Trilliumlady Posted December 30, 2017 Share Posted December 30, 2017 Thinking ahead to next year..... My DD will be in fifth. She loves to read and reads a good variety of quality literature at grade level, maybe some slightly beyond. I feel she sometimes reads too quickly and doesn’t infer all she could/should from stories. She is doing Wordly Wise which has some comprehension work in it but not much other directed literature work. I have an English major and feel comfortable talking with her about things and ideas but feel disjointed when I do so, so feel some framework might help. What would work for this? I have looked briefly at Mosdos Press but am not sure I love it. Getting multiple study guides might get costly, but I would consider this, especially if there were quality ones more affordable. Is this what Progeny Press does? Or Prodigy Press, something like that? I feel I see people talking about sales they have at times, right? What other resources should I be considering that I don’t even know exist?! Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sweetpea3829 Posted December 30, 2017 Share Posted December 30, 2017 After several years of choosing high quality novels (three a year, plus a short story for Christmas), putting together my own discussion questions, pulling free lit guides from the internet, and using a variety of different purchased lit guides from various places... I chose Mosdos Pearl for 5th grade this year. I needed a break from doing all of the legwork. Mosdos has served that purpose well. It gets the job done, and it offers enough in the way of comprehension questions, discussion, literary analysis, etc. I don't love it though. It's expensive, and textbook-ish. The selections are lovely, but they are all short stories (which is fine for a year, but I wouldn't choose for all of my literature to be this way). I'm also using Mosdos Opal with my 3rd graders and same thing...I'm thankful to not have to do all of the legwork, and the job is getting done. But I just am not in love with it. In addition to Mosdos, my 5th graders are using Editor-in-Chief, Essentials in Writing, Word Roots, and I require them to read two chapter books per month, with a book report for each. Of those two books, they can have one "fluff", but the other must be a high quality. They have a list to choose from, and they can bring me other selections that I may or may not approve. Obviously, this would all be too much, if we did ALL of what Mosdos offers...so essentially, Mosdos is just Literature. They do the reading comprehension mini-stories from the student workbook, the four reading comprehension questions that follow each story selection, and we discuss the stories together. We are skipping the poetry selections for now, and will probably dedicate the summer to covering all of those. The 3rd graders answer the comprehension questions that follow the story selections, the vocabulary from the workbook, and there's a few other selections from the workbook that I pull from them. They are also doing All About Spelling, Essentials in Writing, and Spectrum Language Arts. Like the 5th graders, they are also required to read two chapter books a month, and report on them. I'm not sure what I will do for next year. Mosdos is expensive. Too expensive to use it for just literature. But I also am not mentally ready to again take on the legwork of putting together my own lit approach. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mamamoose Posted December 30, 2017 Share Posted December 30, 2017 I think you can pick 3-4 books and the guides to go with from Great companies like Veritas Press, Memoria Press, Progeny Press and the likes. Then assign extra reading if you want, without the guides. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wendyroo Posted December 30, 2017 Share Posted December 30, 2017 In preparation for my oldest entering the logic stage, I have been searching for free lit guides available on the web. The four sites that I have found most promising are: Glencoe Literature Library Penguin Teacher's Guides Course Hero Literature Study Guides GradeSaver Study Guides Wendy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mirabillis Posted December 30, 2017 Share Posted December 30, 2017 we have loved Lightning Lit - 7th & 8th. So now we have ventured also into their 1st, 2nd & 3rd grade levels also. 4th just got released this year, so I am doing that with my 6th grader. It's working great. Good book choices even for his advanced, older level. Independent workbook. Writing exercises, comprehension questions. I think it would be perfect for 5th. For 5th, we read various novels (recommended by Lori D), and answered comprehension questions about them. But give LL a try - even if it's Level 4 - I believe it can work for Grade 5 or 6 easily. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trilliumlady Posted December 31, 2017 Author Share Posted December 31, 2017 we have loved Lightning Lit - 7th & 8th. So now we have ventured also into their 1st, 2nd & 3rd grade levels also. 4th just got released this year, so I am doing that with my 6th grader. It's working great. Good book choices even for his advanced, older level. Independent workbook. Writing exercises, comprehension questions. I think it would be perfect for 5th. For 5th, we read various novels (recommended by Lori D), and answered comprehension questions about them. But give LL a try - even if it's Level 4 - I believe it can work for Grade 5 or 6 easily. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trilliumlady Posted December 31, 2017 Author Share Posted December 31, 2017 Oops, don’t know how to quote. In reference to the above, I only see a few sample pages for Lightning Lit level 4 available on her website. Does she have the full teacher and student editions available for this yet that I’m just missing? Also, I am hoping to do IEW next year for her writing, likely the DVD based SWI A or B. Would this be too much writing to do if we did IEW plus the creative writing requested in Lightning Lit? We will finish WWE 3 this year to give you an idea of what she’s been used to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trilliumlady Posted December 31, 2017 Author Share Posted December 31, 2017 In preparation for my oldest entering the logic stage, I have been searching for free lit guides available on the web. The four sites that I have found most promising are: Glencoe Literature Library Penguin Teacher's Guides Course Hero Literature Study Guides GradeSaver Study Guides Wendy Hope I did this quote correctly. Thanks for these links, I will definitely be checking them out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mirabillis Posted December 31, 2017 Share Posted December 31, 2017 Oops, don’t know how to quote. In reference to the above, I only see a few sample pages for Lightning Lit level 4 available on her website. Does she have the full teacher and student editions available for this yet that I’m just missing? Also, I am hoping to do IEW next year for her writing, likely the DVD based SWI A or B. Would this be too much writing to do if we did IEW plus the creative writing requested in Lightning Lit? We will finish WWE 3 this year to give you an idea of what she’s been used to. We use IEW starting in 5th grade also. 5th grade IEW SWI-A > Lightning Lit 4 (or in 6th) 6th grade IEW SICC-A > 7th grade IEW SICC-B /// Lightning Lit 7 8th grade Elegant Essay/Speech Boot Camp // Lightning Lit 8 We defer to IEW as our writing first. But the Lightning Lit writings are more fun and varied. Writing poems, writing narratives, stories. And we don't force the dress-ups - they are more natural, fun extensions of writing. Lightning Lit 4 was just released in August. So far only the first semester. We're just finishing that. 2nd semester should be ready soon (I hope!) https://www.hewitthomeschooling.com/Materials/Information/ll4ch1.pdf https://www.hewitthomeschooling.com/Info/iLLGr4Books.aspx We also do Grammar - FLL through 4th, then Advanced Language Lessons for 5th (we were doing their incomplete version before they released their new grammar), and then 6-8th we do Analytical Grammar which is great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trilliumlady Posted December 31, 2017 Author Share Posted December 31, 2017 Thank you, mirabilis, very helpful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScoutTN Posted December 31, 2017 Share Posted December 31, 2017 (edited) Center for Lit has some nice resources. Edited December 31, 2017 by ScoutTN Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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