Accelerated learners & humanities

[ElizaG]

I'm interested in finding out more about ways to provide younger students with significant extra challenge in humanities subjects. Not so much foreign languages, but the content-heavy ones such as history, literature, and religious education.

 

For example, let's say you have a 4th grader who's interested in high school level books and topics (as well as more age-typical activities), has hit the ceiling on many relevant areas of K-8 standardized tests, and has a lexile score at college level. How do you teach this child? Just working one or two years ahead isn't going to be much of a stretch. And if you go beyond that, you start to get into inappropriate content, some of which is unavoidable.

 

I'm thinking that one approach would be to reduce the emphasis on books and do lots of field trips, although that's not feasible for everyone.

 

Another would be to give broad coverage at a lower level, then choose several relatively innocuous topics or authors and let the student go in-depth on them.

 

Other ideas, resources, case studies, or anecdotes would be appreciated.

[snowbeltmom]

When my kids were that age, they enjoyed the online interactions in online g3 classes. www.onlineg3.com

[Embassy]

What do you consider inappropriate content? I've gone the way of giving my child more difficult material and studying topics in depth. Lots of classic literature would be appropriate for younger ages. Even then I might be careful of just skipping to books at a high-school reading level because there are so many great works of literature that aren't at a high school reading level. For history I use some major works mixed with some time-period literature. I like the Teaching Company lectures as well. For religious studies I just use resources designed for adults.

 

Here is an example of what my 5th grader is doing for literature and history.

[Laura Corin]

I added in in older books that tended to have more complex sentence structures and more detail than more modern books. I also branched out into specialist areas - we spent about eighteen months on Chinese history, for example. I wrote my own assignment questions too - you can see some of them in the side bar of my blog. I agree with the others that there are lots of classic texts that are appropriate for young quick learners.

 

Laura

[FairProspects]

Well, I can tell you what my mother did with me in that situation. She gave me large lists of historical fiction (that was my interest area, but it could be applied to any interest) and primary source documents and we started discussing different historical events from the viewpoints of different peoples. She also gave me assignments to write my own historical fiction about what life would have been like had the historical event gone the other way.

 

Such as: What if the Spanish Armada hadn't blocked English access to the island of Roanoke? How would that have changed the English settlements and expansion in America? What might have happened to the settlers at Roanoke?

 

OR: Was the Lost Blue Bucket Mine real or a myth? What sources support your idea? If she likes creative writing, she could write historical fiction of a girl on the OR trail who found the mine and is trying to convince her parents to stay and look for it; getting as in depth about the topography, daily life, diaries, etc. as she wants.

 

You could also go the direction of learning about archeology, how different civilizations are remembered, and create a civilization and their literature, language, and material culture, always thinking about how that civilization would like to be remembered in history.

 

*sigh* There are many days I wish I had a humanities kid to challenge!! It would be so much fun!!

[ElizaG]

What do you consider inappropriate content?

To give some examples, I've just been looking through a couple of volumes of the Oxford Medieval & Early Modern World series, as well as one of the books mentioned in your history list (The Ancient Celts from Scholastic). Others might disagree, but here are some things I'd consider inappropriate for elementary aged children:

 

The story of Abelard & Heloise

Lengthy excerpts from Machiavelli

Graphic accounts of disembowelments, etc.

 

It's quite possible that a child could come across references to some of these things in other places, but I still wouldn't hand them a school book with the material in it. It's just not something we want to emphasize.

 

In any case, the above books are written at an upper elementary to junior high level, and while they're good for a broad introduction, they're likely to just be an appetizer for a student who loves to read and is very interested in history. This is pretty much what led to my question in the first place. I was thinking that if we have these concerns about the middle school books, then the high school or adult-level ones would be out of the question. Although I'm starting to think that this might not be the case. History books written for the younger crowd often seem to put a lot of emphasis on the sensational aspects. The Oxford ones less so than some others, but there's still a bit of it there. Otherwise, why would they gloss over the actual philosophical issues of the 12th century, but spend over a page on Abelard's hanky-panky?

