Literary Lessons from Lord of the Rings

[trudence1]

Has anyone used Literary Lessons from Lord of the Rings (www.homescholar.org)

 

This looks like it would be perfect for my son for his 9th grade year, but I would like to hear from reviews from those who have used it.  What did you/your child like, what did you/your child dislike? 

 

Did you need any items besides the teacher's guide, student book, and their edition of the trilogy? 

 

 

[Lori D.]

One of the all-time high-water marks for our family! :) But, I'm afraid I tend to cheerlead this program, and so as to not dominate the responses in your thread (lol), you can read my thoughts/experiences with LLftLotR in the threads below. For balance, I also tried to link a thread or two in which people express why the program did not work for them.

 

Looking for a literature program for high school (specifically links Sue in St Pete's review of LLftLotR)

Literary Lessons from the Lord of the Rings (a thread from 2008)

Literary Lessons from the Lord of the Rings (a different thread, from 2010)

Lit Lessons from LotR -- have you used this?

LLftLotR: Not getting it (when/why it's not a good fit)

LLftLotR co-op? (posts #4 and 5 info detail some weak areas of the program)

Question: LLftLotR and WttW (suggests other things you can use with LLftLotR)

[SkateLeft]

I know that other folks have loved it, but we were very disappointed.

 

The student workbook contained mostly reading comprehension questions (fill in the blank, multiple choice, short answer), with very little actual literary analysis. The unit studies were okay. Personally, I'd be very hesitant to call it high school level English without some beefing up. I prefer my high school English courses to have more higher level thinking, writing and analysis required.

 

I believe they may have released a new edition since I used it, so perhaps my criticisms have been fixed.

[trudence1]

Thanks so much for these responses.  I will look through the links provided.  I was so excited to see this option and I tend to jump in without enough info.  I am trying to go into, or pass, on this with my eyes opened...not on a wave of emotion =)

[Lori D.]

Okay, I know I *said* I wouldn't dominate, but I can't help myself…  :lol:  I really appreciated SkateLeft's comments, and just wanted to add to them:

 

 

I believe they may have released a new edition since I used it, so perhaps my criticisms have been fixed.

 

No, the new edition just slightly shifted what material is in the Student Guide/Teacher Guide to reduce the size (and printing cost) of the Teacher Guide, but also to now ensure that you have to buy both elements. The program material is identical.

 

 

Personally, I'd be very hesitant to call it high school level English without some beefing up. I prefer my high school English courses to have more higher level thinking, writing and analysis required.

 

I totally agree. If you were to also do the additional works of Literature discussed in the program (along with a study guide for each to help you get depth), it would work well as a high school English course. The works mentioned or covered in the 12 units of material include: The Iliad, The Odyssey, Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Macbeth, and Midsummer Night's Dream. The last post I linked in my response above also lists other ideas for Literature to study along with Lord of the Rings.

 

I do think LLftLotR is best for grades 7-9, and/or for a high school student new to literature and literary analysis. Or for a middle/high school student who doesn't care for Literature, but who enjoys Lord of the Rings. :)

[trudence1]

I think I have decided this will be perfect for my boys who are LotR fanatics.  We have done very, very little lit. analysis so far, and I am planning on doing some IEW style writing with it.

 

Am I understanding this correctly?  If I get the 1st edition Teacher's Manual I won't be missing anything that is in the 2nd edition...I just wouldn't NEED a student's book?

[Lori D.]

I think I have decided this will be perfect for my boys who are LotR fanatics.  We have done very, very little lit. analysis so far, and I am planning on doing some IEW style writing with it.

 

Am I understanding this correctly?  If I get the 1st edition Teacher's Manual I won't be missing anything that is in the 2nd edition...I just wouldn't NEED a student's book?

 

Yes -- Just be aware that:

1. 1st edition is hard to find (although, rivendell mom has one for sale at WTM classifieds), and

2. the answers are right there under the questions -- it was originally laid out as identical to the Student Guide, just with answers printed in the space left in the Student Guide.

