Narrating Literature – Early High School

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  • August 19, 2016 at 3:29 pm
    Sue
    Participant

    DD15 is beginning 10th grade shortly, and I am considering how to approach literature this year. She has struggled somewhat with dyslexia, and it has affected her reading composition. Still, she has enjoyed books such as The Prince and the Pauper, Watership Down, Little Women, and others in the past. This year, I am going to require more written narrations from her literature selections.

    I have been pondering literary analysis and am not sure how I want to handle this subject. I don’t want to stray too far from Charlotte Mason’s methods, but I frequently second-guess myself, thinking that I should add to her methods in order to prepare my kids for college classes.

    However, today I reread Sonya’s blog post, Teaching Literature: Subject by Subject, Part 9. In it, she says “….you can encourage deeper thinking and evaluation by how you word narration questions. Make sure you keep the questions open-ended, but feel free to ask them to explain any comparisons between this book’s main character and another one they have read, or ask them to contrast the plot in this book with another one. In other words, don’t shy away from discussion, but give them the benefit of the doubt that they are gleaning much on their own and don’t need or want you to dissect things for them.”

    I’d like a few suggestions regarding the above-quoted paragraph. What are some suggestions you have for comparison (or contrast) of characters or plots in this way? What might be some books that would lend themselves to this comparison? I have to be honest, I have lost track of what books we have read over the years, especially those assigned for independent reading. I had to go back and look at the organizer to see what DD read this past year!

    I think I need to declutter my mind, LOL. Looking forward to your answers.

    August 20, 2016 at 4:50 pm
    Sonya Shafer
    Moderator

    Here’s an example to get the ball rolling or the creative juices flowing or (insert another metaphor here):

    A potential character comparison: In the Charles Dickens books, Bleak House and Great Expectations, one of the main characters expects to receive a lot of money. Compare and contrast how those two characters react to that expectation. How do their frames of mind affect their decisions and what are the results of those decisions? What do you think of the two men and the decisions they made?

    A potential plot comparison from those same books: Why do you think Dickens used that “expectation” theme in both of those books? Can you recall any other books or stories that have that same plot element? How do they compare/contrast to the two books mentioned above?
    OR
    Why do you think Dickens used that “expectation” theme in both of those books? How does the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:13-21) carry a similar theme? What life principle can you draw from the Dickens stories and the parable?

    August 21, 2016 at 8:11 am
    Sue
    Participant

    That’s a comparison I hadn’t thought of, comparing them to the parable in Luke.  That would work well for both of us since we are both much more familiar with the Bible (read several times over recent years) than some classic literature (read only once and maybe a loooong time ago in my case).

    Part of my problem is that I haven’t read Tales from Watership Down and only read Watership Down a long time ago.  I couldn’t quite think of questions to compare those two even though that would be a logical thing to do.  I suppose I could have made if very broad, such as “Compare the characters in both books” or “How were the two books similar; how were they different?”

    I really should go back and read some of the books I read in high school….so many books, so little time!

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