View Full Version : If someone were to make their own Am. Lit or World Lit program, how many books would
Kelly on the prairie
07-14-2008, 07:36 AM
I am considering making up a literature program using a variety such as garlic press and progeny press. For high school credit, how many books and papers do you think would be appropriate?
I must say we are not big fans of Lord of the Rings (I know, I know...don't fling a goblin at me) however, it would be nice to maybe not use a "formal" program, but rather a variety of our choosing.
Now that I write this out, I think am I crazy? Will it be too much extra work?:tongue_smilie:
Holly IN
07-14-2008, 08:19 AM
I am very interested in this as well....I am subscribing to this so I can keep tabs...:lurk5:
Holly
Chris in VA
07-14-2008, 08:19 AM
No, it's what we do. I always try to do too much. You have to know your student well--how many can they handle? WTM suggests anywhere from 8 to 16 Great Books a year--8 is light, but still fine, 16 is pushing it. I like to mix in a little historical fiction about the period, alongside the GB's written *during* the period.
Would our reading lists for Ancients, Medieval, Modern help you? I'll post if you want.
Kelly on the prairie
07-14-2008, 09:21 AM
Would our reading lists for Ancients, Medieval, Modern help you? I'll post if you want.
Would it?! Would it?! I would be very interested. Do you include a selection of short stories?
One of my favorite classes in college was a short stories class and I would love to share a selection of those with my kids.
It is so hard to decide. I have been playing with the idea of ordering Teaching the Classics. I love IEW, however, I am competent enough to have implemented it without the DVD set. Maybe I should take the plunge and order the TTC workbook. At least it would be a jumping off point.
dtsmamtj
07-14-2008, 10:22 AM
This is pretty much what we are doing this year - creating our own. I have just the IEW workbook (no dvd) for TTC and I am now in the process of chosing our literature books. I would love to see your list Chris in VA as this what we are studying in history. It will depend on the book for what kind of paper to to write or no paper at all. Last year we did 6 literature books plus 2 months of a poetry study. On average we were doing one each month, but Moby Dick and Uncle Toms Cabin took us about 6 weeks each instead of only 4 last year. We also include one Shakespeare and one Charles Dickens when possible. HTH
Looking forward see what ideas others have as well.
T
summer
07-14-2008, 10:29 AM
It is less work than following someone else's schedule. I would just get books from that time period as you feel you want them and read them. How many would depend greatly on the child. What I have would be great for my older, but we will be lucky if dd, who is 12 now, will ever read them. I am hoping a few key books get read though.
Kareni
07-14-2008, 11:49 AM
On the topic of short stories, take a look at these two threads (see particularly Eliana's posts in the latter one):
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15625&highlight=short+stories
and
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4540
Regards,
Kareni
HollyinNNV
07-14-2008, 12:12 PM
Here's the website for the writing/lit class I teach. It will give you an idea of how I have worked out the challenge that you are facing. It is still under construction.
http://web.mac.com/hollyk3799/Site_2/Welcome.html
Scroll down to find the lit reading list.
The corresponding history is western civ with Spielvogel.
The music page has links, but is not complete yet.
The art page is totally under construction.
The blog will be for student discussion on the various books we read.
HTH,
Holly in N NV
This is all created by myself because I can't find exactly what I want in another program. The co-op is called WINN (writers institute of northern nevada).
Jenny in Florida
07-14-2008, 12:18 PM
In retrospect, it looks light, but it was our first year attempting a WTM-ish curriculum and we were still finding our feet.
9th Grade: American History Through Literature and Fiction
We organized the year into a series of five units, each focusing on a social justice issue (the native American experience, slavery and abolition, women’s suffrage, the Holocaust and Japanese internment, desegregation and the civil rights movement). For each unit, my daughter read (or we read aloud together) one “Great Book” (something of the period) and at least one supplemental book, often historical fiction. She wrote a “context page” for each of the primary books and then wrote a longer essay on the topic of her choice at the end of each unit.
