I Hate Literary Analysis - Part 3

Last summer, when the kids came home from their first year in college, I felt like I could finally say I had succeeded in my goal. "For fun" they went to the library to get some reading material. My son Alex read the entire Shakespeare collection, my son Kevin read CS Lewis and some Dostoevsky. I may have been stressed out when they were in high school, but I can honestly say that I achieved my goal: they LOVE reading. Yippee!

Blessings,

Lee

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I Hate Literary Analysis - Part 2

The truth is I always felt guilty about not doing literary analysis.... I decided early on that my goal in teaching the Bible was for the kids to LOVE their Bible. So I finally decided that my goal for literature would be the same - teaching them to LOVE literature. I didn't want to "beat the love of books out of them" with analyzing everything.

In retrospect, it all ended up great. They are able to do college literary analysis in their honors "great books" class without a problem, and getting A's. Great 20/20 hindsight, but at the time I really stressed over "reading comprehension" more than just about anything else.

Keeping the focus on "love of learning" is so hard, though, when you are faced with a kid who may only answer "fine" when you ask them about their reading :-)

Blessings,

Lee
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I Hate Literary Analysis - Part 1

True confession: I really admire people who do literary analysis, but I simply wasn't capable. It seems odd that someone who is such a fan of literature based curriculum should say that. I primarily used Sonlight, and later The Well Trained Mind. Sonlight was the easiest to use, but after a while we had read most of the books, so I switched to The Well Trained Mind reading lists and other "reading lists for the college bound" and tried to tie in the reading with the history. We didn't do any "literature analysis" we just enjoyed the books. My kids loved it so much they both signed up for the great books and honors courses in college and did very well with it.

Blessings,

Lee
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Money Saving Timeline Idea

For a home-made timeline, I bought a roll of paper at an office supply store. It was a lot cheaper, and because the paper was in a roll I didn't have to tape regular printer paper sheets together. The rolled paper came in handy for some other homeschooling things as well. We used it for math games, and for creative writing story outlines. Sometimes I had the kids write the name of the book we were reading and put it on the timeline. They were really not much into drawing pictures (big surprise there,) so I would also often just print small images from the books we were reading, or off the internet and put those on the timeline.

Blessings,

Lee

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Teach Poetry to Homeschoolers

I recommend a series of poetry books for children called Poetry for Young People. The series has Poe, Elliot, Shakespeare, Hughes - there are perhaps 10-12 books in the series. You can get them at the library, but here is an example from Amazon:



By using real poetry, they learned early that poems don't always rhyme, etc. It was fun. I know I learned a lot :-)

For more fun, we also used the Shel Silverstein books, including "Falling Up."

For writing poetry, I used a simple book called "How to Write Poetry" by Paul Janeczko. It was fine, but I thought the kids learned more by enjoying the real poetry rather than writing it.

Blessings,

Lee
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501 Writing Prompts

If you are looking for a quick and easy way to judge your student's writing quality, I liked the book "501 Writing Prompts" by Learning Express. It has (remarkably!) 501 prompts that you can use, but the great part is the sample essays! About every 25 or 50 essays, they will show a what a student essay would look like with that topic. They will give a perfect example, a middle-quality example, and an example of what NOT to do. That really helped me because I'm a visual learner, and I really needed to see for myself what a good essay would look like. Don't feel like you have to "grade" the your kids essays, however. The grades aren't that important. What's important is practice.



Blessings,

Lee
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Reading Comprehension (or...Read this Post Twice)

Reading comprehension was a huge concern when my sons were in 9th grade. I thought - and worried - about it a lot. The thing that frustrated me was that my kids would interact with the books they read (laughing at the funny parts, for example) but when it came time for "reading comprehension questions" they didn't seem to do very well. I ultimately decided that for us, having my child understand the book meant interacting with the book. I decided that reading comprehension questions weren't the best gauge of real understanding. To learn more about this idea, you might want to read Ruth Beechick's book, "You CAN Teach Your Child Successfully."

It is most important that your student is encouraged to read and write at their own level. Whether they are above or below their grade level is not nearly as significant. Once your child knows the mechanics it probably just boils down to practice. Encourage your child to write every day.

Blessings,

Lee
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Are You Qualified to Teach High School English?

