Using K12 Human Odyssey...Other materials?

[CyndiLJ]

We are going to be using K12's The Human Odyssey for our high school world history, and I am wondering if there are other materials or self-created lists out there for activities, etc. that pair well with it?  I purchased the teacher's guide that goes with it, but I am looking for something else as well that might step it up a bit.  I plan to use the Great Courses High School World History lectures to accompany it, but wondered if someone had put together something else out there for their own use that they might share, or if anyone had suggestions.

 

And please, I'd really appreciate it if folks would refrain from posting and telling me how this is not a "high school" level text.  I know that, but we have English Language Learners who are 15 and 16 and are quite bright but not at a high school level of reading skill yet, and I felt this was a very well done series that will provide a thorough overview of world history at the right language level  and also could be adapted for us to use as a whole family for my higher level readers.  So what I am really looking for is some tools to intellectually lift it a bit, while keeping the reading level accessible for all my kids.  Does this make sense?  

 

I even hesitated to post this here on the high school list for fear of being publicly flogged :-)  But maybe someone here will understand what I am asking and be able to offer some good suggestions.

[Jilly]

I know someone on the boards wrote a schedule pairing this with The World in Ancient Times and The Medieval and Early Modern World books from Oxford University Press. That might work although it would mean more reading for your teens. Maybe pairing it with the audio of SWB's The History of the World would work nicely if they like audiobooks. 

[Luckymama]

Hey that is me :) I'm on my phone---I think the link is still in my signature (there's also a link for American history).

The Oxford Press books are at a similar reading level to the Human Odyssey.

[EKS]

I think using The Human Odyssey is a great idea for your situation.  I just wanted to be sure you knew that the reading level gets higher with each book.  The biggest jump seems to be between the second and third books.  The third volume is written at the high school level.

[Kareni]

In 9th grade, we used a hodgepodge of materials when my daughter covered the time period 1700 to 2000. Here are the resources (non-fiction, literature, videos and music) that we used.  Perhaps something might be useful for you and your children.  Be aware that we are fairly liberal so some materials might not suit all families.

World History the Easy Way, Volume 2 by Charles Frazee

American History the Easy Way by William Kellogg

World History Map Activities by Marvin Scott

 

Poor Richard’s Almanack by Benjamin Franklin
George Washington, Spymaster by Thomas B. Allen
Tomaso Albinoni – 12 Concerti a cinque Op. 5
Roots by Alex Haley (to p. 126)
Georg Philipp Telemann – Suite A Minor, 2 Double Concertos (Michala Petri, Academy of St. Martin-in-the Fields)
Amadeus (video)
"A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift
George Washington’s World by Genevieve Foster
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
I Will Repay by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
Eldorado by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
Sir Percy Hits Back by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
The Scarlet Pimpernel (three part video, BBC)
Carl Friedrich Abel – Symphonies Op. 10, numbers 1 – 6, La Stagione
Francesco Geminiani – 12 Concerti Grossi, I Musici
The Art of the Fugue by Bach, Emerson String Quartet
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Longitude (video, A&E)
C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower (set of 8 videos, A&E)
Lock, Stock, and Barrel by Donald Sobol
Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphonies 5 in C Minor, Op. 67, and 6 in F Major, Op. 68, Pastoral
"Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Cartouche (video)
Joseph Haydn – String Quartets, Op. 17, Nos. 1, 2, and 4, Kodaly Quartet
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (translated by Norman Denny)
The New Nation by Joy Hakim
A Tale of Two Cities (video)
Georges Bizet – Carmen Suites No. 1 and No. 2; L’Arlesienne Suites No. 1 and No. 2, Leonard Bernstein
Adolphe Adam – Giselle, conducted by Richard Bonynge, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Anton Bruckner – Symphony No. 4 “Romantic”, conducted by Eugen Jochum, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Men-of-War: Life in Nelson's Navy by Patrick O'Brian
Young Frankenstein (video)
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (video with Kenneth Branagh)
Lily Afshar -- A Jug of Wine and Thou (Persian music)
Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith
Master and Commander (video)
Chamber Works by Women Composers, The Macalester Trio
Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun by Rhoda Blumberg
Wassail! Wassail! Early American Christmas Music by the Revels
"An Occurrence at the Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce
The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
Stephen Foster’s Civil War Songs (sung by Linda Russell)