She also read through Elements of Style, as recommended in TWTM, and did a word roots program. We used two of the Glencoe study guides (available free online at http://www.glencoe.com/sec/literature/litlibrary/ (http://www.glencoe.com/sec/literature/litlibrary/) ): The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Slave Dancer. For history, we used a variety of resources, including Freedom: A History of Us by Joy Hakim.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, Nicholas Black Elk and John G. Neihardt
Crying Rocks, Janet Taylor Lisle
Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Watasuki Houston & James D. Houston
Malka, Mirjam Pressler
Minuk: Ashes in the Pathway, Kirkpatrick Hill
Mississippi Trial, 1955, Chris Crowe
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave, Frederick Douglass
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Mildred D. Taylor
Secrets on 26th Street, Elizabeth McDavid Jones
Sing Down the Moon, Scott O’Dell
Slave Dancer, Paula Fox
The Bostonians, Henry James
Time for Courage: The Suffragette Diary of Kathleen Bowen, Kathryn Lasky
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Warriors Don’t Cry, Melba Pattillo Beals
Jenny in Florida
07-14-2008, 12:34 PM
10th Grade: History and Literature of the Ancient World
This year’s studies were organized roughly by region/culture. We did, I think, six units, still with a mix of “Great Books” and supplementary readings. Again, my daughter wrote context pages for each of the major works written during the period being studied. And she did some kind of project, not always a traditional essay, for each unit. (The one I remember most clearly was designing the packaging for a boxed set of The Iliad and The Odyssey, writing a synopsis of each for the cover and creating artwork and so on.)
Again, she used a variety of resources for the history part, primarily the National Geographic Visual History of the World and The Mammoth Book of How It Happened: Eyewitness Accounts of History in the Making from 2000 bc to the Present. For the “literary” part, we relied mostly on The Book of Great Books: A Guide to 100 World Classics.
“Mu-lan” (poem), Translation from The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady: Interpretations of Chinese Poetry, Hans H. Frankel
“The Ramayana: A ‘Telling’ of the Ancient Indian Epic,” adapted by Larry Tominberg
Antigone, Sophocles
Art of War, Sun Tzu
Bhagavad-Gita, Juan Mascaro (translator)
Bone From a Dry Sea, Peter Dickinson
Dhammapada The Way of Truth, Sangharak****a (translator)
Gilgamesh, John Champlin Gardner
Iliad (selections), Homer (Robert Fitzgerald, translator)
Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare
Lady of Ch'iao Kuo, Warrior of the South, Laurence Yep
Odyssey, Homer (Henry I. Christ, translator)
Popol Vuh : The Definitive Edition Of The Mayan Book Of The Dawn Of Life And The Glories of Gods and Kings, Dennis Tedlock (translator)
Selections from Ancient Egyptian Literature: “The Tale of Sinuhe,” “The Shipwrecked Sailor,” “Great Hymn to the Aten”
The Bible: Authorized King James Version With Apochrypha (selections): Genesis, Esther, Exodus, Job, Ruth, Jonah
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold, C.S. Lewis
Tusk and Stone, Malcolm Bosse
Jenny in Florida
07-14-2008, 12:52 PM
11th Grade: History, Literature and Theater of the Middle Ages and Renaissance
This year, we didn’t do units, just a fairly straight up chronological order. We focused on the middle ages (up through about 1500, as I recall) in the first semester, then the Renaissance in the second. As you can see, we still did a mix of “Great Books” and interesting supplemental readings. We continued using the three primary history and literature resources from the previous year, adding some readings from The Well-Educated Mind for more literature background/analysis and two other books for history. She wrote one short historical essay about every other week, using prompts from History Scholar and worked through Wordsmith Craftsman, also. At the end of the year, she did a research project for history (tracing and creating a family tree for the ruling families of England from the Norman Conquest through the 1600s) and another project focusing on the theatre stuff.
“A Gest of Robin Hode,” Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren
“Prologue,” Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe
“The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd,”Sir Walter Raleigh
“The Pasisonate Shepherd to His Love,” Christopher Marlowe
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Mark Twain
A Man for All Seasons, Robert Bolt
Adventures of Robin Hood, Roger Lancelyn Green
Anna of Byzantium, Tracy Barrett
Anne of the Thousand Days, Maxwell Anderson
Arabian Nights, Volume I (selections)
Beowulf , John McNamara, translator
Canterbury Tales(selections), Geoffrey Chaucer
Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (selections), Robert H. van Gulik, translator
Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey
Don Quixote (abridged), Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Henry V, William Shakespeare
History of the Kings of Britain (excerpts)
King Lear, William Shakespeare
Le Morte D’Arthur (selections), Thomas Malory
Mabinogion (selections), Charlotte E. Guest, translator
Merry Wives of Windsor, William Shakespeare
Nine Days a Queen, Anne Rinaldi
Richard III, William Shakespeare
Second Booke of the Historie of England, (excerpts), Raphael Holinshed
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Burton Raffel, translator
Tale of Genji (excerpts), Lady Shikibu Murasaki/Arthur Waley, translator
The Koran: Selected Suras, Arthur Jeffrey, translator
The Lion in Winter, James Goldman
Chris in VA
07-14-2008, 01:09 PM
Wow! After Jenny, you probably won't even want to look at our lists!:D (the smiley is green for a reason...)