You are totally, completely, and 100% qualified! Not because you know English perfectly, or even because you know how to grade perfectly, but because you are their parent. The one who knows them and loves them best.

Teaching English in high school is not about grading criteria or percentages. It's about getting lots of writing practice - and having your students write a lot. It's also about editing their papers. Just read them, circle things that are obvious spelling or grammar errors (OBVIOUS errors, that's all.) It is also about discussing their ideas: "What did you mean when you said....." Or "please rewrite this it doesn't make sense." But you're not doing anything magical, you're just reading it over. It's just like if a friend said "would you please read this?" That's all!

Remember that some public school English teachers don't have an English degree. They may not even have the English background that you do! The only reason they use rubrics and other grading criteria is because they have to grade so MANY students, and be consistent between them. Not us! We want to encourage each student to do THEIR best, and that means we don't really want to treat all our students the same. We want each to excel in their own way.

Another advantage that homeschoolers have is the student-teacher ratio with English. In public school, kids are lucky if they get one paper a semester to be assigned and carefully edited. With 20-30 kids in the class, teachers aren't necessarily expected to read everything. I bet you'll read and give more feedback on your kids papers than they would ever get in public school! We can read their history or science papers for quality writing as well, because we evaluate them in all their subjects.

Husbands and wives can often share the burden of grading English papers. That happened to be a HUGE chunk of homeschooling where my husband helped.

I want you to know that even though I didn't "Grade English Papers" - my boys still got full tuition scholarships to college. They both still got into the Honors program. And they still get As and Bs on their college papers.

Blessings,

Lee
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Ninth Grade Language Arts?

>>>>What should I use for 9th grade Language Arts?<<<<

Focus on reading and writing at your student's level, and you can't go wrong. We used Sonlight for their writing prompts. It included workbooks for vocabulary. For young high schoolers who need extra help, Winston Grammar is a great way to get a good understanding of parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, etc.) in a way that's very hands-on. If your student is a hands-on learner, then I really recommend Winston Grammar. But really, in high school it's often just about practice, practice, practice.

Blessings,
Lee
www.TheHomeScholar.com
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"Helping parents homeschool through high school"

The Latin Road Pays Off!

>>>Please comment on the Latin Road <<<


I used Latin Road for 3 years. My kids were VERY successful with it, and my son still remembers all his Latin even after 3 years without cracking a book! He had to take a college placement test at the college he's going to, so they could see which class would be appropriate for him. He passed all 3 levels of Latin, and started the university in Junior level! Yippee! He enjoyed Latin Road so much that he has continued his Latin studies in college.

Latin Road uses a lot of memorization, rote learning, flash cards, and practice, practice, practice. It took as much time as a math program, and we had to do some Latin translating everyday, just like you do math problems everyday. It was very mom intensive, as you say. I used to spend about 2 hours on weekends getting my own lessons done, so that I would know how to teach it the following week. Her lessons are well laid out, and I never had any trouble figuring out what to do each day. It was VERY clear, and each lesson was about the same length of time to complete, and each lesson was very clearly labeled. Again, sort of like a math book, I guess! It was written for homeschoolers, so that's part of why it was so easy to use. Each day we would do some flash cards, recite some memorized lesson or read aloud, and do some copy work or translating. It was a LOT of work, and hard, but my kids really seemed to like it, and it really paid off in the end.

Hope that helps!
Blessings,
Lee
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English and Grammar Every Year!?

>>>Do you think it is necessary to teach English and Grammar every year?? <<<

No, I don't think it's important every year. We taught grammar one time, in 7th grade, with Winston Grammar and that was that. My kids did great on their SATs, so it was obviously plenty for them. We did do foreign languages in high school, so that was another way we got grammar without "teaching grammar" if you know what I mean. We focused more on writing.

Blessings,
Lee
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Let's Talk Latin!

>>>>How is Latin even possible? I printed samples from Latina Christiana, and I'm feeling overwhelmed. Declensions? Conjugations? Possum? Sum? Help! <<<<

Be brave, little Piglet! (Quote from Winnie the Pooh, from all who are wondering - my brain also stuffed with fluff!) I remember having those EXACT same fears when we started Latin! I would look at the book and, well, it was all Greek to me!

