American Literature in Co-op setting / Maybe Sonlight? What have you used?

[crosby0511]

I'm looking to teach American Literature in a co-op setting next year, but can't settle on a curriculum. I love the look of the Sonlight American Literature 430, but will it work in this type of environment? I've only used one of their sets and it was a one on one environment with a lot of daily discussion.

Do you have a favorite you would use in a co-op setting?

I would love some help deciding.

Rachel

[SoCal_Bear]

Maybe Beautiful Feet? I think that works well. 

[SoCal_Bear]

Maybe Stobaugh's American Lit course? It's now published by Master Books.
https://www.masterbooks.com/american-literature-set-single

 

[crosby0511]

Thanks @calbear. It doesn't look like Beautiful Feet has what I'm looking for, but Stobaugh's books have potential. Thanks for the reply.

 

[lmrich]

I think more information will be helpful... how often are you meeting? What is the age range of students? How much are they willing to spend on materials? How much help do you need... have you taught American Lit in a group setting before, do you need curriculum that contains all the writing prompts, etc. or do you want to develop those yourself? 

[crosby0511]

Great question @lmrich. This is for high school and I have not taught it in a group setting before, only one on one to my own child. I would love something that gives me writing prompts. We will be meeting once a week with me as the only teacher for this class. As for cost, it would be great if it were $200.00 or less per student. 

[lmrich]

I don't know if you are comfortable putting it together on your own. I LOVE designing curriculum so this kind of thing gets  me excited. I would want to have my students read 3 -4 novels, a variety of short  stories, and some poetry. You can certainly purchase book units that you can copy and hand out to the students. I tend to like TPT since I know I can print those materials for my students (some homeschool materials have strict copywrite rules), and it is usually affordable.  

I really like this seller's stuff: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Laura-Randazzo/Category/To-Kill-a-Mockingbird-Lee-66376

You will have to tweak it a lot to make it fit into your schedule, but it is doable. You will also want to make sure it jives with your ideas and beliefs. 

You should also look at a syllabus of other American Literature courses, and I might recommend that you purchase an anthology, too, just to get an idea of what is normally covered. I have been able to purchase anthologies used for less than $10. 

You might want to charge a materials fee and then still have the parents purchase the books so you can cover your expenses. 

[Lori D.]

5 hours ago, lmrich said:

I think more information will be helpful... how often are you meeting? What is the age range of students? How much are they willing to spend on materials? How much help do you need... have you taught American Lit in a group setting before, do you need curriculum that contains all the writing prompts, etc. or do you want to develop those yourself? 

 

4 hours ago, crosby0511 said:

Great question @lmrich. This is for high school and I have not taught it in a group setting before, only one on one to my own child. I would love something that gives me writing prompts. We will be meeting once a week with me as the only teacher for this class. As for cost, it would be great if it were $200.00 or less per student. 

@lmrich's questions are super, and your answers, @crosby0511, also really help.

My background, so you'll understand where I'm coming from:
I homeschooled our 2 DSs through high school graduation, and then switched to teaching at our homeschool co-op for the past 9 years -- mostly high school lit. & writing (i.e, the English credit), but I have also taught a few other things as well. So while I have not done an American Lit. focus year, I have created several other lit.-focused years, plus taught the writing, so I have some experience with teaching high school lit. in a classroom now.

Question about # of students:
How many students are you considering having in the class? If you are hoping for a lot of class discussion, from my experience, I have found 6-8 students is the sweet spot. Fewer than 6, then it gets very hard to have enough variety of opinions/ideas for discussion -- especially whenever 1-2 students don't make it class for any reason, which even further shrinks the class size. (And, student absences happens frequently, in my experience).  

More than 8 students or so, then group dynamics kicks in and the shy/quiet kids are too intimidated to talk, which also shuts down conversation. I have run a lit. class with as many as 12 students, but it was difficult to get discussion from a number of them due to natural group dynamics shutting down quiet students -- and it was difficult for classroom management, as you start getting excited, rowdy, normal teen behavior with larger groups.

To help keep class size optimized, I run two lit. sections, each with 6-9 students, and we are covering the same material in each. That only requires one "prep" per week, but allows more overall students to do the lit. -- but in smaller discussion-sized classes.

Question about time per week to invest in this class:
How much time per week are you planning on spending OUTSIDE of class for doing this class?

At a minimum, from my experience, you'll want to plan on:
- 1-2 hours/week to do the week's reading yourself so you're very familiar with the material to guide students through it in class
- 1 hour/week going over whatever program / guide / material you'll be using, and to prep what you are going to say/teach for the teaching part of class
- 0.5-1 hour/week sending out for admin. stuff: updating your paperwork; sending emails: reminders, answering questions, etc.
- IF you are grading any work, then plan on 15-60 min. per student per assignment, depending on the type/length of assignment

Questions about writing:
You mention wanting writing prompts. Will those just be for "output" for the PARENTS to grade, and you will just check off that it is done (students show you in class)?

Or, will you be GRADING these writing prompt assignments?

