High School Literature and Composition
By the teen years our unschooly way of doing things morphed into more formal learning in many ways. Below is just a summary of how we wound up working this particular subject out. Every kid was a bit different, almost every year. From my experience, most of my kids took to writing easily, except one (there's always one!) in spite of the fact that they all were dyslexic and late bloomers when it came to reading.
Things we continued to do into high school:
Family Read Alouds: Immersion in good and great books from childhood continuing through the first two or three years of high school. By 12th grade they were too independent and the read aloud naturally fell aside. But marinating over the many years in eloquent language of these read alouds laid an important and solid foundation. Some read alouds I explicitedly read for my teens over the years: The Count of Monte Cristo, Silas Marner, David Copperfield, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Henry V, Lord of the World, The Odyssey.
Copy work - I highly recommend this resource for all four years of high school: Farnworth's Classical English Rhetoric
Clubs/Outside activities that would occasionally include writing. For example one son entered a 4-H public speaking contest where he had to write his own speech (and he won!). My oldest two sons were involved in a church youth group that occasionally asked for journaling. My oldest daughter was in a teen girls group that was an off shoot of Little Flowers, which we called the Teresitas. They often had writing as part of their activity. My youngest daughter was in American Heritage Girls for many years and their badge work sometimes included writing as well.
Self-motivated writing - each kid went through phases where they enjoyed writing, even the one who hated any kind of academic writing. My kids wrote poetry, adapted plays, and wrote short stories, all on their own.
Co-op classes - My oldest three took a high school Shakespeare class from another homeschooling mom who happened to have majored in theater. My current 12th grader is taking an English course at a nearby co-op.
Community college classes - my youngest son (20 at this writing), took writing classes while dual enrolled at the community college. He also opted for trying out the local Catholic high school for 9th grade, so he had formal English class there as well.
Book clubs (adding in the expecatation of a couple of essays and a typical paper) - I formed weekly book clubs for my high schoolers. We read Ancient Lit, World Lit, British and American Lit. I enjoyed using resources like Lightning Lit to help us, as well as free guides I found on the internet from the likes of Pink Monkey and Glencoe.
A lot of the literature we read was new to me. Or I actually had a dread of The Odyssey. I remember reading it as a college Freshman and not understanding it at all. I thought I was dumb. Same with Shakespeare. But studying these things alongside my kids as a fellow student, seeing the literature guide and the book itself as our mentors, my own understanding and education deepened. Don't see yourself as someone who has to be a typical classroom teacher to your children. It's a blessing to learn collaboratively with them.
One thing I found helpful is to educate myself on the writing process. Over the years I stumbled on a few resources that I thought really worked.
Beginning around 5th or 6th grade I did a one on one study based on 4 Square Writing. When the next child was looming near the teen years, I would single them out and spend a few weeks during the winter or early spring months using this technique. I tried to stop the lessons when the student became bored or balked but we spent a few weeks doing short lessons. They found it fun. I copied the template and let them have at writing the sentences. This teaches the basic technique of writing an essay.
My youngest is an extrovert and desperately wanted to be part of a group. Actually she needed to be a part of several groups! The only co-op that worked for us turned out to be academic. At one point early on, the woman who was to teaching composition got sick and they needed a substitute teacher to step in. Guess who volunteered? First I had to teach IEW and then The Lost Tools of Writing. I appreciate the note taking technique taught by IEW but I really loved Lost Tools. It is very technical, almost too basic at first, but slowly you fold in more complexity. If you must have a writing course, I'd get Lost Tools, get yourself trained and then join their yahoo group or wherever they offer support for home school teachers. This is if you don't feel up to the job of teaching writing, really need support and you have a slew of teens to educate.
If you want a really good, concise, non-intimidating overview of the art of rhetoric, I highly recommend The Office of Assertion by Scott Crider of the University of Dallas. This will also help you understand the method that Lost Tools uses. Professor Crider walks the reader through the elements of Invention (coming up with something to write about), Organization, and Style. He uses as a model, a solid A paper he received from a freshman college student on The Odyssey by Homer.
Though, I never did this, it might be a great book to hand to your older high schooler to read or you could read it together. Depends on your student and how you best work together.
With my three older kids I also used a resource that isn't available anymore, which is a shame. It was called WriteGuide and it was run by Catholic folks who taught writing by email. They'd guide your student through writing whatever type of essay or paper you chose. I'm sad it no longer exists.