As you take it one step at a time, it begins to make sense. Really, it's just like following complicated directions in a recipe or something. Just take it one step at a time, and then it begins to make sense. I promise! Plus, remember the advice that Dori gives in Nemo and "Just keep swimming" and you'll get it figured out.

That being said, I did use Latin Road, and they do assume that 1) you're homeschooling and 2) the teacher is a mom who doesn't know Latin. That may have been why it was OK for us. I did look at Wheellocks' Latin and couldn't even BEGIN the first chapter in that one. I believe that Latin Road is for 5th and up, but you'd have to check the website.

Blessings,
Lee

How do I give a credit in Bible to my homeschooler?

>>>>A client writes: I want to give my kids credit for Bible...but I haven't asked them to write a single thing down this year. What do I do?<<<<

When we did Bible, I just had them read books, mostly. No tests. Rare papers. Sometimes one of them would teach Sunday School classes, or read scripture at church.

May I suggest that Bible may be one good area to count hours? Just estimate how many hours per day or week they spend reading and talking to you about these issue. 1 hour a day or 5 days a week would be a whole credit. 2 hours per week might be 1/2 credit (rough estimates are OK.) Once in a while, when I wanted "proof" I would ask them to write their English paper on something about their Bible or the books they were reading. They did it INSTEAD of an English paper, though, not in addition.

Do you remember all my stories about Alex and economics and Kevin and chess? They just did all this reading for fun (totally freaked me out, actually.) Now with Alex, I gave him CLEP exams in economics, and figured out real fast how many credits of economics he had learned. With Kevin it wasn't so easy. Surprisingly there is no CLEP exam in chess! (LOLOLOLOL!!!!!) I still gave him credit for it. No tests (duh!) and no written work. I kept track of the books that he read, and the chess classes that he taught. When I wrote his course description, that was all it included :-)

You CAN cut out the busy work. Stop thinking in terms of how SCHOOLS evaluate learning, and think about how YOU evaluate learning. From what you say, it sounds like you do most of your evaluation by oral report, right? Oral reports are a perfectly acceptable way to evaluate. Alex's college final in French yesterday was an oral report. It's really fine to do that!

If you want "proof" and you just must have proof, then write a list of the books they read, and write the topic of your discussions. "Nature of Hell, 1 hour" or "Nature of Grace, 1 hour." If that makes you feel better, than more power to you! Then you'll have "proof" in case you ever wanted to use your proof. I just don't recommend that you change what you're doing, because what your doing is working!

Does that help?

Blessings,
Lee
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What about teaching homeschool grammar?

>>>>Dorette asked a questions about our Sample Comprehensive Record. "Did you ever do any "intensive" grammar course with your boys? I see that you did a Latin course that includes grammar. Was that enough?"<<<<

Dorette,
Before beginning Latin, we did a one-time through course called "Winston Grammar" that I just loved! It's a hands-on, no-writing grammar program that was perfect for my boys. It does not teach writing, it only covers parts of speech (noun, verb, articles, etc.) It was very helpful, though, because it gave us a common language that we could use to discuss their writing. I could say, "this sentence has two adverbs" and they would know what I meant. After doing Winston Grammar Basic, we moved straight into The Latin Road to English Grammar, and that was the only other grammar we used. It was enough grammar, yes. The boys had excellent scores on the SAT test. Of course, how well they WRITE is the real judge of a grammar program, though, and I had them doing some writing every single day.

Other people like to cover Grammar every year, instead of one time one year, and that's fine. Personally, I felt that we covered enough grammar in their writing each year. I do warn people about it duplicating courses, though. If you are doing Winston Grammar, don't do Easy Grammar and Editor in Chief as well, because the student can get frustrated.

This brings up an interesting point, though, about our Sample Comprehensive Record. You can't really tell by looking at it, unless you know our family quite well. My sons started Latin when Kevin was in 7th grade and Alex was in 5th grade. They continued it for 3 years, and completed the program entirely. I put Latin on the transcript for both children, because I knew that it was a high school level course and that they had succeeded in learning a high school amount of material. We put each high school credit under "early high school credits" instead of 9th, 10th, or 11th grade. It may help you to see how those "early high school credits" worked in our family. I am confident that I did the right thing. Alex has continued Latin in college, and he's getting straight A's, taking senior level Latin courses. Not only did I put that 5th grade class on his high school transcript, the colleges accepted it (possibly because he graduated early, though) AND he went on to successfully continue the course in college.