I should clarify--we didn't just make our own lists--the first two years, we adapted Omnibus, both adding and subtracting. We used some Cliffs and some Sparknotes, too. In 11th, we used Sonlight 300, but not their discussion questions, just their list (partly, and adapted).
Grade 9: 2005-2006
Genesis
Exodus
Gilgamesh
Hittite Warrior, Joanne Williamson
Cat of Bubastes, G.A. Henty
Greek Myths, D’Aulaire
The Odyssey, Homer
The Iliad, Homer
The Orestia, Aeschylus
Theban Trilogy, Sophocles
The Histories, Herodotus
12 Caesars, Suetonious
Greek and Roman Lives, Plutarch
Ben Hur, Lew Wallace
Quo Vadis, Henryk Sienkiewicz
Know What You Believe, Paul Little
Know Who You Believe, Paul Little
It Couldn’t Just Happen, L. Richards
Grade 10: 2006-2007
Martyr of the Catacombs
Church History, Eusebius
Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Bede+
Confessions, Augustine
Song of Roland
Beowulf
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Once and Future King, T.H. White
Canterbury Tales (Selections), Chaucer
In Freedom’s Cause, G.A. Henty
The NineTailors, Dorothy Sayers
Inferno, Dante
Parcel of Patterns, Jill Paten Walsh
World Religions 101, Bruce Bikel
Grade 11: 2007-2008
The Scarlet Letter
Heart of Darkness
Metamorphosis
The Jungle
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Great Gatsby
Cheaper By the Dozen
Grapes of Wrath
China’s Long March: 6000 Miles of Danger
Parallel Journeys
The Hiding Place
Alas, Babylon
The Old Man and the Sea
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Cry, the Beloved Country, Paton
Red Scarf Girl
Grade 12
50 Great Short Stories, ed. Martin Crane
Great Expectations, Dickens
Selections from Sherlock Holmes
Frankenstein
Red Badge
Fall of the House of Usher, Poe (also reading some of his short stories in the ss book above)
Usher 2000, Bradbury (just for fun--makes the point of the usefulness of literacy)
Huckleberry Finn, Twain
Lord of the Flies
Our Town
4 Shakespeare plays:
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Hamlet
MacBeth
Romeo and Juliet
We have already done the 50 ss book, and just need to take a week finish them up (no papers, just a few paragraphs and some discussion).
Ds will graduate in December, so I had to shorten the year and take some time in the summer. He won't be writing a lot of papers, but I will assign a few. His history
is mostly covered by his Am. Gov class at CC this fall, but he'll be doing a context page for the books written in the 1800's, as we skipped the 3rd year of the rotation, choosing to
go with interest-led (20th Century) instead of chronological history. As we cover realism and romanticism, we will read the corresponding books.
Eliana
07-14-2008, 03:39 PM
I'll share two of our lists, one dd #1 has almost completed, the other she just finished writing up... do keep in mind that she is a voracious reader who has been reading challenging literature for quite some time; she makes (and completes!) some quite challenging reading lists:
American Literature this year (some of these were rereads):
Fiction:
Irving's Sketchbook (selections)
Scarlet Letter
Last of the Mohicans & Pathfinder (she bogged down in this one and dropped it)
Huckleberry Finn
Call of the Wild
Red Badge of Courage
Red Pony - Steinbeck
Bartelby - Melville
Old Man and the Sea - Hemingway
Washington Square- James
Drama:
All My Sons; Death of a Salesman
Glass Menagerie
Moon for the Misbegotten (screen this one!)
Ladies of the Camillas
Sabrina Fair
Wit - Edson
Our Town [started this one, disliked it, and dropped it]
Tally's Folly
Andersonville Trial
[She took a detour and read some other scripts as well: Winslow Boy, Not About Heroes, Two Rooms, Doll's House]
Poetry:
We chose 6 poets to cover carefully: Frost, Millay, Dickinson, Longfellow, Stevens, and Sandburg [She chose from a list I made up] and we briefly touched on a number of other poets.
