Oh, Dearest Mother, Sweetest Virgin of Altagracia, our Patroness. You are our Advocate and to you we recommend our needs. You are our Teacher and like disciples we come to learn from the example of your holy life. You are our Mother, and like children, we come to offer you all of the love of our hearts. Receive, dearest Mother, our offerings and listen attentively to our supplications. Amen.



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High School Years and Beyond
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Subject Topic: Am. Lit. Short Stories Post ReplyPost New Topic
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SallyT
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Posted: Aug 14 2013 at 7:28am | IP Logged Quote SallyT
O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi is another Christmas must, from the early 20th century.

I don't know anything about the Seton book, but if it's got most of the standard selections for American Lit, then I'd use it. Background info is always helpful, study questions sometimes less so, though that depends. I have my students keep a reading journal that's part Book of Centuries (each new page headed with significant dates and figures from that week's reading), plus one or two fairly open-ended writing prompts mostly aimed at literary analysis. Writing about literature is a particular form of composition that I stress increasingly (though not exclusively) through the four years of high school, and I encourage close reading of both poetry and prose, so that the student comes away with the idea that things are going on *in the language* that echo and amplify the larger ideas in the story or poem.

The CK-12 Commonsense Composition text (free online) has a really good couple of chapters on analyzing prose and writing about literature. I'm not sure I can link to the specific chapters, but the whole "Flex-Book" is here. It might be helpful to begin your year with these chapters (5 and 6), and/or Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book, to establish a framework for critical reading and thinking about the written word.

Having some basic schemata to apply to everything he reads can render a lot of study questions irrelevant, though you may occasionally want to use them to point his thinking in a particular direction.

Sally



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sunnyviewmom
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Posted: Aug 28 2013 at 7:41pm | IP Logged Quote sunnyviewmom
I just want to thank everyone for their input on this. It has been so very helpful! A special thanks to Sally for the course list. I plan to use most of her suggestions. Thanks to all!

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