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Please Help me with dd16 Lit study!!!
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Dd16 is a very strong reader. She loves to read and discuss what she has read. She doesn’t even mind written narrations or essays based on her readings. However, she hates ALL Lit programs!!! She says it kills the joy of reading the book. She has done basic Lit study so she is familiar with the different terms. What does she really need from a literature program? Is there a way I can teach her these skills without having to “kill” the book?
I can think of a couple possibilities:
1. Get other teens involved. It’s always more fun to discuss lit if it is more than just you and mom, or even you and a sibling or two.
2. Make a deal. Something along the lines of one book is just read/enjoyed and the next book is analyzed, repeat.
3. Try movies and books. If there is a literature title you want to analyze then offer to have a movie night the weekend after you have done the discussion/analysis. Watch the book in movie form. Chances are you will then get even more literary discussion!
I say, don’t make her “do” literature at all! Let her enjoy it and discuss it with you as she loves to do. Charlotte Mason did not approve of dissecting books and there is no need to do so except as preparation for literature analysis in college.
Many kids never “do” literature analysis and still go on to be very successful in college. If your daughter loves to read and discuss her readings, than she is miles ahead of the average student. 🙂
I would suggest, at the minimum, go through Teaching the Classics together, with the seminar workbooks.
If she responds well, get their Worldview supplement, too.
Personally, I think doing a semester of Windows to the World would be rewarding.
If you don’t want that, then she can read ‘How to Read a Book’ by Mortimer Adler.
A great addition would be Roar on the Other Side.
These will not kill her reading enjoyment, but enhance it and cause her to be a more active reading and thinking individual.
I didn’t have much time to post last night so I’m back with more thoughts this morning.
The first thing I would do is to at least give her a nice long break from literary analysis. Then I might do one book study a year or something like that to prepare her for this study in college.
There really is no need to analyze each and every book we read. Charlotte Mason did not recommend this. Simply Charlotte Mason does not recommend this and neither does Ambleside Online. There is a nice page at AO with Q & A concerning high school language arts and they talk about why we shouldn’t analyze books too much.
Here’s a link to that page at AO:
https://www.amblesideonline.org/HighSchoolEnglish.shtml
In my homeschool, we cover literary analysis very briefly. I am having my daughter use a very concise lit study once a year through high school. That’s it! 🙂
That is true that every book shouldn’t be deeply analyzed. Neither TtC, nor WttW recommend analyzing every book either. Roar on the Other Side is a very gentle intro to poetry and more literary concepts.
The thinking skills taught by these resources are very valuable, and not just in regard to literature, but also current events, government, the Bible, and history, especially. I personally don’t see any conflict or contradiction with CM principles having gone through these programs, as it is still about the student’s own mind being used to explore the richness of a book, as opposed to being force-fed, which isn’t CMish.
Also, discussing a book isn’t always the same as engaging in a Socratic dialogue about one; and writing analytically about one, and learning annotation skills, too, are other aspects of thinking critically about the big ideas within the book chosen for deeper exploration.
There’s also a Great Courses course called How to Read and Understand Shakespeare which might be useful for her with its informality; it received great reviews. I just downloaded it myself from Audible. You can get it on DVD, though, too.
Speaking of Shakespeare, there are a couple books that are good:
The Brightest Heaven if Invention, and How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare.
Of course, the best way to top it off is either a live performance or a good one on TV. The BBC had his histories newly performed a couple of years ago, called The Hollow Crown. They were excellent.
For some modern renditions, Check out Digital Shakespeare. Also, David Tennant and Patrick Stewart have done some, too that, although modern, have gotten rave reviews.
When studying other plays, try to find performances of those, too. For ex: The Crucible. That one requires in depth study and there is a movie (Winona Rider) and a new stage performance with Richard Armitage that might be available online. The plays definitely need to be experienced.
HTH
As for poetry, if you and/or she wants more after RotOS, then Art of Poetry is an in depth understanding type of material, not a grammar study of it.
I do think the Ancient works and works from the Dark and Middle Ages require assistance, and those works originally passed down orally would do well to be listened to. There is a video performance version of Beowulf done in Old or Middle English, with Mod. English subtitles available; as well as Seamus Heaney’s verse translation version heard for free on YouTube. I will find them and send them forward later today.
Thank you for all the ideas. I think we may have found a middle ground. She has done some Literature already and completed English 2 through FLVS this past year. I showed her WTTW and she already knows all of the skills except annotation. That was not taught so I am hoping to find something simple to teach us that, since I never learned it either. So, after doing some looking she likes the look of Epi Kardia American Lit program. She likes that is doesn’t have mind numbing comprehensive questions or a zillion vocab words to define before she can read. This also has instructions in it to use How To Read A Book. I also like the look of Roar for the poetry element. She is not a fan of poetry and has studied it somewhat so maybe I can sneak a little in with this. lol,
I’d side with anyone who says to avoid killing the love of literature by over dissecting and analyzing each work. I also applaud lots of discussion. The groups is a great suggestion. Allow time too. Don’t rush the digestion of these great works. If anything else, maybe read some literary criticism via essays, articles at the library regarding the work. That’s more enlightening and where you’ll actually look/learn when you’re writing a paper at the college level. But do this because it’s fun and there is interest in knowing what scholars think.
I always enjoy this site for general understandings and technique questions …
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/01/
I got curious and googled “literary criticism” to see what was out there. This also looked like a pretty comprehensive online resource …
http://gdc.gale.com/gale-literature-collections/literature-criticism-online/
This from Excellence in Literature might be useful:
http://excellence-in-literature.com/handbook/how-to-annotatehttp://excellence-in-literature.com/handbook/how-to-annotate
They also have other wonderfully useful articles concerning writing helps and articles about various authors and their works
Another resource that may be helpful is an excerpt from How to Read a Book, called How to Mark a Book:
http://classicalkids.net/files/How%20to%20Mark%20a%20Book.pdf
HTH
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