Non-Fiction:
Walden, Emerson's Essays, Life of Frederick Douglass, The Circuit (and its sequel), Travels with Charlie, Life on the Mississippi, All the President's Men, excerpts from a range of non-fiction
Short Stories:
The Stolen Day - Anderson
A Horseman in the Sky - Bierce
There Will Come Soft Rains - Bradbury
Home - Brooks
Regret - Chopin
The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky (http://www.geocities.com/short_stories_page/cranebride.html) - Crane
The Enchanted Bluff - Cather
Flavia and Her Artists - Cather
Contents of the Dead Man's Pockets - Finney
Drop in the Bucket - Fisher
The Revolt of Mother - Freeman
A Day's Pleasure - Garland
A Day's Wait - Hemingway
A Municipal report - Henry
Thank You Ma'm - Hughes
Rip van Winkle - Irving
Seven Types of Ambiguity - Jackson
The Lottery - Jackson
A White Heron - Jewett
Love of Life - London
OR To Build a Fire - London
Miss Brill - Mansfield
The Geranium - O' Conner (the *earlier* version, **not** the later one!)
A Mother in Mannville - Rawlings
Chrysanthemums - Steinbeck
The Test - Thomas
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - Thurber
The 1,000,000 pound Bank Note - Twain
Two Kinds - Tan
Everyday use - Walker
The Lie - Vonnegut
A Worn Path - Welty
The Fiddler - Melville
The Real Thing - James
As I typed this up, I could see all the gaps in her coverage here... but it left her hungry for more (the scripts were the biggest hit of the year - I have about a dozen more on my bedside table waiting for me to screen them for her... ).
My eldest just finished making her list for next year's Ancient Lit - this is from my rough draft of her list, she's still fine tuning:
Gilgamesh
The Iliad and Odyssey
The Analects of Confucius
Sophocles - the Oedipus trilogy
Aeschylus: Agamemnon
Euripides: Iphegineia in Tarsus, Hippolytus
Excerpts from Herodotus
Excerpts from Thucydides
The Art of War
[perhaps an Aristophanes play]
Plato: Meno, Crito, Apology, Gorgias, The Republic (more if time allows)
Aristotle: Ethics, excerpts from Politics
Book of Mencius
The Bhagavad Gita [if time allows at least excerpts from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata]
Excerpts from Records of the Grand Historian
The Aeneid
Excerpts from Plutarch's Lives
Marcus Aurelius's Meditations
"Greek Lyric Poetry"
Sudiata
Some of the Icelandic Epics
Excerpts from the Mabinogion
Selections from a collection of Ancient Egyptian literature
She doesn't count historical fiction or secondary sources as 'literature reading' - so she's putting those on a separate list...
It's an insanely ambitious list, especially as she plans to *add* to it still, but she's very motivated (this is *her* list, not mine!), and she knows that she can adjust this as we go...
Kelly on the prairie
07-14-2008, 03:48 PM
These are some AMAZING lists!
So, how do you "do" these books. Do you discuss them every chapter or two or as a whole? Do you require a pointed paper about each book or about varying elements each book brings to the table of literature? Do you have a very specific list of questions you require your student answer or does it vary by book?
I'm trying to get a picture in my mind as to how to implement each book study.
Oh, also, how many of you let your student pick their literature list for the year? Do some of you allow them to pick a portion of their readings?
questions...questions...questions...
Eliana
07-14-2008, 03:49 PM
I am considering making up a literature program using a variety such as garlic press and progeny press. For high school credit, how many books and papers do you think would be appropriate?
I must say we are not big fans of Lord of the Rings (I know, I know...don't fling a goblin at me) however, it would be nice to maybe not use a "formal" program, but rather a variety of our choosing.
Now that I write this out, I think am I crazy? Will it be too much extra work?:tongue_smilie:
Sorry, I shared some of our lists, but didn't answer your actual questions at all!
The number of books and papers depends on your approach - are you going to do a few things in intense detail, or cover a broader range less carefully? Are you going to require lots of shorter papers, or a few longer, more advanced papers? There isn't any one right answer here, and the spectrum is very broad.
... and then the works themselves require differing amounts of time and focus... War and Peace will take up a lot more time than Animal Farm... and not just because of the page count!
