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jennthmg
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| Posted: Feb 09 2010 at 7:22am | IP Logged
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I'm doing my research and know what Kolbe, Sonlight, TWTM, Seton & MODG recommend. The topics I'd like to decide about are grammar, vocabulary & composition. I'd like to know from BTDT ladies - what you use and why.
Thanks for any input,
Jenn
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Faithr
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| Posted: Feb 10 2010 at 6:18pm | IP Logged
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Hi Jenn, I did a mishmash with my kids. My oldest did the Sadlier Oxford Composition from Kolbe for 9th grade. For 10th she took an outside Shakespeare class that required lots and lots of writing. I had her write some essays and two research papers for me for her 11th and 12th grades. She also took a 1 day How to Write the SAT Essay (or some such title!). We never did any vocabulary formally. I think with lots of readings and a background in Latin (she took a Latin Class her 6th, 7th and 8th grade years) it was not necessary at all. She did very well on her SATS and is currently attending the Univ. of Dallas. My oldest son is now in his final semester of 12th grade. I was so inconsistent with him! He took the same Shakespeare class in his 9th grade. Then in his 10th and 11th grade he also did the same essays/research papers as my oldest. Now in his 12th grade I realize that he never took a proper grammar/comp course. So now in his last semester he is using Writeguide to independently get a credit for Composition. He choose to use Learn to Write the Novel Way (from Konos). So he is busy writing a novel right now! He is not going to take the SAT. Instead he's going to a comm. coll. next year (he's already taking some courses there) and then he hopes to get into a Music Conservatory the following year. I never bothered with vocabulary for him either. He is taking a Latin class for his foreign language which includes all kinds of derivatives and grammar. And frankly, this boy tested at a college vocabulary comprehension level in 7th grade when he was diagnosed with dysgraphia. So vocab was never an issue.
My current 9th grader is using Writeshop. He is not the writer that my older two naturally were, so I am a little worried about him. He's getting plenty of grammar in with the same Latin class. He is a voracious reader and has an excellent vocabulary as well. So again, I'm not worried. I'm hoping to do SL with him next year and use their language arts program.
Anyway, this is just to say that even though I am on my 3rd high schooler I still haven't figured it out! But I do think it'll all turn out well in the end. The important thing is to have them reading a lot, studying a foreign language and writing a lot. It's more what you do than the particular program, at least that has been my experience.
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jennthmg
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| Posted: Feb 11 2010 at 8:59am | IP Logged
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THANKS, Faith! The cost of all those Kolbe books is making my dh choke and I'm trying to see if I can utilize what I've got and free online sources. Dd#1 is a good writer and a voracious reader, so I though we might be able to fudge on the Enlish books.
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Bookswithtea
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| Posted: Feb 11 2010 at 10:51am | IP Logged
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We don't focus much on grammar or vocabulary at the high school level. We try to wrap that up by the end of junior high so that we can focus on literature and composition in the high school years. I look for opportunities for them to write, write, write across all the subjects I can squeeze it into. I also make sure they know the 5 paragraph essay format well before high school so that all high school work is done with that basic format. Then its easy to use study guides (CHC, Hillside Education, Sparknotes, etc) for whatever literature you want to study and then just set the parameters for the writing (how many sources, footnotes, how many pages, etc). I just make the requirements heavier with each year.
This way I am not limited to any particular program.
Fwiw, I've seen Sonlight's writing as its woven into their high school programs. Its a lot of different kinds of writing (heavy on creative writing). It is probably very good at helping a child to develop voice. Its relatively easy to modify, but it does link you into their book choices. I prefer to choose my own.
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mothering ds'93 dd'97 dd'99 dd'02 ds'05 ds'07 and  due 9/10
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Macmom
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| Posted: Feb 11 2010 at 11:47am | IP Logged
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As a (former) high school English teacher- focus on composition and reading/ discussing good literature.
If you NEED some grammar help, then Easy Grammar plus is VERY good.... or try "The Latin Road to English Grammar." I like Latin Road because it's high school level Latin (and you need those foreign language credits to get into college!) with a strong focus on how words work in sentences (ie: grammar!) Its killing two birds with one stone!
For vocab, we love the Vocabulary from Classical Roots series. It also dovetails well with the Latin study.
But write, write, write... read and discuss are key. Creative writing is good, but explore different styles- journalism, essays, and, for the classically minded, the progymnasmata that can add depth to ALL sorts of writing.
Peace,
Macmom
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SallyT
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| Posted: Feb 12 2010 at 11:34am | IP Logged
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I echo what Macmom and Books just said. I'm doing a four-year cycle that dovetails literature with history. We do some grammar refreshment, but our focus is literature and writing.
In 9th grade we did ancient and classical literature -- I used a book of myths by Padraic Colum which is also available as an e-text (The World's Great Myths, or something to that effect, is its title in the Dover edition); we read The Iliad and The Odyssey (I was teaching a co-op class and allowed various translations, including, for some readers, Colum's retellings); we read Antigone, and also Pygmalion and Julius Caesar (not classical themselves, of course, but they fit); we read The Aeneid. That's not all we read, but it's what I can remember off the top of my head. We wrote a number of 5-paragraph essays and a 10-page research paper on an historical theme.
Last year we did English literature from the Anglo-Saxons forward, with lots of medieval poetry, a concentration on the sonnet, and Macbeth, plus essays and a term paper.
For both of these years, we used e-texts, secondhand editions, and an anthology of English literature I already owned. This year, for 11th grade, I went with a standard school American-literature textbook, so that we would have the readings all in one place. We're just working our way through it, and I'm having my daughter keep a reading journal, rather than answering the very touchy-feely questions at the ends of the chapters. We're writing more essays and girding ourselves for yet another research project. We have also worked quite a bit on composition via the SAT prep book -- teaching to the test has actually been a very good exercise for us -- and have diagrammed sentences in some of our readings (like Emerson, for example) to figure out what exactly they say.
I'm just starting to plan next year. I know that I want to devote one semester to poetry, and I'm planning to use Laurence Perrine's Sound and Sense for that. I'm also toying with doing a sort of mini-Great-Books course using Anthony Esolen's Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization as a spine, and reading our way through at least selections of any Great Books we haven't already read.
My overall goal is to promote cultural literacy -- my husband is a college professor, and he's always floored by what his students haven't even heard of. You don't have to (read *shouldn't!*) agree with Emerson and Thoreau, but by college an educated person ought at least to know what they say and how their philosophies are part of a strand of inherited Enlightenment thought which shapes our culture today, for good or ill. Not that I go into all of this in THAT much detail, but my daughter and I have had some interesting conversations on these themes, inspired by her English reading.
I prefer the chronological approach rather than the genre approach (think about your 9th or 10th-grade textbook: "The Short Story." "The Poem." "The Play." "The Novel."), because I think it's important for a student to see where things come from. Knowing the Trojan War is important, for example, because that story surfaces again and again throughout the rest of literature. Plus, a student can observe how literary forms and strands of thought develop hand-in-hand, as part of a coherent tradition, and I think that that's invaluable.
That, and mastery of the handy-dandy all-purpose 5-paragraph essay are my high-school/college-prep English objectives. I'm also a former high-school and college English instructor, so I have more confidence in putting together my own program than I might otherwise have, but anyway, that's what we do.
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SallyT
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| Posted: Feb 12 2010 at 11:55am | IP Logged
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Oh, I almost forgot another excellent resource we used this year: Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book. Learning to be an active, critical reader covers a lot of the territory you'd cover in teaching vocabulary, for example, as a separate subject within English.
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Topic: Language Arts in high school
