guides for whatever works you want to cover

Free online lit. guides, chapter summaries/book notes, or book/film analysis/reviews:

 

Spark Notes = http://sparknotes.com/lit/

Glencoe = http://www.glencoe.com/sec/literature/litlibrary/

Pink Monkey = http://www.pinkmonkey.com/

Cliffs Notes = http://www.cliffsnotes.com/

Book Notes = http://www.freebooknotes.com/

Wikipedia = http://www.wikipedia.org

 

 

Or buy the really nice, meaty guides put out by Garlic Press publishers:

http://www.garlicpress.com/cgi-bin/shop_gp.cgi?product=SIGN%20LANGUAGE

 

 

3. Online Literature Course

I know nothing about the following, but here is a website which lists universities and colleges which offer online lit. courses to high school or study at home students:

 

Education Portal:

http://education-portal.com/articles/Universities_with_the_Best_Free_Online_Courses.html

 

And here's an online high school offering lit courses:

Keystone National High School = http://www.keystonehighschool.com/curriculum/details.php?id=61

 

 

4. Outsource locally

- private high school course, or good public high school course

- Community College

- good homeschooling co-op course

 

 

BEST of luck finding what works for your family! Warmly, Lori D.

[SwimmerMom]

Have you looked at Total Language Plus? I saw it this weekend at our local homeschool conference (yep, all 50 of us had a "conference" complete with a speaker from HSLDA and everything!).

 

Anyway, the program looked really neat. It wasn't just comprehension questions, but also exercises on learning vocabulary from context and writing topic suggestions.

 

I have a degree in Lit and the high school level books looked fairly meaty to me. It is definitely a "pick up and go" curriculum.

[Christine]

Hi, I did Lightening Literature Early 19th Century American Lit this year and I was incredibly unimpressed. There was very little guidance for me on literature themes, writing style, etc. It was mostly a bunch of comprehension questions.

 

I have now switched to going thru the books with the Cliffs or Sparksnotes as my TM and parent/child discussion.

 

 

 

*sigh* I'm right there with ya! We just finished LL Am. Lit, and I've come to the decision that I won't be doing it next year (for the reasons you mentioned).

 

My thought was to do exactly what you switched to (Cliffs or SN), after I come up with the book list and just create a schedule to go with.

 

Is there a reason you don't like that? (because you have to find time to read? too teacher intensive? something else?)

 

I liked the idea of LL because it seemed the student could do it by themselves. However, after giving the study of "literature" some more thought, I don't know that it's possible to give the student a book and say have at it. (Oh, and one other positive was the inclusion of short stories and poems that I don't know I would have come up with on my own.)

 

Anyway, given that I seem to be a bit "behind" you, I'll be following this thread with interest.

[Veronica in VA]

I used LL American Lit this year, too. I would have liked more indepth questions, etc. but I don't know that we need to do that every year. After reading a few posts from Nan on how she uses TWEM with her teens, dd and I have started to do it similarly. It works wonderfully, I have been amazed at how dd is finding themes, etc that I didn't even pick up on. If you have at least two teens they could do most of the discussion themselves so it would free you up. Maybe something like Walsh's Toolbox for Prose and Poetry (I think that is the name) which discusses literary elements. would help here also.

 

If you don't want to do that, perhaps look at Literary Lessons of the Lord of the Rings.I liked that it included vocab and it did discuss themes, plots, etc. My teens said this was the best thing we have ever used. It does include tests, but I changed some of them around, as I thought they included information that wasn't important. The only other criticism I had was that it didn't review some of the literary elements after they were introduced.

 

For dd's senior year, I think we will use Sonlight 530 (British Lit) which is supposed to be pretty comprehensive. That way, if I missed anything, hopefully it will be covered before she graduates.

 

Hope that helps,

 

Veronica

[Storm Bay]

What we're going to do for dd's last middle school year is Skills for Literary Analysis by Stobaugh. For high school, we're going to use WEM. I don't know yet how long it will take, but I chose the first for 2 reasons that are important to me. The first is that I heard Stobaugh speak and even though he's not my style of speaker, he is the first to really convince me of the importance of why kids need to do some literary analysis (I hate it, to be frank.) Also, I read Cathy Duffy's review of the book, and her reviews have been helpful to us. I went to him after his lecture and asked him what book of his I should get if I were to only buy one, and this was his recommendation.

 

As for WEM, I looked at a library copy, listened to various suggestions, and I found that what Nan in Mass wrote when I posted on this made a lot of sense (others made sense, too!!! but I mean for how we'll approach this), since literary analysis is not their favourite subject, either. Plus, Stobaugh, who does not agree with all of Bauer, said she was brilliant, which merely clinched what I'd already been thinking of doing. So, I finally bought WEM and am happy to have it. However, we plan to do a minimum number of books with my eldest as she's planning to be a science major, so we'll focus more on Science than literary analysis.