History for 9th Grader

[keptwoman]

I would really love your input into something.

 

My DS has been home from school a year now.

 

He did Ancients in 7th Grade at school, albiet rather inadequately...they ran out of time for ROME. I mean HELLO!!!! Anyway...

 

We are in 8th grade now and using History Odyssey Middle Ages Level 2. We are not enjoying it much, it has rather too much outlining and summarising and not enough reading. The final straw for me personally was when I realised that while it spends enormous amounts of lessons on areas of the world that haven't impacted our particular history much, and something like 8 lessons on Shakespeare, it spends only one on the Tudors. Perhaps it's because it's a US program and we are Australian/New Zealanders but I found that quite extraordinary.

 

So long story short. Next year we will be doing Early Modern and after examining all the ready made programs out there I've decided to do it the WTM way.

 

What I dont know is whether DS is ready for rhetoric stage. He is certainly capable of reading and understanding most of the books. But not all, particularly given the book list for Early Modern assumes an 11th grader.

 

I'm not sure that he would be able to do the required analysis and writing.

 

I'd also love to hear from some Brits or Down Under types who want to give things a rather more British than US slant.

 

I would love some input into how you would go about planning for this. Starting from scratch is rather terrifying!

[Lori D.]

We used Spielvogel with an 8th and a 9th grader this past year, using just the lengthy intro to the book (which talks about how we learn about ancient cultures, and what makes a civilization), and the first 200 pages which cover ancient history in 6 chapters, and we did just fine with it. I had them write out answers to the little mini reviews embedded in the chapter (usually about 6 questions, with 2 of those questions being more "thinking" or "support your answer" type of questions). At the end of each chapter is a lengthy 2-page review; we would do some of it orally, and then maybe pick a question for them to write a short essay on. While I did the reading out loud (2-4 pages per session, 3-4x a week), this is a high school level text and an average high school reader would have no problem doing this text on their own.

 

We also dipped into some younger-aged books (gr. 5-8 in writing style, with more illustrations) throughout the year, that had more detail on specific cultures along the way to flesh out a few things and to see the history from more than one point of view. I had hoped we'd do some timelining along with the way, but my boys really don't enjoy "hands on" projects, so this fell by the wayside. : (

 

I also had them read (on their own time) about 6 historical fiction works (below their reading level) set in the ancient times. We also read aloud/discussed together some of the ancient classic works, along the lines of what TWTM suggests. We used literature guides to go along with those. That was quite enjoyable and easy to do together -- it just took time -- we read/discussed for 30 minutes/day about 4 days/week -- but we covered:

 

1. Epic of Gilgamesh (abridged version by Westwood) -- with SMARR lit. guide

2. The Iliad (Fagles translation) -- with Novel Unit lit. guide

3. The Odyssey (Fagles translation) -- with Garlic Press publishers lit. guide

4. various Greek myths -- (they read these on their own) with no lit. guide

5. Oedipus Rex -- with Spark Notes, free online lit. guide

6. Antigone -- with Spark Notes, free online lit. guide

7. The Aeneid (abridged prose version by Church) -- with Spark Notes

 

 

All together, this worked very well and I feel we covered the history and the literature of the ancients pretty well for just finishing up middle school and starting high school. I plan to continue using these methods and resources throughout high school. One thing I plan to change, as far as timeline/writing is to use a very nice idea from Brenda in MA on how she had her son write about history: "For [20th century] history, I also had him do decade reports, as I described in another recent post about what to do for history besides read. For each decade, he wrote a 3 - 4 page mini-research report, and included a timeline of 20 significant events, and a couple of maps relevant to that decade."

 

See Brenda in MA's response (scroll down to her several posts in this thread) more fully in this previous thread: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24521

 

Also, while I will have to look getting into a different text to at least supplement Spielvogel for the modern history; and I will need to figure out a text to use as a "spine" for our US history year (though I plan to still use the Spielvogel for world history supplement).

 

Spielvogel puts out 2 texts commonly used by WTM people:

1. Human Odyssey -- high school textbook (world history, includes Asian, African, Pacific Rim peoples and events)

2. Western Civilization -- college textbook (focuses on European and US people and events)

 

The Western Civ book may have more of the British history depth you were looking for, and no one on this board has indicated that the writing was too difficult for their high school student.

 

 

Welcome to high school! It was a blast for us here -- though, it takes a LOT more of my time than I anticipated, as we do so much discussion together. You're going to have a great time! : ) BEST of luck finding what works best for your family for history! Warmest regards, Lori D.

[LisaNY]

Lori D. has given some great suggestions. I would only add that I think it would be beneficial to start WTM Rhetoric-level history at the beginning with the Ancients/Great Books. You shared that your ds didn't get that far w/Ancients in ps.

[keptwoman]

I spent some time with him over the summer holidays looking at Rome.

My schedule goes:

8th Grade Medieval/Renaissance

9th Early Modern

10th Modern

11th Australia/New Zealand history

12th either student exchange or in depth study of the time period of his choice.

 

So I can't go back and start at Ancients really, because he likely wouldn't get modern or our country/ies history which is important.

So age/grade wise he is smack between the 7th and 11th grade recommendations in TWTM for Middle Ages, and that's my dilemma.

Thanks for the spine recommendations Lori, I was looking at Western Civilisation, it's made it into my Amazon cart, so I think we will get that. But then if HO covers our area too, hmmm. Big decision!

[Lori D.]

Don't worry -- this is very do-able. We did ancients last year, but to get the boys' cooperation, I let them pick, and they want to skip ahead and do 20th century world history (sigh). So, we'll be doing modern history for 9th and 10th. I'm still in process of picking out our history and lit., but getting there! Warmly, Lori D.

[Kareni]

...

My schedule goes:

8th Grade Medieval/Renaissance

9th Early Modern

10th Modern

11th Australia/New Zealand history

12th either student exchange or in depth study of the time period of his choice.

 

...

 

Rather than devote an entire year to Australian and New Zealand history, would it be possible to include those within the other cycles of history? Clearly much of that would fall within the Early Modern and Modern time frames .... Just a thought.

 

Regards,

Kareni

[keptwoman]

I did think about that, but I feel that in doing so I fail to do both world and local history justice. I'd rather have a years concerted effort. And as he is quite likely going to be overseas during his 12th grade year, he would miss modern altogether which is not ideal. Also I have another child on the history rotation, so I want to keep them together.