My philosophy of teaching writing developed into this basic approach:
Things we continued to do into high school:
Family Read Alouds: Immersion in good and great books from childhood continuing through the first two or three years of high school. By 12th grade they were too independent and the read aloud naturally fell aside. But marinating over the many years in eloquent language of these read alouds laid an important and solid foundation. Some read alouds I explicitedly read for my teens over the years: The Count of Monte Cristo, Silas Marner, David Copperfield, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Henry V, Lord of the World, The Odyssey.
Copy work - I highly recommend this resource for all four years of high school: Farnworth's Classical English Rhetoric
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| One of my favorite resources ever! |
Clubs/Outside activities that would occasionally include writing. For example one son entered a 4-H public speaking contest where he had to write his own speech (and he won!). My oldest two sons were involved in a church youth group that occasionally asked for journaling. My oldest daughter was in a teen girls group that was an off shoot of Little Flowers, which we called the Teresitas. They often had writing as part of their activity. My youngest daughter was in American Heritage Girls for many years and their badge work sometimes included writing as well.
Self-motivated writing - each kid went through phases where they enjoyed writing, even the one who hated any kind of academic writing. My kids wrote poetry, adapted plays, and wrote short stories, all on their own.
Co-op classes - My oldest three took a high school Shakespeare class from another homeschooling mom who happened to have majored in theater. My current 12th grader is taking an English course at a nearby co-op.
Community college classes - my youngest son (20 at this writing), took writing classes while dual enrolled at the community college. He also opted for trying out the local Catholic high school for 9th grade, so he had formal English class there as well.
Book clubs (adding in the expecatation of a couple of essays and a typical paper) - I formed weekly book clubs for my high schoolers. We read Ancient Lit, World Lit, British and American Lit. I enjoyed using resources like Lightning Lit to help us, as well as free guides I found on the internet from the likes of Pink Monkey and Glencoe.
One thing I found helpful is to educate myself on the writing process. Over the years I stumbled on a few resources that I thought really worked.
Beginning around 5th or 6th grade I did a one on one study based on 4 Square Writing. When the next child was looming near the teen years, I would single them out and spend a few weeks during the winter or early spring months using this technique. I tried to stop the lessons when the student became bored or balked but we spent a few weeks doing short lessons. They found it fun. I copied the template and let them have at writing the sentences. This teaches the basic technique of writing an essay.
My youngest is an extrovert and desperately wanted to be part of a group. Actually she needed to be a part of several groups! The only co-op that worked for us turned out to be academic. At one point early on, the woman who was to teaching composition got sick and they needed a substitute teacher to step in. Guess who volunteered? First I had to teach IEW and then The Lost Tools of Writing. I appreciate the note taking technique taught by IEW but I really loved Lost Tools. It is very technical, almost too basic at first, but slowly you fold in more complexity. If you must have a writing course, I'd get Lost Tools, get yourself trained and then join their yahoo group or wherever they offer support for home school teachers. This is if you don't feel up to the job of teaching writing, really need support and you have a slew of teens to educate.
If you want a really good, concise, non-intimidating overview of the art of rhetoric, I highly recommend The Office of Assertion by Scott Crider of the University of Dallas. This will also help you understand the method that Lost Tools uses. Professor Crider walks the reader through the elements of Invention (coming up with something to write about), Organization, and Style. He uses as a model, a solid A paper he received from a freshman college student on The Odyssey by Homer.
Though, I never did this, it might be a great book to hand to your older high schooler to read or you could read it together. Depends on your student and how you best work together.
With my three older kids I also used a resource that isn't available anymore, which is a shame. It was called WriteGuide and it was run by Catholic folks who taught writing by email. They'd guide your student through writing whatever type of essay or paper you chose. I'm sad it no longer exists.
My philosophy of teaching writing developed into this basic approach:
- Steep them in great literature
- Copy great lines from literature and speeches
- Encourage self-motivated writing and outside commitments that might require writing
- Make sure you, the parent, know what good writing is and how it's been taught classically. Convey that knowledge to your student in some way. (Conversations about writing, having your teen critique something you wrote, analyzing an essay together).
- Make sure during the high school years your student gets practice writing a few basic essays and at least one research paper, especially if the student plans on attending college. This is easy to do if your student wants to attend a co-op or community college or take an on line class. Or you can do the book club thing and use your training to guide the students, depending on your level of comfort.
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