 

(I'm admittedly a crank about things like this. I just got done stickering over most of the cutesy titles they've attached to the excerpts in the primary source volume -- "Burning Down the House," "You Are My Sunshine," etc. -- for no other reason than that I find them banal and distracting. I don't understand why the editors would go to the effort of providing young readers with access to these historic documents -- presumably to encourage them to think for themselves -- only to spoon feed them a bunch of pop-culture pap to go along with it. Okay, rant over. ;))

 

Lots to think about here. Thank you to everyone who's posted so far. :)

[Laura Corin]

To give some examples, I've just been looking through a couple of volumes of the Oxford Medieval & Early Modern World series, as well as one of the books mentioned in your history list (The Ancient Celts from Scholastic). Others might disagree, but here are some things I'd consider inappropriate for elementary aged children:

 

The story of Abelard & Heloise

Lengthy excerpts from Machiavelli

Graphic accounts of disembowelments, etc.

 

It's quite possible that a child could come across references to some of these things in other places, but I still wouldn't hand them a school book with the material in it. It's just not something we want to emphasize.

 

 

Being really honest here: it's going to be really hard to work at a high level in humanities without letting your child have an understanding of the realities. If, for example, you are discussing the Tudor period in England and you don't get a feel for

 

- Henry VIII's urges, both sexual and dynastic

- The brutality of the choices faced by people who held non-approved religious beliefs (burn on this earth or burn in hell)

 

These are fundamental, human motivations underlying the movement of history and 'high level' discussions are going to include them.

 

I do understand the dilemma facing you: I have lists and lists of books for young gifted readers on Amazon because I had problems with suitability in the early years. Personally I don't think it's soluble, however, once one is talking about high school or college-level discussion.

 

FWIW, I would have turned the irritating and banal captions into talking points (What do you think of that title? What would be a better one? What makes yours better? etc. It's a way of turning a problem into an advantage)

 

Good luck with your decisions

 

Laura

[anabelneri]

We use the Ambleside Online book lists, generally at the grade level ("Year 4" for grade 4 aged child), and overall they've been pretty good. I'm not pre-reading as much as I did before, but dd is more able to handle things, and I know that many other mothers have approved the booklist. The reading levels are generally higher than the grade-level would suggest (see here). I tweak the science readings (I prefer modern & evolution-accepting) and leave out their religious materials entirely.

 

 

My solution for religious education has been to run the program at church. I found an excellent program that takes kids' faith & abilities seriously, I've gotten trained in it, and I found a community willing to support it. It has been a multi-year process, and it's unlikely to be a common solution, but it works for my family. If I weren't doing it there, I would teach my kids at home. I would agree with the PP about using adult resources... the program that we use starts doing essentially adult-level scripture study with 4th graders, and I've seen 3rd graders ready for it. The only thing different from what adults would generally do is that we also include some hands-on activities to get a flavor of the time and culture. When we do Abraham, we also talk about nomadic culture and the herding of sheep and goats, but then we might also teach basic spinning on a drop spindle to get the kids hands-on with real wool, etc.

 

Good luck!

[ElizaG]

Being really honest here: it's going to be really hard to work at a high level in humanities without letting your child have an understanding of the realities. If, for example, you are discussing the Tudor period in England and you don't get a feel for

 

- Henry VIII's urges, both sexual and dynastic

- The brutality of the choices faced by people who held non-approved religious beliefs (burn on this earth or burn in hell)

 

These are fundamental, human motivations underlying the movement of history and 'high level' discussions are going to include them.

I see what you're saying -- and at this age, I'm prepared to give a brief mention of these things as part of the broad overview, but no more than that. Even if I were willing to go in depth, though, I'm not sure that a 9 or 10 year old could really get much of a "feel" for them.

