SL300 20th Century -- would love to hear thoughts/reviews/comments!

[Lori D.]

Thanks in advance!

[Kimber]

We're using this for co-op next year. I'm hoping for the best, but I have learned that the spine on the website is the Visual History of the Modern World, not the Visual History of the 20th century as is pictured. They had the name of one book and the picture of the other. The IG has been updated with the Modern World book.

Kimberly

[Captivated]

Since the spine has changed I can only tell you our experience with previous version. We LOVED the entire core. Great books, great discussions.

[CynthiaOK]

I'd love to hear, too. We will be using this in our co-op next year.

[Kimber]

Did you assign all of the readers--history and literature? How much writing did your student have to do weekly for the version that you used?

Thanks,

Kimberly

[Captivated]

I did assign all the reading, the books were really good - but we were doing this at home and not at a co-op. We didn't do all of the writing cause my ds was using another writing program at the time. He was writing at least an essay a week so I didn't add to it. :) It is a very full course. If I were doing this at a co-op I would find out how much work the moms are willing to have their child do. I think total with readers and history - it took him 2 hours a day to read all that needed reading and then we discussed once a week instead of daily. I think this could be a great co-op class as long as they are willing to work.

[Brenda in MA]

it is a lot of work, but he enjoyed it. He used the older version with the DK book as the spine, and we discussed it twice per week.

After a frustrating start with the Language Arts assignments, I just had him write 5 paragraph essays on the books that were more "literature" than "history", and he used those towards an English credit.

For the history, I also had him do decade reports, as I described in another recent post about what to do for history besides read. For each decade, he wrote a 3 - 4 page mini-research report, and included a timeline of 20 significant events, and a couple of maps relevant to that decade.

My son enjoyed the course and the books, but it was a lot of work.

HTH,
Brenda

[Kimber]

Did he create the maps himself? Or did he find them from other sources?

This is fantastic information!

Kimberly

[Kimber]

Thank you very much. I was trying to get a feel for how much writing would be enough. This sort of gives me permission to adapt it more rigorously.

Thank you, :)

Kimberly

[Brenda in MA]

Did he create the maps himself? Or did he find them from other sources?

This is fantastic information!

Kimberly

Kimberly,

He found the maps from various sources. I have the set of maps from Knowledge Quest, and he used some of those. He also found some on the internet. Basically, what I wanted from him was a map that was relevant to that decade and marked/labeled appropriately. For example, one of the maps he included for the 1950s was a map of Korea showing the division of the North vs. South and also having some of the major cities/battle sites labelled. For the 1940s, he included a map of Europe color coded to show which countries were with the axis, the allies, and which were neutral.

HTH,
Brenda

[Kimber]

Thank you Brenda,

I believe we'll try this in our co-op. I mentioned the idea to the administrator, and she loved it.

One last question. :) How often were these decade reports given? I'm assuming it took him one to two weeks per research report, but I'm not good at guessing these things.

Thanks,

Kimberly

[Brenda in MA]

but he also had literature papers due during some of the weeks. He spent about 2 weeks researching his topic of choice and making up the timeline and maps, then he spent the last week actually writing the report part. The timeline construction was pretty easy once he had the first one done as a template. The SL IG has many lists of events, so it's pretty quick to scan the relevant IG pages and come up with 20 events to include.

HTH,
Brenda

[Kimber]

Thanks a bunch to you Brenda! You also Lori for starting the thread!

Kimberly

[Lori D.]

Thanks, Amy! Can you tell me how many books are different from the year you used from the current year??

[Lori D.]

Extremely helpful, Brenda! Thanks for taking the time to respond. Would you remember what thread that other post of yours was under??

[Captivated]

Sure - happy to help. Looks like only two changes - the main history spine "Visual History of the 20th Century" and then one of the bible books "How to Ruin Your Life by 40." The rest looks the same.

[Chris in VA]

We are using 300 now. We don't do the LA/writing, or the Bible, just the lit and the history (we are using the DK book--of course that's changed).
Be aware there is no commentary or helps in 300 THIS YEAR for half the books. I would check with the company to see if this has changed. And imo, you can take out at least 6 of the books and never miss them.
Make sure your discussions go deep enough because the analysis of the history was lacking--again, that's only THIS YEAR--it hopefully gets a lot deeper in the new IG.

[Brenda in MA]

Extremely helpful, Brenda! Thanks for taking the time to respond. Would you remember what thread that other post of yours was under??

Lori,

This is the thread:

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24132

Brenda

[Brenda in MA]

We are using 300 now. Be aware there is no commentary or helps in 300 THIS YEAR for half the books. I would check with the company to see if this has changed. And imo, you can take out at least 6 of the books and never miss them.

I agree with Chris, here. I was quite disappointed with the IG notes on the literature books. I ended up using Spark Notes as an aid to discussion and for essay topic ideas. I'm pretty sure that SL is aware of peoples' dissatisfaction with this Core's IG, so I hope they addressed it in the edition that just came out this April.

Brenda

[Chris in VA]

Yes, I have to say SL's response to the dissatisfaction was quite nice--they gave a lot of thought to the next IG, from what I've heard. We used SparkNotes, too--

I know I'm hard on SL sometimes in my posts--one thing they do well, or at least have for me, is listen to what the buyers are saying, and try to improve their product. They also gave me a $40 credit because I bought Understanding the Times as recommended, but really needed the lectures that accompany it--they never mentioned those. When I complained, they agreed. They now don't offer just the two books I bought. And that credit never expires. I think they are trying hard to honor God in their business.

[Lori D.]

Thanks Chris. Very helpful. : ) That's how I was considering using SL300, too -- for the history and the lit.