Great Books & high school credits

[Lori A. Davis]

I'm doing some early prep for high school and I'd like to know how people are determining high school credits for the Great Books study. This replaces most of history, so is this a full credit in history and in literature every year (2 total credits)? I can also see how adding IEW Literary Analysis can boost this to add another composition credit (3 total), but how do others handle this? Do you just track the hours/report pages to determine total credit hours? If you do thid the student can accumulate 12 credits over 4 years - more than half the total credits needed for a diploma.

 

When I looked over all the recommendations in TWTM it seems the student will easily end up with more than 32 credits. In ancient times when I was in school you could earn a max of 28 credits, so 32 sounds a bit unrealistic - plus it leaves very little time for outside activities. I know that we don't have to do everything in the book, but TWTM high school plan is a bit daunting from our middle school point of view - any advice from high school veterans on have attainable goals?

 

Lori

 

Lori

[Kris]

Our plan is to do one "English" credit each year, which includes grammar, comp and lit, and then one History credit each year.

 

I tried to break "English" up, but it was daunting. So I "lumped." You're right -- for him to get enough hours in to count a full credit for both lit and comp, as well as everything else, there wouldn't be much time to do much else.

[Lori D.]

We've been doing both literature programs AND *some* Great Books ala Well Trained Mind in high school, and so below is how I've decided to assign credits, based on what we've done, and also on comparing how much work public/private high schools *usually* count for a full credit (generally 135 to 180 classroom hours, 6-12 books, and various papers, quizzes, and tests).

 

The short answer for high school for us at this point is looking like:

4 credits = English

2 credits = History

4 credits = The Great Books (literature elective credits)

 

Hope this is of some help. Warmest regards, Lori D.

 

 

 

Last year for 9th grade:

 

A. 1 credit for English 1 = about 5 hours a week of work

- writing = instruction & assignments from a writing program, plus writing on the literature

- grammar = a grammar program

- literature = Literary Lessons from the Lord of the Rings (full year lit. guide & the 3 books of the trilogy)

 

B. 0.5 credit for History (World: Ancients) = about 2 hours a week of work

- textbook readings (non-fiction)

- additional resources (parts of other books, documentaries, films, etc.)

- historical fiction (6 books)

- a few short papers, quiz responses, "in class" discussion

 

C. 1 credit for The Great Books course = about 4 hours a week of work

(this will be counted as a separate literature course, which would be considered an elective)

- Great Books study ala WTM (7 classic ancient works suggested from WTM)

- writing responses to some of these works

- "in class" discussion

 

 

 

This year for 10th grade:

 

A. 1 credit for English 2 = 5 hr/week

- writing = writing assignments on the literature

- grammar = final grammar review; grammar mechanics practice

- literature = "Worldviews in Science Fiction Literature" -- reading/discussing/writing 9 works

(we're making our own course with various lit. guides: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde; Frankenstein; The Time Machine; Animal Farm; The Giver; Brave New World; short stories from Cosmicomics; Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy; A Canticle for Leibowitz)

 

B. 0.5 credit for History (World: 20th century) = 2 hr/wk

- textbook readings (non-fiction)

- additional resources (parts of other books, documentaries, films, etc.)

- historical fiction (6 books)

- a few short papers, quiz responses, "in class" discussion

 

C. 1 credit for The Great Books course = 4 hr/wk

(this will be counted as a separate literature course, which would be considered an elective)

- Great Books study ala WTM (6 classic works)

(Beowulf, Macbeth, two short story units, All Quiet on the Western Front, Diary of Anne Frank, To Kill a Mockingbird)

- writing responses to some of these works

- "in class" discussion

 

 

 

projected schedule/credits for 11th grade:

 

A. 1 credit for English 3 =

- writing = writing assignments on the literature

- grammar = no formal grammar; possible grammar mechanics practice

- literature = "American Literature" -- reading/discussing/writing 6 works

 

B. 0.5 credit for History (U.S.) =

- textbook readings (non-fiction)

- additional resources (parts of other books, documentaries, films, etc.)

- historical fiction (6 books)

- a few short papers, quiz responses, "in class" discussion

 

C. 1 credit for The Great Books course =

(this will be counted as a separate literature course, which would be considered an elective)

- Great Books study ala WTM (6-8 classic works)

(1-2 works by Shakespeare; 1-2 short story units; 4 further American lit. works)

- writing responses to some of these works

- "in class" discussion

 

 

 

projected schedule/credits for 12th grade:

 

A. 1 credit for English 4 =

- writing = writing assignments on the literature

- grammar = no formal grammar; possible grammar mechanics practice

- literature = "British Literature" -- reading/discussing/writing 6 works

 

B. 0.5 credit for History (World: Medieval/Renaissance/Reformation) =

- textbook readings (non-fiction)

- additional resources (parts of other books, documentaries, films, etc.)