 

Beefing up the writing sounds good. And to you also want to beef up the literary analysis portion, you could also do Teaching the Classics, to cover the 5 major literary elements and Socratic questions to strengthened discussion, and you could go over 2 lessons/week of Figuratively Speaking for more on literary elements. 

[Sunshine State Sue]

Lori D. tends to be the head cheerleader, but I'm there beside her.  She's already linked my post.  I loved it.  Ds gave it a 7/10 on his end of the year survey.  He rolled his eyes a lot at me during the year.  I was very enthusiastic.

 

Enjoy!

[SoCalLynn]

My daughter is almost finished with it. She finished 9th grade this year, but we didn't start LLfLotR until about 2 months into the school year. She likes it so much she offered to finish it over the next few weeks. Her favorite part so far, besides reading the book, was the unit on Beowulf. She made a really neat project.

 

I have two complaints about it:

1. I wish the essay questions weren't given just as "options" suggested in the teacher's manual. I would prefer a couple of essay options in the student assignments.

2. I noticed *numerous* typos in the student guide, as in *many*. It was very distracting for my daughter and for me, and seems very unprofessional. The curriculum has been around long enough that she should have had these worked out by now.

[Chrysalis Academy]

If you want to add more essay & discussion aspects, check out these free lit guides.  I think they are quite excellent and will use them alongside LLLOTR:

 

http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/lordoftheringstrilogy/lessons/

 

There are also these lectures from the Mythgard Institute:

 

http://www.mythgard.org/academy/past-classes/

 

All this is just to say: if you don't feel like LLLOTR offers sufficient higher level thinking, analysis, and writing, there are some (free) things out there that can help flesh it out.  As I'm delving into it to plan our studies for next year, I don't anticipate using the short-answer and vocab portions.  I do like the chapter discussions, and the unit study components, which are very rich.  I like the HM questions for discussion, analysis, and writing much better, though.  I actually printed out portions of those lessons and added them to my LLLOTR binder, and it feels meatier now.

[EKS]

I did not like LLLOTR.  But I think that if we had used it differently, things would have been better.

 

The comprehension section for each chapter is *ridiculous*.  It is a paragraph that summarizes the chapter with words left out that the student is supposed to fill in.  My son had a very hard time with this, and since I felt it was important to use the program as written (I never use anything as written now, BTW!), I got upset and frustrated that he was having trouble.  If I had it to do over again, I would have skipped the comprehension exercises.

 

The questions that come after the comprehension section were actually quite good at times, but again, I thought it was important that he answer them on his own in writing, and he had trouble doing that (I should mention here that he has dyslexia).  I should have just used them as discussion questions and then had him write about one of them in more detail each day *after* we had discussed everything.

 

The unit studies are quite good, and I wish we had spent more time on them.

 

So, my suggestion is to use it in a way that works for you and your student.

 

I have a 1st edition answer key, BTW... If I had it to do over again, I would have just used it because all those blank spaces in the student guide were quite daunting for my student.  (It sounds ridiculous, I know.)

[trudence1]

Thanks everyone for your help.  I am probably going to skip most of the comprehension questions, since my boys have listened to these books so many times that they can quote large portions, unless we use them for fun trivia questions. 

 

That brings me to another question.  Do you need the same exact "Lord of the Rings" book from which the TE was based if you're not doing the comp questions?

[Chrysalis Academy]

I can't see why you would. 

[Carol in Cal.]

I agree with EKS that I would downplay the rather inane

'comprehension' questions, and emphasize the

discussion questions and unit studies, which are

very good.

[TKDmom]

I bought a 1st edition TE used, and it looks disappointing to me. We love LOTR, but all I see is comprehension questions and a little background info. I'll listen in to see if you guys can talk me into it. :D

Or if you'd rather, send me a pm and I'll sell it to you. ;)

[Lori D.]

