Highschool Literature Questions

We’ve used MFW and Beautiful Feet for high school literature.  It’s been divided by Ancient Civilizations in 9th grade and World History in 10th grade.  I’m really leaning toward more Beautiful Feet for U.S. History in 11th & 12th grade.  There are so many great books and so little time 😉  Blessings, Melissa

I’ve tried by high school to move more to various essay forms instead of only narrations, although of course we still do that frequently.  My kids are college-bound and essay writing is a necessity, so we stress this. 

I do try to read the books my high schoolers read.  I want to be able to discuss with them, and this is important enough to me to sacrifice a little summer time or other time to read the books so I can be familiar.

Some of the resources that have helped me include Total Language Plus (although I modify these pretty drastically when I use them) and Lightning Literature from Hewitt.  These resemble typical high school courses but involve WHOLE books and not the fragments many of us read in high school.  They have GREAT background info, literary terms, and terrific essay ideas.  We have switched to mostly these now for 9th and up.

For college-bound, I recommend at least a credit’s worth of American lit, then any other kind you want–my transcripts have included a credit of World Literature and a half-credit of Shakespeare.

I think you can’t go wrong with the suggestions on the SCM Literature guide for 9-12 grades.  I’d only quibble that perhaps Emma is a better book than Pride and Prejudice, though P&P is more popular, and I read Great Expectations earlier than David Copperfield (some students can be daunted by the length, and since I consider David Copperfield the finest novel ever written in the English language, I subject it to pretty intensive study in senior yeaer.)

I do not do the spelling or vocabulary exercises; they are a waste of time.  I pump up the dictation, choosing extra dictation passages so we can do one each day, and do at least one written narration and one essay or useful writing assignment per unit.  (Some of the TLP writing assignments are twaddle.) 

Essay writing is still a useful skill.  If your student has not had instruction in it, I’d recommend some before expecting essays.  Useful helps would include Jump In by Apologia or Teaching the Essay by Analytical Grammar. 

World Literature would be literature written by non-Americans.  You can choose a wide smattering if you like; if you choose only Brits or only Europeans you might want to call it British Literature or European Literature. 

One place to find essay questions if you can’t think of any is to search on the net for lit/study/teaching guides for that book.  You have to pay for some, but you might find free ones available. If you do, mine them for a few essay questions and ditch the rest (they are usually twaddley.)    You remember the discussion and writing questions in things like Cliffs Notes; they got a bad rep because kids just read the notes and not the book, lol, but they are useful for things like essay questions.  Sometimes you can find them at libraries.

Lightning Lit–

Hm, you know, I didn’t even know there WAS a teacher guide.  LOL  So I’ve never used that.  LOL

We get the books ourselves–I just make note of the titles and the versions.  Sometimes I find the versions they have and sometimes I get a slightly different one, hasn’t caused a major problem yet.  I’ve found every book either already on my shelves or at paperbackswap so that part hasn’t cost me anything.

They really recommend starting with one of the American Lit ones first.  We did–just finished the American Mid to Late 19th Century (my son, oddly. LOVED Moby Dick–I’ve never managed to make it through that one despite starting it four separate times with the best of intentions!)