plain jane Posted May 30, 2008 Share Posted May 30, 2008 I'm looking at starting to use one of these two next year. My dc are all quite young and because dd is only in grade 2 I would like to take this opportunity for her to get a good solid start to reading quality literature. I would also like to work on my own self education at the same time. Can you help me compare the two and if they could fit into our grade 2 year? Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhondabee Posted May 30, 2008 Share Posted May 30, 2008 Much of the same information is presented in both. The Reading Strands actually has more info, but Teaching the Classics is much easier to absorb. Teaching the Classics is basically a DVD presentation that demonstrates how to conduct a socratic dialogue about the piece of literature. Reading Strands also demonstrates a socratic dialogue, but it is written, and it doesn't really give you specific questions to ask. I was left wondering how I was supposed to think of the questions, and what I would do if my dc didn't answer "correctly". TtC has an appendix full of questions, which Reading Strands lacks. Frankly, it took watching the Teaching the Classics videos for me to "get" Reading Strands, but it also took Well-Educated Mind for me to "get" the how-to of Teaching the Classics with books that weren't in their syllabus. (But, my kids are older, and so the WEM are more pertinent to their reading.) I just couldn't decide which questions in the TtC syllabus "went with" the story we were trying to analyze. Teaching the Classics will help you sift through the mass of available "stuff" to cover, so that you can cover the most fundamental things first. They also have (or did have) lesson plans available for specific books. I'm sure that's not the best comparison. If you have specific questions, I'll be glad to try to answer them~ Rhonda Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beth in Central TX Posted May 31, 2008 Share Posted May 31, 2008 I think Rhonda gave you a very good assessment of both programs. I would like to add that Reading Strands talks about literary terms, gives you examples of Socratic Dialogue, and provides a reading list. Teaching the Classics does the same (via the Syllabus & DVDs), but the layout is better and the information is more complete. In my opinion, Teaching the Classics teaches you how to build your own literature study which makes it the stronger program. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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