 

Which is why I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to stock up on resources for some specialized areas of history that are both interesting to our family, and relatively child-friendly. Things like local and family history, and the history of science, agriculture, music, children's games, and so on. I'd already been doing some of this, but hadn't planned on making it the bulk of our history studies for the next few years. I think that might be the best approach, though, as it doesn't seem possible to do a standard textbook or literature-based chronological cycle at a higher level without getting out of our depth. (This first time around, I've ended up combining suggestions from a few reading lists, and the children have read many of the "logic stage" titles as well as a few of the "rhetoric" ones.)

 

I also like what FairProspects' mother did, with the historical fiction and primary source documents.

 

BTW, the reason I did away with the captions was because even after just flipping through the book once or twice, some of them were stuck in my head, and kept coming to mind whenever I thought of something related to the document. Argh! If my children are half as impressionable as I am, they could have been stuck for life associating some Asian dynasty with a Simon and Garfunkel song. ;)

 

Thanks once again for your suggestions. And Anabel, thank you too. I'll sleep on these ideas, and maybe something will take shape. :)

[8filltheheart]

The way I have handled this situation is to use annotated children's literature and use the annotations to help me find lots of material to explore. I did Anne of Green Gables last yr. The Secret Garden, Wind in the Willows, Peter Pan, the Hobbit.....there are lots out there and you can find references to all types of influencing literature, poetry, plays, historical articles, etc.

 

My dd and I have thoroughly enjoyed this approach. I wrote about our AGG study last yr at length. If you search the Logic Board, you might be able to find a few posts describing what we did. (you can actually purchase Where the Brook and River Meet which sort of does this for you. However, I found it geared to older students and we really changed it to the pt where what we did doesn't resemble it at all. Yet, I am thankful that I purchased it b/c it gave me the idea to use annotated books and a feel for how to put this type of study together on my own.)

 

H

[ElizaG]

Thanks, 8. Thinking about it, I suppose a lot of this comes down to our own preferences for how much time to give to formal literary studies, and what sort of things to emphasize: literary devices, historical and cultural connections, moral issues, inspiration for the student's own creative efforts, etc.

 

English literature only really started to develop as a school subject in the late 19th century, and these sorts of questions (and sometimes vigorous debates :) ) about how to teach it have been going around since the beginning.

 

Some approaches are relatively easy to adapt to younger students, but others would probably do well to be put on hold for a few years.

 

Thanks again, everyone -- this is very helpful.

[Kfamily]

I've been handling humanities in a way similiar to what 8FilltheHeart has described for my younger dd. This has been the perfect way to meet her needs.

 

Here's how we've decided to do this:

 

Literature:

Anne of Green Gables (we're doing this in a couple of weeks too at my dd's request)

tied with Evangeline (Longfellow)

Evangleline and the Acadians (Landmark book by R. Tallant)

Poetry (Tennyson, Whittier, Campbell, Lowell, etc.)

 

Complete Fairy Tales by George MacDonald

along with At the Back of the North Wind (she has already read The Princess and the Goblin)

Poetry (still to be decided)

 

 

We do talk about literary terms but I'm just now introducing them to her and I don't want to put too much emphasis on this yet. Good conversations about the literature and poetry is usually just the right amount of depth without going overboard in literary terms, etc.

 

She really wants to read Ivanhoe by Scott, North and South by E. Gaskell and The Saga of the Volsungs and the Nibelungenlied but I'm still going to work on those.

 

I also really like this study:

 

http://tolkienprofes...ie-and-fantasy/ and will probably use this outline with her next year.

 

History:

(Ancient History-Ancient Greece)

 

 

History of the Ancient World (D. Mills)

Tales of Ancient Egypt (Green)

Myths of the World (Colum)

Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt (Payne)

Men of Athens (Coolidge)

a couple more books here...

 

Primary Sources

Keeping a Book of Centuries

 

While the book choices are not too over the top in terms of difficulty, the idea is to use the books with the requirements one might expect of a middle school student rather than the lighter pass of exposure that one might give to an elementary student. I'll have longer, more thoughtful conversations with dd about what we read and expect more from her in terms of writing output. This is where we make it meet her needs.

