History - continue with sequence or restart with Ancients?

[Kathy in MD]

Originally I planned on doing Early Modern history (1600-1850) for the ninth grade as a continuation of the history cycle we started in the 7th grade. But I read a few months ago that SWB now recommends restarting the history cycle for the 9th grade. So I'm now looking for the pros and cons of each option.

 

Here's the background on my situation. Ds is an only child, so I won't be teaching 2 different time periods. He's also a weak reader (I will use audio books for some works) and probably still more in the logic stage than the rhetoric stage. He's not studied World history in any depth since 1600, though he has had a year of in-depth American history. I plan on following TWTM history program, with a bit more emphisis on the history portion through The Teaching Company tapes.

 

What do you suggest for our next time period, ancients or early modern and why? If the pro's and con's seem balanced to me, I'll let him decide.

[mamaof2andtwins]

I am going to be faced with a similar situation in 2 school years with my now 7th grade daughter. She is in ancients this year. She has already had one round of chronological history. She will be ready to begin Early Modern in 9th grade.My thought is to continue the cycle with her and ramp up the reading and writing into the higher level. BTW she has an older brother and two younger sisters.

 

In TWTM, several options are given (pp.276-278). Since you began ancients in 7th grade, and did not make that quick progression through the time period so that you ended the modern age at the end of 8th grade (options #1), you would probably want to continue the progression, but change over to using Great Books from the Early Modern (Options #3). I didn't read anywhere about this being changed, but you need to decided what is best for your family. I personally find it fracturing to end a cycle in the middle and begin again with ancients especially if your son has not really had much study in Early Modern or Modern History.

 

Best wishes,

Jennie

Edited December 7, 2008 by mamaof2andtwins

[Laura K (NC)]

One benefit for us was that my son will have done modern, ancients (this year), medieval and renaissance, and then pre-modern in his senior year. Along with premodern history, he will do (in addition) government and economics. Government will go very nicely with the pre-modern history, and it and economics will bring my son round again to modern history.

 

I was concerned that my son hadn't had enough background or maturity to really study the ancient texts. There's some difficult reading there, especially in the speeches. I thought it was a shame that this difficult reading had to be watered down a bit by me in order to get through it.

 

Modern history isn't easy, either, but there is just so much great literature to choose from, it was easier for me to use modern literature as an introduction to more thorough reading. The modern period in particular is a great opportunity to read short stories. Window to the World by IEW is a great lit. guide that uses short stories that fit so well with this time period. My son was not ready in 9th grade to read books like The Jungle or Catcher in the Rye, but he never had a shortage of great books to choose from.

 

Now, I'm giving you the literature reasons for our choosing the modern period first. As far as the history, we used Sonlight's 20th century history as a spine. My son probably didn't work hard enough with that, and I didn't agree with all of Sonlight's literature picks, but he remembered so much, and I can use that to work backward, and tie ancient history events and places to modern history that he'd already studied. The democracy of Athens v. the democracy of the U.S. was a nice comparison that he was able to get, having studied American history on its own in middle school, and then again during his trip through the modern period. The recent conflict in Ossetia happened in the Caucasus, which was an interesting and important territory throughout the ancient period. I think it's just as easy to move backward in time to tie historical events together as it is to move forward in time. The important thing, to me, is to be able to see the links. Information is so much easier to remember that way.

 

If you have more than one child, it's so much easier to have them all study the same history period at the same time. In our family, that means that my middle son is studying ancient history in his 8th grade year, and my youngest son is studying it in his 6th grade year. If I restarted all of them on ancient history in 9th grade, they would be doing too much repeating, I think, while some crucial history would be left out. That happened to us in the middle school years, and I am learning from my mistake.

[Beth in SW WA]

We are starting over again in Ancients next year for 9th, after just completing logic stage Ancients in 7th. After researching US history/lit options, I think my ds will be better prepared to hit those concepts/authors in 11th/12th.

 

I think this is my plan. Ds is currently 8th:

 

7th: Ancients (a la TWTM)

8th: Middle ages/ Ren/ Pre-Modern/ Modern (basically a world history course)

9th: Ancients w/ HOAW, HO, Omni 1, Drew's Iliad study guide

10th: Medieval (I hope SWB has her book done by then)

11th: US History/Lit (Patriot's History & America The Last Best Hope), LL

12th: US Govt/Econ

[Rhondabee]

Kathy,

 

Do you recall if SWB recommended speeding up (or slowing down) Logic stage history so that you would "naturally" fall into Ancients in 9th grade? I have 3 years to plan, but I'll have a 9th grader and 12th grader - I wonder if she would recommend the 9th grader doing Ancients while the 12th grader finished his cycle with Moderns?

[EKS]

I have a son in 7th grade now. We finished the history cycle last year in 6th, so after much angst, I decided to condense the middle grades rotation down to two years and then start with the ancients in 9th. The reason I decided to do this was (1) that I wanted high school history to start at the beginning, (2) I wanted to give him a thorough review that tied everything together before high school, and (3) I thought, given my son's LDs, having that review fairly fresh in his mind it would help him when it came time to tackling the more difficult high school material.

 

A set of books that I am *really* liking for this purpose is The Human Odyssey series put out by K12. It emphasizes the overarching themes and is a wonderfully coherent narrative.

[Kathy in MD]

Thanks, everyone for the imput. I asked this question 2 years ago when I was debating wheither to condense a 4 yr cycle into two years or stretch it out. And now I'm having 2nd thoughts.

 

I'm leaning toward continuing the four year cycle since I don't have time to compress 2.5 yrs into 6 months.