Making High School English an Honors Course

[jsdisneymommy]

I am starting to do some research and preparation for next school year. Excellence in Literature is definitely high on my list for a literature program for next year. My son loves IEW for writing, and I was planning to do the IEW Advanced US History book for his writing, but it seems that Excellence in Literature has so much writing included that I probably wouldn’t need to do both. I like how Excellence in Literature provides an optional honors track, making it quite easy to satisfy the honors requirement on my part, but it seems that for the student it requires double the work, almost. In my curriculum counseling meeting with our state homeschool association, I was told that a college prep course would teach 6-8 novels a year, whereas an honors course would teach 8-10. However, the Excellence in Literature courses cover 9 works/modules per year without the honors track. With the honors track, that number is doubled, as it requires the honors student to read an additional work for each of the 9 modules. That’s 18 books in one school year, and honestly, that seems excessive. How can you successfully cover that many works per year and really delve into them literarily? Thus, I am still reticent to go with Excellence in Literature.

However, I am also scared to create my own curricula, picking and choosing from literature guides, as I have been doing for the past 5 years. For elementary and middle school, it has been easy since the number of texts required per year is less. This year, I made the conscious decision to push my 8th grade son and see how he did with an increased number of texts. He has read the following and completed literature guides for all of them: The Hunger Games (Progeny Press Guide), Tom Sawyer (Memoria Press), Treasure Island (Memoria Press), Wind in the Willows (Memoria Press), As You Like It (Memoria Press), and I Am Malala (literature study published by The University of Wisconsin for a university-wide read). He has time for one more book, which I am trying to decide upon. He was going to do a study of short stories and poetry that is published by Memoria, but I fear we have run out of time to complete the whole study guide. And therein lies the problem with trying to fit in 8-10 books a year on my own for honors using lit guides. The Memoria and Progeny Press guides are all really in-depth, long studies, analyzing each and every chapter of a book. We flew through them as quickly as we possibly could and averaged 25 days per book, but he had to do a lot of work each day in order to get the guides done in that amount of time. Perhaps the Excellence in Literature program doesn’t analyze each chapter so much, but is looking more at the overarching themes of the novel and that is how they finish each novel in 20 days instead? But even then, how do you finish double that number of books in the same amount of time?

What have other parents done when it comes to the honors track? Do more choose to go through a tried and true program like Excellence in Literature? Or do many create an honors path on their own?

[DebbS]

Both of my kids took honors literature from an academy and read and analyzed at least 18 substantial books per year. Some books took 2 weeks and some took just one week.  I don't think that's too many - mine found time to read other books just for enjoyment also. The literature courses were similar to one that their professor taught at the college level.

 

I am not familiar with Excellence In Literature, but if you think that 18 books is too many, could you just do the honors track for some of the modules but not all? In addition, to prove an honors course, regardless of how many books you choose to read, passing the AP Literature test would confirm the honors designation.

[katilac]

We have always created our own path for literature. There are an abundance of worthy books. Why not use that homeschooling freedom to pick books you love or that deeply interest you? 

 

A good, rigorous course is definitely not all about the number of books. 

 

One thing I find helpful is to google stuff like "honors english 9th grade syllabus" and compare what comes up. I have done this for many subjects - it gives me good ideas for assignments and pacing, and lets me see roughly what is expected at the honors level (while also seeing that there is plenty of variance). 

 

Think about what you are trying to accomplish. There is worth in exposure to a wider number of works, but there is also worth in a deeper and longer exploration of fewer works.  There are some fantastic works that can definitely not be completed in a week or two. If you dive deeply into Paradise Lost or Dante's Inferno, you aren't likely to also complete 17 other books, but your time has still been well spent. 

 

We correlate our literature to our history era, WTM style, so that's the first part of narrowing it down. We look at the recommended reading in WTM and also in our history spine and go from there. Some works we plan to read and discuss only, others have further assignments, and the top choices get allocated lots of time. Of course, the plans sometimes change, but it's a good start. 