And what level of grading -- just reading for content, that they answered the writing prompt questions? Or will you also be grading on writing quality (grammar, paragraph structure, proof-editing, etc.)? In my experience, each "level" of more in-depth grading beyond simply checking off that the assignment was turned in requires exponentially more time per student for grading.

If you are going to be doing any grading, you may have the similar surprising experience that I did -- a HIGH percent of struggling writers, "late bloomer" writers, and remedial writers. I think that reading and writing skills are declining across the board in our nation for multiple reasons, but also for homeschoolers (or at least in my homeschool co-op). What I am seeing is that by high school, if a student isn't clicking with writing, the parent despairs and throw up their hands and just hopes that by outsourcing to me, the co-op teacher, that maybe *I* can fix their student's writing. Eek!

You may not have these issues at all, but I find that the writing abilities of my high school students runs a wide gamut -- every year, I typically have an extremely wide range of writing ability in my students:
- 15-20% = writing at or above grade level (upper high school to even sometimes college level)
- 25% = writing way below grade level, due to "late bloomer", or not much previous writing instruction at home, or remedial due to LDs
- 55-60% = writing somewhere in between, requiring varying amounts of feedback/instruction to keep moving forward

As a result, that has led to me heavily having to TEACH writing, so that students have the foundation to be able to do the writing assignments. And those struggling / late blooming / remedial writers take 3-4x as much of my TIME for mentoring them through the writing AND in grading / giving feedback on their writing. So, just something to bear in mind.

Lit. program ideas:

Lightning Literature
1 semester long programs, with teaching info written to the student, plus writing assignments ideas. Designed to be done mostly solo by the student, so these would be pretty easy to just "touch base" with students in your class, and only need minimal time outside of class on your part. And you could have parents do the grading of the writing assignments if you wanted.

A nice feature is that each program covers a variety of types of literature: novel, short story, poetry, play, essay, biography. The one downside is that all of the lit. for each 1 semester program focuses just on a short time period (example: early-19th century). I personally would want much more ability to choose the literature, but that's just me.

These run $40 per student guide, and under $7 for the matching teacher guide -- you can also get these as downloadable pdf files for about $30-35 per student guide and $5 per matching teacher guide.

Excellence in Literature: American Lit
1 year program. Writing assignment heavy, but you could just select a few to have students do. The program is written to the student, but one downside is that students are expected to learn about the author / background / times and other teaching info by following the links in the program and reading them. One option might be for YOU to present that material in class for the first 20 minutes, and then use the rest of your hour for class discussion.

$40 per program -- doesn't look like there is a separate teacher guide for these.

Edited May 18, 2022 by Lori D.

[Lori D.]

21 hours ago, lmrich said:

I don't know if you are comfortable putting it together on your own. I LOVE designing curriculum so this kind of thing gets  me excited. I would want to have my students read 3 -4 novels, a variety of short  stories, and some poetry...

You might want to charge a materials fee and then still have the parents purchase the books so you can cover your expenses. 

This is similar to what I do.

I spend the summer putting together my own weekly lessons that include: vocabulary words, background and teaching info, plus discussion questions, and then print a semester's worth of material into a 3-hole binder or 3-ring binder for each student. That way I can cover what  lit. that I want for each class. That binder of lessons is included in my class fee -- but parents are responsible to purchase the list of books covered in the class.

My class fee also is a nominal fee for my time (all that prep + all that grading/mentoring of the writing). I charge enough that it makes parents take me seriously and that they WILL COME (not just keep blowing off the class), AND that they will make their student do the work ("because I paid good money for it!!") -- but not so much that all of those 1-income homeschool families can't afford it. I make so very little (maybe $2/hour), that it works best if I consider this co-op teaching as a ministry rather than as an actual paying job. 😉 

I also have a policy of having a second adult in the room at all times by giving 3 "parent aide scholarships" -- parent works 1/3 of the classes doing whatever I need in class, and in exchange gets anywhere from 1/3-1/2 off of their class fee (I calculate out what works financially for each year a little differently, depending on costs and needs). That way I get a little pay for doing the class, all of the supplies are covered, and parents feel good because they are working to earn that discount. (Initially when I just handed out a few scholarships to families on the edge financially, they were rather demanding and didn't have "buy-in" to really make students do the work. Weird how gifting someone sometimes has the very opposite effect than what you would think...)

For American Lit:
I personally would want a wide variety of types of works (novels, short stories, poetry, plays) and variety of genres (realistic, adventure, humor, fantasy, sci-fi, mystery/detective), AND to be including some of the YA works that have come out in the last 20 years in order to get some diversity of writing style and diversity of perspective/viewpoints to bring out discussion in class and to help students start thinking about contemporary issues in current American culture.

I don't buy lit. guides or teacher lesson plans for creating my own, but do a lot of online searches for free guides and resources, do a lot of research for background info. I have a strong background in literature, so it has not been difficult to create my own lesson materials and discussion questions -- just time consuming. 😉 

Edited May 19, 2022 by Lori D.

[lmrich]

6 hours ago, Lori D. said:

This is similar to what I do.