You might want to Google high school English syllabi and get a sense of what's out there... and then put that together with what folks have shared here and your own instincts and experience and sketch out a plan.
Since this is your first year doing this, I would strongly recommend being prepared to adjust as you go - what might you cut? What could you add? ...and where?
I don't think you are crazy at all! I, personally, find the diy approach much easier than getting something preset and then having to tweak it to better match our family! ...but ymmv. :)
RebeccaC
07-14-2008, 05:43 PM
I am doing this for this year, however it is not tied to our history cycle and it is blended with the curriculum called Movies as Lit (ML) I am using guides from Teaching the Classics (TC,) Progeny Press (PP,) Portals in Literature (PL,) Novel Units (NU) LATITUDES: Resources to Integrate Language Arts and Social Studies Which contain primary docs. (L.)
Here is our reading list for what it is worth guides I am using with each book will be list as above. The Number is the Lexile number on the book. www.lexile.com
Shane (ML) (NU) (L) 870
Bronze Bow (TC) (PP) 760
Huckleberry Finn (TC) (L) 990
At the Back of the North Wind (TC)
To Kill a Mockingbird (ML) (PP) (L) 870
Tom Sawyer (TC) (PP) 950
Johnny Tremain (PP) (L) Latitude guide has this as high school due to the reading of various primary sources from the time period of the book, etc.... 840
Call of the Wild (PP) 1170
Hamlet (TC) (L) Oxford School text 1390
Henry V (ML) Oxford School text 1390
A Raisin in the Sun (ML)
Some of these books are not on traditional high school lists or conventional when it comes to WTM, however the guides claim to take them to high school depths as far as analysis goes or the reading of primary sources. This is one reason I have 11 reading selections between books & plays. I also have 11 or so short stories but I am still working on that. This is the first time I am doing this.
Some of the levels are chosen because I know that my boys can read these on their own. The Shakespeare plays may be done as popcorn type reading but I am not sure yet since I have them scheduled for May and June next year and by then my boys maybe able to handle them.
We will not do every activity in all the guides I have listed with the exception of Movies as Lit and with that guide they will do most of the work. I figured 2 to 4 weeks per book. Bronze Bow and Johnny Termain as 2 weekers (is that a word ;) ) and are scheduled for our first month of school. They are my get your feet wet books for both me and my boys :D Most of the books are scheduled for 3 weeks.
When a book is paired with a movie the paper will be a contrast the book and the movie. Movies as Lit has all the info on how to do that and a way to grade the paper. Other wise we will go with essay ideas from the various lit guides.
There are other movies that will be worked on between books using Movies as Lit. This reading list is half of our Lit course. I have other grammar and writing programs we will use to round out our language arts credit.
Hope this helps.
Kelly on the prairie
07-14-2008, 09:42 PM
Thank you all! I copied off this post to use in deciding what to do. You gave me a great stepping off point.
Rebecca C.- I want to be your kid. How and what you are teaching sounds very engaging, thought provoking and sensible. I would love to hear what you are using to round out your ninth grade year in the way of language arts.
I have thought several times about getting the book Movies as Literature as we are all a bunch of movie buffs here in this house. Also, time and again,the kids have been disappointed in the movies after reading the books which, in my way of thinking instills, solidifies their love of reading.
RebeccaC
07-14-2008, 10:28 PM
Thank you all! I copied off this post to use in deciding what to do. You gave me a great stepping off point.
Rebecca C.- I want to be your kid. How and what you are teaching sounds very engaging, thought provoking and sensible. I would love to hear what you are using to round out your ninth grade year in the way of language arts.
I have thought several times about getting the book Movies as Literature as we are all a bunch of movie buffs here in this house. Also, time and again,the kids have been disappointed in the movies after reading the books which, in my way of thinking instills, solidifies their love of reading.
Well, our hs is heavy on language arts this year for many reasons. We are using Sentence Composing for Middle School: Grammar for Middle School: A Sentence-Composing a website for grammar review http://www.EnglishGrammar101.com going to order in Aug Thinking Through Grammar sophomore from www.drwhimbey.com/sophomore.html which is another sentence writing approach to grammar sequential spelling
You know that you can buy sample lessons from Movies as lit for $5. each off of the authors website, www.designastudy.com/products/1891975099.html# scroll down they are at the bottom of the page.
