Freshman English

For those of you with homeschool high school experience, what have your “English” classes involved and what resources have you used?  We have been really focusing on oral and written narrations the last few years and I have definately seen improvement in my soon-to-be-9th grader daughter’s written narrations.  BUT… I’m considering (probably should write “slightly stressing”) about where to go from here.  I remember my high school english classes consisting mostly of grammar (9th grade) and reading/analyzing literature and writing essays and research papers. The history and english classes were somewhat synchronized by time period. 

      I’m concerned mostly with two things:

        1.)Literature Analysis: I know CM did not recommend tearing literature apart, but that’s what I remember mostly doing in high school- looking at themes, foreshadowing, analogies, ect (I remember reading Herman Melville’s Billy Budd- I was the only one in the class who recognized that Billy Budd was a Christ-like character, or maybe I was the only one brave enough to mention Christ in a public high school- which is funny because I was the shyest, quietest student there).  I’ve looked a little bit at some literature courses- Greenleaf Press, Excellence in Literature, Learning Language Arts Through Literature, Any Novel Study Guide- the topics they cover and the essay questions they ask, I feel like I could never come up with on my own.  I have Sonya’s Hearing and Reading, Writing and Telling book (which is very helpful) and when I look at some of Charlotte’s narration questions for older students, it seems you would have to know the book/chapters very well in order to come up with such focused questions.  I don’t think I’d have time to pre-read every book she’ll be reading through high school and think of “deep” essay questions that cover all those topics found in a literature course.  So far, my daughters’ narrations have come from pretty basic narration questions: tell back what you read, using different forms, like journal entries, newspaper articles, interviews, ect; describe this or that;or tell what you know about…  I just know my daughter is going to balk at more reading, in addition to the reading from the SCM history modules.  I don’t want to load her down under a weight of academic subjects, but I want her to be prepared for college, should she choose to attend.

   2. Writing-  Should we do a course on writing paragraphs, essays, research papers, etc, Freshman year?  We have not in the past been consistent with any other writing program other than written narration.  Do we need a course  to learn the “5 sentence paragraph” or “5 paragraph essay”? 

Also, more advice needed: Grammar.  We finished a grammar course “Grammar the Easy Way” (which in my opinion wasn’t that easy ).  She has always struggled with parsing and diagraming, but we made it through the course.  Is grammar on the SAT’s?  Should I have her repeat another grammar course in 9th grade?

Sorry this is so long, but as you can see, I have LOTS of questions! Any advice would be much apprecitated.

Thanks,

Kim