Can you help me think this through?

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

First, please bear with me. I'm still trying to work through it all in my own head, so I'm probably not expressing myself as clearly as I'd like to!

 

My friend's daughter is in a special program in her junior high (and soon her high school) that integrates the humanities in a very holistic way. The English and history teachers work together and teach in such a way that at a certain point, it's hard for the students to see which assignments are "history" and which are "English," if that makes any sense. They read literature/materials written during the period they're studying, and they integrate music and art history in the same way.

 

Now, I think that I can manage all of that, but it sounds like they're doing more analysis than I feel like I'm capable of providing. My friend was saying that, for example, they'll read and perform Shakespeare while also studying that period in history, and they'll be given a writing assignment analyzing a societal or political issue of the time that Shakespeare addressed in the play they studied, and they'll need to tie it all in. That's the part that's kind of scaring me!

 

I know I can schedule the history reading/literature/music/art from the right time periods. It will take me forever, but I know I can eventually coordinate it all. However, if this already exists somewhere, I'd love to not re-invent that wheel. As for developing assignments and leading my students through analysis like that...I have less faith in my abilities. I feel like I have a lot of trees here, but I don't know how to turn them into a forest.

 

How does one do this? Anyone have any experience or thoughts? I hope I'm making myself clear here. I'm basically working off my understanding of my friend's secondhand reporting on the program he daughter is in. She's very pleased with the school's implementation of this whole thing, and it's been around for at least 20 years, so it must be working pretty well. I just need some handholding here--I do best with a schedule and assignments that I can use as a jumping-off point. I'm not good at developing something like this from scratch!

 

Is there a curriculum that leads the teacher through teaching this? That schedules all this stuff that needs to go together and provides assignments like that? Does TOG do this? I know TWTM provides the backbone in terms of materials, but is there a curriculum that goes further in depth?

[Lang Syne Boardie]

TOG does exactly this, at the rhetoric level. The integration is kind of hard to see in the samples. I didn't really understand how it worked until we finished a year and looked back on it. In our second year I've been able to see the connections better as we go, and make it a richer experience.

[cavscout96]

TOG?

[Lang Syne Boardie]

TOG?

 

Tapestry of Grace www.tapestryofgrace.com (can't hyperlink on iPad, sorry)

[Hen]

MFW would probably do this. We started off the year with the high school World History program, and right off- an assignment for Literature was reading Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. I had decided to skip their literature assignments since I had my dd in a course for homeschool highschoolers that I pay for and is very rigorous. I decided to keep the Julius Caesar assignments, since it was a melding of Literature and History, in my opinion. So, you might want to look at My Father's World History. We didn't stay with the curriculum very long, I moved over to Oak Meadow History because I just needed to keep her moving through History faster than I was managing- my problem, I'm sure, I think I'm A.D.D. -anyways, you might want to check out Oak Meadow also- it is a textbook driven course, but they ask pretty deep essay questions and give several project suggestions for each chapter that will often blend Literature/History/politics/Science.

[bethben]

I second Tapestry of Grace. For example, this year, ds studied an annotated version if the Odyssey. While he was reading that, he was learning about the Greeks in general while writing about the Greeks. He was also learning about the geography of Greece at the same time. Overall, it sounds similar to what you want.

 

Beth

[CrystalM]

WTM 3rd edition lays this exact plan out in rhetoric stage. History, literature, art, music, even speech are all integrated.

[seekhim4ever]

We also use Tapestry of Grace - for 7 years. It seems to me that it would suit your desires well. The Socratic Discussions (the analysis you made reference to) provided are very valuable at themiddle school and high school levels. The Teacher Notes are also a great help in my preparations because there is no way I could read everything all of my childre are reading. As you made reference to, history is our spine. That guides our weekly geography studies, Church Hisroty and Bible reading, wonderful literature selections and discussions, developmental writing assignments, and vocabulary studies. Some aspect we have enjoyed include:

• that our children of various ages can be studying at least some complementary subjects in an intigrated way (History, Bible, Church History, Geography, Literature, Writing, Vocabulary)
  
• the unity saves me some time
  
• that the kids can talk together (even share information)/play/work on assignments covering the same topics helps to reinforce the subject matter and highten interest for them