I bought a 1st edition TE used, and it looks disappointing to me. We love LOTR, but all I see is comprehension questions and a little background info. I'll listen in to see if you guys can talk me into it. :D

 

Each chapter starts with the 1 page of fill-in-the-blank comprehension questions and then 1-2 pages of vocabulary fill-in-the-blank/quizzes. Yep, that's the part to skip. ;)

 

The "meat" of the program follows that, with 1-2 pages of chapter notes for each chapter which contains very gentle introduction to literary terms and themes to watch for and light discussion of how things are unfolding, which end with 2-5 discussion questions. If those questions are too "lite", then the FREE Houghton-Mifflin study guide that Chrysalis Academy linked has deeper, middle/high school-level discussion questions (usually 1-2 questions for every 3-4 chapters).

 

And then after every few chapters, you'll find one of the 12 units of additional material, each of which is 4-8 pages long, meant to further flesh out the study/understanding of LotR:

- unit on background info on Tolkien

- unit on linguistics

- unit on setting

- unit that is a map study

- unit on the 11 conventions of an epic (+ background info on Iliad & Odyssey)

- 2 units as guide to excerpts of Beowulf

- unit on the genre of fantasy

- unit on poetry

- 2 units on King Arthur myths, (a focus on Sir Gawain & the Green Knight)

- unit on what happens to the characters (using info in Tolkien's appendices)

- 2 optional units: one on the movie versions, one on religious elements in the books

 

If your family has:

- already read / discussed / analyzed Lord of the Rings

- and/or has already been doing literary analysis

- and/or has already studied some of those Literature topics covered in the 12 units of material

then yes, you are beyond this program. :)

 

One thought: if you haven't covered most of those Literature topics, then you might want to do that before re-selling. Some good info in those units, and you can use each unit as a springboard for going deep with your own research and studies about that topic, or related topic. This thread, "Any serious Tolkien fans??" has oodles of links and ideas for expanding LLftLotR -- or creating your own completely unique study on the trilogy, the world of Middle Earth, and/or Tolkien.

 

 

BEST of luck in finding what works for your family! Warmest regards, Lori D.

[EndOfOrdinary]

The only issue that would come up using a different edition of the books is if they go searching for the vocabulary words to find context. The words are listed with a page number. If you have a different edition, it is a different page number. Not a big enough deal to get us to purchase their edition. It was only annoying one time. For the life of us my son and I could not find the word "ken."

 

My son greatly loved the layout of the program. If it was for high school, I would have students read the classics talked about in the unit studies, and ask for literary analysis papers where they are directly relating the classics to Tolkien's work. There are also lots of lit analysis sorts of questions relating to LotR online if you do a search. Quite a few Tolkien geeks exist.

[TKDmom]

Each chapter starts with the 1 page of fill-in-the-blank comprehension questions and then 1-2 pages of vocabulary fill-in-the-blank/quizzes. Yep, that's the part to skip. ;)

 

<snip>

 

If your family has:

- already read / discussed / analyzed Lord of the Rings

- and/or has already been doing literary analysis

- and/or has already studied some of those Literature topics covered in the 12 units of material

then yes, you are beyond this program. :)

Very helpful thanks! I will look at more thoroughly and ignore the comprehension questions. ;)

We have read LoTR, but we haven't done any literature analysis. I was going to do a Narina lit study this summer/fall (just reading with children's versions of supporting lit like Shakespeare). Ds10 tried to start re-reading LoTR on his own this month, but discovered it's not as easy to read as it was to listen. Maybe, once he turns 11 and enters 6th grade it will be a good time to revisit LoTR with a lit study for him and older dd.

[swimmermom3]

I did not like LLLOTR.  But I think that if we had used it differently, things would have been better.

 

The comprehension section for each chapter is *ridiculous*.  It is a paragraph that summarizes the chapter with words left out that the student is supposed to fill in.  My son had a very hard time with this, and since I felt it was important to use the program as written (I never use anything as written now, BTW!), I got upset and frustrated that he was having trouble.  If I had it to do over again, I would have skipped the comprehension exercises.