The Century for Young People by Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster
Critical Thinking in United States History, Book Four, Spanish-American War to Vietnam War by Kevin O’Reilly
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake and Nutcracker, Berliner Philharmoniker, Mstislav Rostropovich conducting
Winsor McCay: The Master Edition (The Sinking of the Lusitania)
Claude Debussy: La Mer, Nocturnes, Jeux, The Cleveland Orchestra, Pierre Boulez conducting
The Battleship Potemkin (video)
“Broadway, Blues, and Truth” from RESPECT: A Century of Women in Music
Botchan by Soseki Natsume (translated by Umeji Sasaki)
Many Lives, Many Stories by Kathryn Abbott and Patricia Minter
Witness by Karen Hesse
Influenza 1918 (video from PBS)
New Orleans Rhythm Kings and Jelly Roll Morton
Antarctica by Walter Dean Myers
War Game by Michael Foreman
Mao Tse-Tung and His China by Albert Marrin
“The Butcher Boy”, “The Garage” and “Rough House” from The Best Arbuckle Keaton Collection (video)
Fluffy Ruffle Girls: Women in Ragtime
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Charles A. Lindbergh: A Human Hero by James Cross Giblin
Inherit the Wind (video)
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
All Quiet on the Western Front (video)
The Depression and New Deal by Robert McElvaine
Cabaret (video)
Radio Comedy Classics: Jack Benny Program and Fred Allen Show
Surviving Hitler by Andrea Warren
Maus I and Maus II by Art Spiegelman
Rabbit-Proof Fence (video)
The Verse by the Side of the Road by Frank Ransome, Jr.
Elvis Presley title album
Aaron Copland, Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, Billy the Kid, Fanfare for the Common Man (New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein)
1940s House (video)
Diary of Anne Frank
North to Freedom by Anne Holm
Shane (video)
Frank Sinatra, Come Swing with Me
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Little World of Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi
Ed Sullivan’s Rock and Roll Classics, Volume 8: Legends of Rock (video)
Beatles, Beatles for Sale
Atomic Café (video)
Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited
“I Have a Dream” by Martin Luther King, Jr.
All the President's Men (video)
Forrest Gump (video)
Judy Collins, Whales and Nightingales
Hair (video)
The Vietnam War by Marilyn B. Young, John J. Fitzgerald and A. Tom Grunfeld
Singers and Songwriters, 1974-1975
Good Morning, Vietnam (video)
Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis
The Mouse that Roared by Leonard Wibberley
The Mouse that Roared (video)
Abba, The Definitive Collection
W;t by Margaret Edson
W;t (video)
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Fax from Sarajevo by Joe Kubert
U2, Achtung Baby
A Little History of the World by E. H. Gombrich

Regards,
Kareni

[chiguirre]

There's a free video series at the Annenberg website that might work for you. Here's a link to the homepage:

http://www.learner.org/resources/series58.html

[tinkgumby]

Great suggestions!  I'm actually reading the first one aloud to my 6th and 8th graders, and we are all LOVING it!  We just finished the chapter on Greek philosophers today, and they actually want to go read some Plato!  (:

[foxbridgeacademy]

How good is their understanding of verbal language? You might look at YouTube for BBC and History Docs to add to it. We use Connect the Thoughts for Writing and Discussion topics (as well as additional reading).  There are a few activities included in those courses.  I also suggest you ask this question on the Logic board you might get even more answers.  

Idea's for Activities:

Cooking meals that use ingredients from the time/location

 

Building models of particular architecture styles (i.e. Aqueduct from stone, plaster Popsicle sticks?) (make tiny clay bricks then cement together for desert houses.)

 

Writing in Hieroglyphs on real papyrus (from Amazon) or clay tablets and cuneiform

 

We did a topographical map on foam board.  I used the blue kind that people put on their houses 4x8 piece makes 8- 2x2 maps, you could do Mesopotamia, Rome, British Isles, India, etc. (we ended up painting and using clay tools for cutting/gouging.)

 

Make clay jewelry 

 

When discussing Iconoclasm and Byzantine times you can do drawings and mosaics to represent the particular style

 

Do the same for illuminated manuscripts.

 

Celtic Art during the Dark Ages! Lots to work with.  Make a staff?  They are older and could work on carving figures on a walking stick.

 

 

 

[CyndiLJ]

I think using The Human Odyssey is a great idea for your situation.  I just wanted to be sure you knew that the reading level gets higher with each book.  The biggest jump seems to be between the second and third books.  The third volume is written at the high school level.

 

 

Thanks Kai...and everyone else...for not feeling the need to criticize our selection for high school.  Our circumstances are quite different than the norm, and I have researched and researched diligently to find something that can cross the divide of all our kids and perhaps meet in the middle.  This series was SO well done (I have a copy of all three texts) and so rich in terms of being well written and not too :textbooky" that I think it will really help us move forward in language.

 

Kai, I did check out the differences in reading levels, and I think after looking at it that it might be just the right amount of reach by the time we get to it.  By then I would hope that all our kids would be reading at a high school level, as I have another year to go in between as we focus on Modern US History first, then dive into world history.

[CyndiLJ]

How good is their understanding of verbal language? You might look at YouTube for BBC and History Docs to add to it. We use Connect the Thoughts for Writing and Discussion topics (as well as additional reading).  There are a few activities included in those courses.  I also suggest you ask this question on the Logic board you might get even more answers.  

 

 

Actually, I was thinking about perusing the Connect the Thoughts high school PDF's I have (I have all of them for high school) and perhaps using some of the questions and writing topics to accompany the series.  It will take some weeding through it, but we love CTT and I wish I could use it all the way through, but truth be told we are just starting too late and it will take us too much effort to wade through it all.  We read aloud so that we can work on comprehension in depth, and I can't see us being able to do all of CTT that way, it is just too vast (Although I am still wishing we could!).  I am going to look at some of his film lists to go along with the topics, too.

 

Thanks for the activity suggestions, too!