I hope that helps!
Blessings,
Lee

HELP! My homeschool daughter is reading too much!!!

Homeschooling mothers can have panic attacks about many things. This mom worried that her daughter was reading too much.... and her math book was too easy. Sure these are nice problems to have, but it can still be stressful! Here is what I suggested.



>>>Is there any reason I should have her stop reading so much? She is not avoiding any other assignments. I just want to make sure I am not overlooking something.<<<

Hi Kelley,

It sounds like your daughter would be a PERFECT fit for Sonlight! My kids were like that, reading like crazy. The nice thing about SL is that it exposes the kids to a LOT of different kinds of books to read. I mean, I don't think my kids would have naturally picked up some of the books on our SL schedule, but once they did they loved the books. That really helped us, because then I could assign more books from the same author. For example, once they read ONE of the Little House books, I had them read the WHOLE series. In high school, when they read ONE Agatha Christie book, they read about 20 of them for fun. Sonlight is just GREAT that way.

Things to look out for? I notice that my son had some problems with pronunciation. Because he was advanced in reading, he would see words in print LONG before he ever said them aloud, or heard us say them aloud. My Alex, the economist, even said the WORD economist wrong for the longest time, because he'd read so much about them before he learned how to say the word. My advice for that is to make sure you read aloud every day, so that you come across a varied vocabulary. That should help.

The other problem we had was that even though my kids COULD read a variety of books, and WANTED to read a variety of books, some of the books were just not appropriate for a kid their age. That was a very difficult situation to handle, because even though they liked to read a lot every day, I didn't have the time to do that as well. I did pre-read all the books that I assigned for school. I didn't pre-read all the books from the same author, though. Be careful of assigning books that are too mature in content level. Get the book by Jim Trelease, called the Read Aloud Handbook. It helped us choose books as well.

>>>So far she isn't having problems with Saxon math but I may have her in too easy of a book. I picked the one that corresponded to her ps grade level.<<<

We started homeschooling when my kids were in 3rd and 5th grades, and I picked a grade level math book for them as well. I quickly realized that my youngest was pretty bored. You can easily determine if it is too easy for her. Just give her a TEST from the book each day. As long as she passes the tests with, say, 90% or better, then move her along to the next test. Remember that your job is to make sure she learns. You do not have to make sure you TEACH it. If she already knows it, move forward. Pretest her in the book, and start teaching the concepts once she gets below a 90% on something. A couple of years, my son was able to do 2 math books in a year doing it that way.

I graduated both my boys after homeschooling for 8 years. We used Sonlight for 5 of those years. I hope that helps!

Blessings,
Lee

How Can a Booklist be so HUGE!?

>>>>A clients asked:
"I really enjoyed the Comprehensive Records! It really helped to see how you scored your grades, particularly in areas where you did not use a textbook. I also enjoyed your booklists. I have two question about books. How do you select the books for your courses? Do you have any favorite resource? "<<<<


Hi,

First of all, I'm really glad my Comprehensive Record is helping you. Of course, every family will have completely different records, and they will (hopefully) demonstrate each students unique area of specialization. That's why the book lists look like that on my records - because that's how my kids love to learn. I can't KEEP them away from books. This summer, when Alex was home from college, for fun he read Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, CS Lewis, Agatha Christie, and Shakespeare. He didn't just read ONE of each of those, he read the whole SERIES of each one. That's what they love to do, and that's why the book list looks like that. In fact, I actually didn't quite manage to capture ALL of their books, because they were much better about reading books then actually writing down the titles for me.

For example, with our Bible class one year, I set 35 books in front of the kids, and told them to read for just 1-2 hours a week from those books. I was expecting them to read, perhaps, 10. They read them ALL. It was amazing to me, but that's what they loved to do - and they still love it.

We started homeschooling with Sonlight Curriculum, and that started them on reading. I supplemented using Jim Trelease Read Aloud Handbook. By the time they were in high school, we included book lists from The Well Trained Mind, and various college reading lists that I found online.

We didn't use literature guides, really. They mostly just read the books. When I would ask them about it, the just said it was good, and asked for the next one. It's nice like we dissected each book in an intense way.