 

The questions that come after the comprehension section were actually quite good at times, but again, I thought it was important that he answer them on his own in writing, and he had trouble doing that (I should mention here that he has dyslexia).  I should have just used them as discussion questions and then had him write about one of them in more detail each day *after* we had discussed everything.

 

The unit studies are quite good, and I wish we had spent more time on them.

 

So, my suggestion is to use it in a way that works for you and your student.

 

I have a 1st edition answer key, BTW... If I had it to do over again, I would have just used it because all those blank spaces in the student guide were quite daunting for my student.  (It sounds ridiculous, I know.)

 

I had both the teacher manual and the student manual for the first edition. We used the unit studies separately from the actual LoTR units. I passed the student portion on and kept the teacher's manual because we didn't do many of the student exercises, mostly for the reasons SkateLeft and EKS have outline. My youngest despises busy work.

 

We started with the Epics Unit in 6th grade when we did our work on the ancients. The information in that unit is quite good and I have yet to see something comparable. We spread the work out over 6-8th grade, not actually covering LoTR until the final year.  I have written about how we used the program in several threads over the past few years, but unlike Lori and Sue, I have no idea where they are, so I will look and see if I can link them later.

 

Oddly enough, we liked the non-LoTR units almost better than the actual LoTR units. It's a flexible curriculum and it covers a significant number of literary terms.

 

Kai, the year we started using LLoTR was my first year away from boxed curriculum and our third year of homeschooling. I had nightmares over the fact that I was using a much-beloved curriculum in a totally unconventional fashion. We had such an amazing year doing the ancients (6th grade) ala SWB fashion. When we did the epic units, I had ds read the preliminary part, and then instead of reading their versions of Homer and Virgil, we just used the Sutcliff and Lively retellings. We had so much fun.

 

ETA: Forgot to mention we reviewed that Epics Unit when we started our ancients year for 9th grade. I recently sold my LLoTR and am a bit sad because I forgot to have ds review the Beowulf /medieval lessons.

 

 

[A.J. at J.A.]

I would like to know how people calculated a final grade for transcripts using this curriculum.  Thanks!!

[Sunshine State Sue]

I used:

25% homework (fill-in-the-blank worksheets)

15% quizzes

20% writing

40% tests

 

HTH!

[Connections]

I had both the teacher manual and the student manual for the first edition. We used the unit studies separately from the actual LoTR units. I passed the student portion on and kept the teacher's manual because we didn't do many of the student exercises, mostly for the reasons SkateLeft and EKS have outline. My youngest despises busy work.

 

We started with the Epics Unit in 6th grade when we did our work on the ancients. The information in that unit is quite good and I have yet to see something comparable. We spread the work out over 6-8th grade, not actually covering LoTR until the final year.  I have written about how we used the program in several threads over the past few years, but unlike Lori and Sue, I have no idea where they are, so I will look and see if I can link them later.

 

Oddly enough, we liked the non-LoTR units almost better than the actual LoTR units. It's a flexible curriculum and it covers a significant number of literary terms.

 

Kai, the year we started using LLoTR was my first year away from boxed curriculum and our third year of homeschooling. I had nightmares over the fact that I was using a much-beloved curriculum in a totally unconventional fashion. We had such an amazing year doing the ancients (6th grade) ala SWB fashion. When we did the epic units, I had ds read the preliminary part, and then instead of reading their versions of Homer and Virgil, we just used the Sutcliff and Lively retellings. We had so much fun.

 

ETA: Forgot to mention we reviewed that Epics Unit when we started our ancients year for 9th grade. I recently sold my LLoTR and am a bit sad because I forgot to have ds review the Beowulf /medieval lessons.

 

 

 

I think this is one of the threads you referred to: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/173157-lit-analysis-for-middle-ages/  (Posts 3 and 9)