I’ve yet to wrap my mind around how much literature analysis is necessary to be prepared for college. I don’t want reading to be a chore, especially for my 8th grader who is not an avid reader. Would doing a couple of these guides per year on age appropriate books through high school be adequate college prep? Thanks for any input! Blessings, Gina,
Bummer. Thanks for sharing. Any other suggestions? I don’t want to do Lightening Lit for 8th because dd has read most the books and I don’t want to analyze that many. We have the Any Novel Study Guide but hardly touched it last year… would prefer something done for me. Not sure what to do and how much is really necessary!
Gina, keep in mind that theses were elementary school ones and I’ve not looked at the older ones. I guess it felt like busy work and my kids hated it. They give lovely oral or written narrations, but they really didn’t care for the PP guides. They answered everything just fine, but greatly preferred straight narration. I bought a couple of Memoria Press lit. guides for the coming year, but haven’t given them much of a look just yet.
Oddly, my kids just completed their homeschool testing last week and all did well, as I expected, but my ds9 had the most trouble with reading a paragraph and answering specific questions like main idea, what happened first. It’s strange bc he does this in narration just fine.
Thanks, Christie. My dd14 will have a full enough schedule that I don’t want to add busywork. But I want to make sure she’s prepared for SAT’s/college and want her to think more critically while reading (without makjng reading a drag). I’m very tempted by Teaching the Classics, but I struggle to implement things like this if not specifically laid out (ie what tends to get dropped in the day!) It’s not cheap.
My dd’s lowest scores on the Iowa test in 5th were in reading comprehension. I bought Reading Detective from The Critical Thinking Co
and she improved from missing a lot to getting most of what they were asking for. We haven’t retested yet, but I think part of it was just not being familiar with that type of questioning. I hate to teach to a test. I just mainly have them do exercises as part of light summer activity.
We tried the Progeny Press guides a couple of years ago. My two middle schoolers both disliked it. They felt it was busy work and redundant. They much preferred giving a written narration over the guides. We discussed vocab. if they couldn’t figure it out contextually. That was enough. They loved the books they read, just didn’t like doing the guides.
I do wonder though if they will be prepared for testing. None is required in our state, but they will have to take at least the SAT for college.
Thanks, Benita, for sharing your middle schooler’s experience. Maybe I should just get out our Any Novel Study Guide and organize it to be more independent for dd before the year begins….picking and choosing so it’s not too cumbersome. It looks good, we just hardly got to it!
Thank you both for helping me think through this:) Gina
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