The classes that I failed in (art, state history, etc.) I found that it worked better when my kids learned from literature. So when I got completely frustrated by a subject, I just schedule them to do reading. So instead of studying art, we read art history. Instead of studying 3rd year french, we read french books, and books about France. It's like it's my kids' love language. You're kids may not have the same love language.

Don't feel like you have to read that many books with your kids. Many kids may be doing good to have 1/2 of one page of books on the reading list. It's all about encouraging your kids to do their best, and then be satisfied.

To keep a reading list, you can have the kids write down every book they read, but that didn't work well for me. You can also keep all the receipts from the library and from the bookstore. Keep all your assignment sheets, if you use them, because that may have the names of books you have used. You can include books on tape, and you may want to include plays that are books (like Shakespeare, Death of a Salesman, etc.)

I hope that helps! I'll get to your scheduling questions next time, OK?
Blessings,
Lee

How valuable is a formal literature program for my homeschooler?

>>>>A reader asks: I am considering doing some sort of formal literature with my 7th and 8th grader. We have never done any formal literature.......Or should I just assign them some reading and have them write about it?<<<<


I vote for just reading good books :-) I always felt guilty that we didn't do a "literature program". We just read lots and lots of books. I rarely thought to do intensive discussion. I did read ahead all the books they read - I wasn't a total goof up! But really, our discussions were something like, "what did you think of this book?" answer: "it was good!" I wasn't sure I had prepared them well, but then Alex took the American Literature CLEP exam and passed it with flying colors. Plus the books they choose in the library and at the bookstore tell me that they do appreciate good literature. The only really formal literature we did was to do "Learn to Write the Novel Way" which teaches information about character development and setting and stuff. I just want to give you the freedom to NOT do a formal literature program if you don't want to. It's all about the books, in my opinion, and not so much about the program part.

Hope that helps!
Blessings,
Lee

High School Writing Plan

During the summer before my son's junior year, I struggled with choosing a writing curriculum. When my husband forwarded my older son information on a chess scholarship, I had an idea. Using the internet, I spent months doing an extensive search for essay contests and scholarship opportunities for both my boys. The results were both an awakening and an answer to prayer. To put it bluntly, there are a lot of people and organizations out there that want to give your kids money for college...LOTS OF MONEY!

While most scholarships are highly competitive, some of them actually go unclaimed because no one applies. Never the type of family to refuse free money, we discovered that we could build an entire year's writing plan around scholarship essays.

Most contests required a 50 to 1000 word essay on the topic of the sponsor's choosing. Because there are so many available, we were able to select just the ones that were of great interest to my boys: history, science and economics. Because these topics were in my boy's "wheelhouse", it was much less of a chore to inspire them to write. The first $400 check didn't hurt either! This benefited our family in two ways. First, my boys learned the fine art of writing an essay (perhaps the single most practical skill for the college bound student). Second, we saved hundreds of dollars in curriculum purchases, in addition to the thousands of dollars the boys earned with their winning essays!

What is The HomeScholar Advantage and how can it work for you?

Fortunately, my experience in this area has made me very skilled in quickly searching out "tailor-made" scholarship opportunities for your students. In just one or two hours I can interview your child on the phone, and begin a complete web search for scholarships. I will produce an easy to use, well-organized document with 15 to 35 contests arranged by due date. For the cost of a high school writing curriculum, your students will have the opportunity to hone their writing skills with topics that interest them, and have the possibility of earning money at the same time!

How to Compile a Reading List

Colleges love to see a reading list from homeschoolers - but how do you go about getting a reading list? Obviously the easiest way is to have your student keep track of all the books they have read. I was never very successful with that strategy myself (nobody is perfect!) Instead, each summer as I compiled the previous year's work, I had to think of other ways to recreate the information. Consider these ideas:

• Keep your library receipts - they often include the title of books you have checked out

• Keep bookstore receipts and records from curriculum suppliers

• List the books, audio books, and videos that you have required for your students to read, as well as reading for pleasure
  

• Have your kids collect books from around the house, bringing you all the books they have read in the past year

• Read book lists like these and curriculum catalogs to refresh your memory

Reading list from The College Board

Reading list from The Well-Trained Mind