 

Science is very similiar...

 

Physics kit

biography on Newton and Einstein

Astronomy with parts of Real Science for Kids (very age-appropriate items here)

 

but with many documentaries, Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy (together), articles from science magazines and books by Michio Kaku (together)

[serendipitous journey]

Seconding the recommendation to look at the Ambleside materials; I find the Year 2 materials interesting, so it would probably be interesting to a sophisticated child either on or near grade level. And the literature-based ideas above are excellent.

 

History-wise, I have to say that I like Asimov and he has a chronological historythat is quite comprehensive though a bit, I don't know, dry or something for a main spine. It really is a chronology and not a history. Here he is on Abelard:

 

"... Peter Abelard, who was a charismatic teacher at the University of Paris. Abelard was an unrelenting logician and insisted that theological matters be solved by reason.

Abelard had a famous love affair with Heloise, a pupil of his. He married her but kept the fact secret to avoid hampering his clerical career. Heloise's uncle had Abelard castrated in reprisal.

Bernard was far more powerful than Abelard and continued to denounce him. If Abelard had not died in 1142, Bernard would undoubtedly have seen that a trial which was in progress would have ended with the condemnation and excecution of Abelard."

 

I'm also finding the TimeFrame series remarkably interesting, extraordinarily well-illustrated, and tame so far but I'm nowhere near modern history so don't know how it progresses. I like the visuals though, esp. because art history is very hard to teach well without delving into some grown-up concerns. Though folks like this book.

 

Honestly, though, I'd suggesting contacting some upper-level teachers. The folks who do the Teaching Company lectures are usually interested in education and might be happy to offer suggestions, but I imagine nearly anyone at a good teaching college would be willing to offer pointers. FWIW the Teaching Company material is pretty mild, from my perspective, and might be a good avenue esp. with a supervised reading of the assigned materials.

 

ETA: have you looked at William & Mary's history/literature units? We have one and it is excellent at drawing high-level analyses and thought from appropriate content; however, I haven't used it yet b/c it requires more writing than my 2nd grader can cheerfully produce right now. But I thought it was worth the investment just for reading over the teaching suggestions section, and the resources materials: they were worth the price of admission w/o using the lesson plans, for me.

[shawthorne44]

If you could find a sale of college textbooks, and let him pick out a few books. I remember at that age picking out some and I really enjoyed them. I think because I selected them, and they weren't handed to me. I particularly enjoyed a college-level Logic book, LSAT prep book (loved the puzzles). I sniggered my way through Das Kapital. I read a bunch of Sociology and Pysch. books.

 

I actually think you'll find less to object to in college-level books. They won't be bringing out the gore in order to keep the attention of High Schoolers.

 

Also, for Literature, if you stick to the classics in addition to a more complex sentence structure, you won't have to pre-read since there will be complete descriptions out there.

[FairProspects]

If you could find a sale of college textbooks, and let him pick out a few books. I remember at that age picking out some and I really enjoyed them. I think because I selected them, and they weren't handed to me. I particularly enjoyed a college-level Logic book, LSAT prep book (loved the puzzles). I sniggered my way through Das Kapital. I read a bunch of Sociology and Pysch. books.

 

I actually think you'll find less to object to in college-level books. They won't be bringing out the gore in order to keep the attention of High Schoolers.

 

Also, for Literature, if you stick to the classics in addition to a more complex sentence structure, you won't have to pre-read since there will be complete descriptions out there.

 

Hm. Well, I disagree with the bolded. I learned far more about Thomas Jefferson's affair with Sally Hemmings from historians in college than I did in high school. Adults act on adult motivations, and there is no way to understand the sophistication of these decisions without covering these impetuses. Don't even get me started on my college "Sociology of Deviance" book. You may be safe with logic or LSAT reasoning analogies.

 

The classic literature studies are excellent suggestions too. I did quite a few of those growing up as well.