- historical fiction (6 books)

- a few short papers, quiz responses, "in class" discussion

 

C. 1 credit for The Great Books course =

(this will be counted as a separate literature course, which would be considered an elective)

- Great Books study ala WTM (6-8 classic works)

(1-2 short story units; 6 further British and world lit. works)

- writing responses to some of these works

- "in class" discussion

Edited November 12, 2008 by Lori D.
added info

[Nan in Mass]

I say did because we've sent off the transcript to the college my son applied to already. My older one is in his senior year.

 

We do great books a la TWEM/TWTM, but we've skimped on the history, do English grammar via our Latin, only did 2 of the Vocabulary from Classical Roots (like and should have continued but no time), various writing things but no complete program (generally keep coming back to Writing Strands, though, which the more great books we do, the more I appreciate, badly written as the examples are), scifi instead of moderns, and only a little logic and a little speech. In some ways, I don't feel as though we did enough to claim all the credits suggested in TWTM. Besides, my son had lots of social studies credits (because that is the area where he specialized) and some community college credits, some of which are English ones, and if I claimed all the credit TWTM suggests, he'd have too many credits. I think 32 credits (picking your number) is ok for a great student who has done lots of academic stuff, but we aren't a very academically oriented family and my older one is rather a late bloomer, academic-wise - 32 credits would be rather misleading, even as hard as he has worked. We do great books ssslllooowwwlllyyy, outloud, together. So I didn't even want to claim all the credits for literature that we could have. We did indeed spend massive amounts of time on literature and writing, enough that in a fair world, I should have assigned all that work 8 credits of great books, 2 of writing, 1 of speech, and 1/2 of logic, plus 1/2 of composition (1 semester of community college composition) and 1/2 of speech (1 semester of community college speech). But 12 1/2 credits of "English" put together with the 4 1/2 credits of social studies that wasn't history or government, 4 1/2 science (skimping a bit), 1 technology, 1 physical education, 3 fine arts (again skimping), 3 foreign language, and 4 math all equals 33 1/2 credits, too many even with the skimping. I wanted the rest of the stuff on the transcript, so I just knocked down the amount of credits for the English.

 

This is what I wound up putting on his transcript:

 

Ancient and Classical Literature and Analysis - 1

Medieval and Renaissance Literature and Analysis - 1

Enlightenment to Modern Literature and Analysis - 1

Science Fiction - 1

Speech - 1/2

Composition - 1/2

Western History - 1

US History and Government - 1

 

Again, it doesn't reflect the amount of time we put into great books, but it does sort of preserve the proportions (other than the massive amounts of time we spent on learning writing) and the descriptive titles (rather than English 1, 2, 3, and 4) do give some idea of what we did. For a different college, I might have rewritten the transcirpt giving 2 credits each year for great books (and left off the history), but he is going to a science-oriented state college, and I don't know how familiar they are with either homeschooling or subject divisions other than the standard English/math/science/social studies. TWTM says to "translate" your schoolwork into standard subjects for the transcript, so that is what I did. It worked for one state college, anyway, but I suspect the admissions department just looked at his transcript from the community college and how his brother (already at the college) is doing and totally ignored his mummy transcript GRIN.

 

You don't have to choose right away. I made a "best guess" plan and then modified it every year. I wrote something like "homeschooling is flexible and we may reassign credits at the end when we write the final transcript" on the yearly paperwork to our school department.

 

HTH

-Nan

[PamJH]

My kids will get a credit each for history and literature doing it the WTM way.

 

My DD read 13 Great Books during her freshman year (she still hates the Renaissance) and read the pertinent sections in Spielvogel as well as wrote a paper. She also read historical biographies for the period. And we discussed the period intensively because I know she'll never want to revisit that period for as long as she lives.

 

For Great Books, she wrote a paper about each and completed study guides for a few. She found the reading difficult, but I pushed her anyway.

 

She's in modern history now (her choice) and will read 15 to 18 Great Books, read Spielvogel and a variety of books on the modern period. She'll also write a history paper, do decade reports and discuss the period with her younger brother who enjoys history discussion.

 

For an English credit, last year she did Vocab from Classical Roots, a grammar workbook, and a writing program I devised. This year she's doing Writing the Novel Way.

 

So that's three credits per year for just those classes. She's also doing math, science and logic and taking French at the local college. If it looks like she's going to run over 32 credits, we'll pare back. No sense padding the numbers.

 

By the way, she does track how many hours she spends on each subject.

 

Hope this helps.

[Lori A. Davis]

Thanks for the responses - it is helpful to learn how others have managed this subject area. It seems that a good plan for us will be to follow the plan and give credit for history and literature, and have some of our composition assignments come from Great Books analysis with other assignments covering other topics.