I spend the summer putting together my own weekly lessons that include: vocabulary words, background and teaching info, plus discussion questions, and then print a semester's worth of material into a 3-hole binder or 3-ring binder for each student. That way I can cover what I want for each class. That binder of lessons is included in my class fee -- but parents are responsible to purchase the list of books covered in the class.

My class fee also is a nominal fee for my time (all that prep + all that grading/mentoring of the writing). I charge enough that it makes parents take me seriously and that they WILL COME (not just keep blowing off the class), AND that they will make their student do the work ("because I paid good money for it!!") -- but not so much that all of those 1-income homeschool families can't afford it. I make so very little (maybe $2/hour), that it works best if I consider this co-op teaching as a ministry rather than as an actual paying job. 😉 

I also have a policy of having a second adult in the room at all times by giving 3 "parent aide scholarships" -- parent works 1/3 of the classes doing whatever I need in class, and in exchange gets anywhere from 1/3-1/2 off of their class fee (I calculate out what works financially for each year a little differently, depending on costs and needs). That way I get a little pay for doing the class, all of the supplies are covered, and parents

 

Oh honey, I hope not - $2 an hour! Can you reuse your plans? I have a 6/7 grammar/comp class that I have taught for 6 years in a row so  there is no new planning now for that one. I also teach middle school literature and can pull from old units to create yearly plans. I do spend an enormous amount of time grading and providing feedback. 

[Lori D.]

1 hour ago, lmrich said:

Oh honey, I hope not - $2 an hour! Can you reuse your plans? I have a 6/7 grammar/comp class that I have taught for 6 years in a row so  there is no new planning now for that one. I also teach middle school literature and can pull from old units to create yearly plans. I do spend an enormous amount of time grading and providing feedback. 

lol. No need to feel bad for me. 😉 It is my choice to spend that huge amount of time on creating material, and providing such detailed feedback on the writing. I don't need a paying job, and I really do see this work as a volunteer ministry to be able to help other homeschoolers in an area that they often struggle to cover. That's a real joy to me. And I really do love all of the research and creating new lit. units. Plus, I do a lot of research each week to come up with 2-3 fun and interesting links or images or other "extensions" to what we discussed in class each week.

Yes, I always re-use when I can. A lot of the teaching info I have created over the years I have revised and refined to the point where, now, I can largely re-use many as-is, and others only need small revisions or tweaks. However, grading and feedback time is huge, and there's just no way around that, because merely checking off that a student "did" an assignment is a waste of everyone's time -- where students really learn in the writing process is through the detailed feedback. Since covid, I've learned to use Zoom meetings and that has become a really valuable tool for meeting individually with students outside of class and mentoring them in writing the analysis essays.

And of course, I re-use a lot of my lit. units. But I prayerfully consider what I should cover each year, and that usually means I am bringing in a number of new works of literature, or creating a poetry or short story unit, etc. And I'm always coming up with new ideas for a focus on literature that means I get to dig into some new works and do some great research that I love. 😉 That's really the key -- I do this for the love of it, and I am blessed to be in the financially stable situation where I CAN do it out of personal enjoyment.

[lmrich]

Something I have tried this year that was so much fun and seemed to work really well was  literature  circles. I brought in 4 sets of books (about 5 in each set)  and the students picked a book that interested them. Then in their small group they had to decide how to much read by each week to finish the book on time. It was their job to jot down questions while reading, etc.. and then discuss within their groups. They did a wonderful job. They could work cooperatively on their  final project or on their own. 

10 hours ago, Lori D. said:

 

 However, grading and feedback time is huge, and there's just no way around that, because merely checking off that a student "did" an assignment is a waste of everyone's time -- where students really learn in the writing process is through the detailed feedback. Since covid, I've learned to use Zoom meetings and that has become a really valuable tool for meeting individually with students outside of class and mentoring them in writing the analysis essays.

 

This is so true! And Zoom is so  good for   that. I also use Google Docs so I can provide feedback  at anytime during the week. I point out lots of 'rules' that middle school kids are learning -when to  use  italics vs quotes for titles, how to cite properly, etc.. but also can really help them focus on their ideas. I, too, spend hours and hours on my comp classes. I teach history and math as well - and those are so much easier to grade. 

I also make mid-week videos for the kids to watch so I can point out interesting things in the text. I could always tell the kids who actually watched them because they would bring up some of the points from the video. 

Co-op/hybrid teaching is a lot more work than just  working for that one or two  hours a week. Just something else for the PP to think about. We had a new teacher this year, and she could not beleive how much work it was. We should start a sub-group  for hybrid teachers.

[Lilaclady]

I don’t know if these literature guides  be useful to you. They will be retired at the end of June so you want want to download them now as they are free

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/literature/litlibrary/

[MamaSprout]

I taught Lightning Lit in Co-op for American Lit. I dropped Uncle Tom's Cabin and added a couple of glencoe guides.

I used the old "America Reads" anthologies for British and World. I haven't see the American literature version, but I like that series.

Edited May 21, 2022 by MamaSprout