Arsenic & Old Lace E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
To Kill A Mockingbird
My boys are a bit behind in writing due to some LD issues. That is why there is so much emphasis on sentence writing and grammar being learned through sentence writing.
Dh has several family members who work in the entertainment industry as actors or producers or..... His step brother is a producer and most of dh's family thinks our older son should go into the business. There has been some real interest in my son's story lines by bil and some folks he knows and so bil thinks ds could/should become a type of produce who just comes up with story lines. Thinks he has profound talent in that area. That is why we are doing Movies as lit. Dh wants to put together a class for ds on language of film and Movies as lit is meant to pave the way for that. Ds wants to be a pastor and writer of children's books and I am more incline to back what ds wants but ...........
Anyway I hope this works out like I posted I have not done this before and I am not comfortable just doing Movies as Lit. Ms. Stout the author of Movies as Lit has extension ideas for each film and that is often read the book and then write a compare and contrast paper. We are reading some of the books with out guides like the book that the Quite Man was taken from which is a collection of short stories. There is no study guide for that book so I will just assign it to be read. The book is called The Quite Man and other Stories or the title before the movie Green Rushes by Maurice Walsh. There are a couple of other books and bios that are extention books that will not have study guides and that I am just assigning to be read also. Some of these might be done as family read alouds I am not sure yet since I don't know all of the reading levels of these books.
I will have a 9th and 10th grader doing this this year. My 9th grader is more of a math science kid and is not real thrilled but knows that he needs to expand his horizon with some "artsy stuff" as he put it :rolleyes: My 10th grader on the other hand can't wait to start.
Where are you in IL?
Jenny in Florida
07-14-2008, 11:05 PM
So, how do you "do" these books. Do you discuss them every chapter or two or as a whole? Do you require a pointed paper about each book or about varying elements each book brings to the table of literature? Do you have a very specific list of questions you require your student answer or does it vary by book?
I'm trying to get a picture in my mind as to how to implement each book study.
Oh, also, how many of you let your student pick their literature list for the year? Do some of you allow them to pick a portion of their readings?
What we would do was to discuss the books as she read them. So, she'd go off and read for a while, then come back and tell me what she read. I'd ask questions or ask for her opinion about what she'd read. Very informal. No specific list of questions. English is my background, so I felt pretty comfortable winging it.
Then, as I said in my other posts, she had to write essays about a certain number of the books each year. Generally, she had pretty free rein when it came to deciding what she was going to write about. All I did was set certain guidelines about how long the essay should be or what components it had to have. For example, there was one year when I required that every essay include a synopsis of the book or books she discussed.
Although I always did most of the selecting, I did discuss the possible choices with her when I was planning for the year. If there were sometimes two or three possibilities that would all fit the same niche, I'd ask her to read a little about each one and choose. When we needed something in translation, I'd pretty much always take her to the bookstore with me and let her pick the edition she liked best. It was always a pretty cooperative venture with her.
Irishmommy
01-25-2011, 12:24 PM
When I taught 9th grade in ps we taught about 8 novels a year. That was plenty with a major paper each six weeks. Oh, and we also did a unit on short stories.
Maybe that will give you a jumping off point. I would suggest that in 9th grade you have them read all of the Illiad or the Odyssey. I think it is important to read the entire work, not just parts of it. ;)
Hope that helps in some way.
emubird
01-25-2011, 03:07 PM
When I took AP English we read:
Tom Jones
Wuthering Heights
Invisible Man
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Waiting for Godot
King Lear
As You Like It
a few poems that I can't remember
a few short stories (not that many)
That was a full year course. We wrote a 1-2 page paper on most things we read, but not all.
I also took a full year American Lit course:
The Scarlet Letter
Huckleberry Finn
Sister Carrie
Our Town
Babbitt
selections from Walden
We wrote a paper on each thing we read for that course.
So that gives you an idea as to what AP/honors courses might read in one year. It's not that much. You could do a full year course that only reads 6 things and call it a full course. (These days, I'm hearing from ps kids that a full year course might only be 4 books and 4 papers -- although I would imagine they're reading some other things like poems and plays and short stories.)
Whether you would want to do that is another question.
When I made a transcript up for my daughter to apply to college, I was listing about 6 books for a semester course. I thought that was maybe on the high end. She'd probably read a lot more than that, but she hadn't written papers on all everything. (And I'm not sure that writing papers on each and every book is really necessary, as long as there's discussion on the book.)
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