[Liza Q]

 

My son loves IEW for writing, and I was planning to do the IEW Advanced US History book for his writing, but it seems that Excellence in Literature has so much writing included that I probably wouldn’t need to do both.

I noticed this and wanted to comment. Writing in History and English are fairly different and I recommend that you do both, I don't know how much writing each program assigns so I can't say that you should do all assignments from both programs, but a High School student should be writing both literary analysis essays and persuasive.compare-contrast/etc. history papers. IMO.

[Penelope]

I only have the Intro. to Lit. Volume from EIW.

 

But the extra books for honors are pretty much just extra books to read, not meant to be used with lit guides. And really, there aren't lit. guides per se used with any of the regular books, either. Basically students are to read the book, annotate and discuss, and then spend a couple of weeks learning about the author, delving into the time period, and drafting and polishing an essay. They do have to write an extra paper for the honors option. That seems reasonable. (I am not sure colleges will care or believe it if homeschoolers call a literature course "honors" or not, anyway, but that is another topic).

 

In preparing for ninth grade literature myself, I have looked at a LOT of school syllabi for honors ninth grade English. Most use a textbook that includesexcerpts from a lot of different books, poetry, short stories. Along with that will be a fairly short list of novels. Not a single syllabus I have seen has the student reading anywhere near 18 complete novels, or even 9-- most are more like 3-5-- but they are presumably doing a lot of reading in their text. That doesn't mean it isn't a good idea to read so many, but just that it wouldn't necessarily be expected in a brick and mortar school.

 

One option to broaden EIL might be add in some shorter reading selections or a unit on poetry, with an additional paper or two, rather than reading the extra books.

Edited April 9, 2016 by Penelope

[katilac]

  (I am not sure colleges will care or believe it if homeschoolers call a literature course "honors" or not, anyway, but that is another topic).

 

 

A practical reason for labelling appropriate classes as honors is GPA and scholarships - many colleges accept a weighted GPA for admissions and/or scholarship consideration. 

 

dd's DE admissions counselor was able to scan her transcript and quickly see that she used high level books overall, and she told us that most admissions people are going to have that ability. 

 

When she met with particular departments and professors in the actual college search, texts used were discussed in particular at least once. 

 

If a student is taking classes that would be accepted as honors in the school system, it can only benefit them to list them as such. If the school ignores the designation, no harm done. 

[K&Rs Mom]

In preparing for ninth grade literature myself, I have looked at a LOT of school syllabi for honors ninth grade English. Most use a textbook that includesexcerpts from a lot of different books, poetry, short stories. Along with that will be a fairly short list of novels. Not a single syllabus I have seen has the student reading anywhere near 18 complete novels, or even 9-- most are more like 3-5-- but they are presumably doing a lot of reading in their text. That doesn't mean it isn't a good idea to read so many, but just that it wouldn't necessarily be expected in a brick and mortar school.

 

This is true. 

 

DD13 took the first semester of honors English 9 at our local PS (as a part-timer), and we were SO disappointed in the expectations there.  They did a lot of excerpts (like 5-10 pages of a longer work), zero of the "early world" works that are in the class name, and a YA novel, plus two "independent novels" where you have to read on your own & meet with the teacher to discuss.  Her friends who are in the second semester now said they're supposed to read Medea, Romeo & Juliet, and one other full work, but we'll see if that happens.  At conferences, the teacher said this is about double the pace of the "regular" English 9.   :001_unsure:

 

She's doing the second semester at home, and we'll cover 6 full works, plus commentary on them.  We're already behind, because I had planned one of the Oedipus plays and she wanted to do all 3, so she didn't get as much analysis on those because just reading them is so time consuming.  I think I could call this honors, but won't weight her GPA anyway because anything off the 4-point scale is too complicated for me - I'm already somewhat intimidated by the transcript process!