Hi Angie!
I have Teaching the Classics (the dvd/workbook seminar) and love it! Not only is the seminar helpful to show you how and why socratic discussion is enriching to a study of literature, but it includes a guide in the appendix with many levels of questions you can use for any book as desired.
For example, under the main question of “When does this story happen?”, which I always thought was a pretty basic question that didn’t take much to answer, they have 6 subquestions you may want to pull from. Everything from “How long a period of time does the story cover?” to “In what time of life for the main character do the events occur? Are they children? Are they just passing into adulthood? Are they already grownups? Does setting the story in this particular time of the characters’ lives make the story better?”
When I do a group discussion with my children (or a one on one discussion with my teen, or small group discussion with my teen and husband) I try to browse through the question lists before our planned discussion day and note down which ones are particularly applicable to the book we read, ones I think will produce the most fodder for discussion/thinking.
I have not used Center for Lit’s Ready Readers, so no help there.
My oldest did one summer book discussion with them a couple years back when they offered it free. They were to read The Hobbit before class and come ready for discussion. It was held online and she really enjoyed it. I know they offer different kinds of classes, some include writing assignments, I have no experience with those.
