How to Teach Literature Without a Curriculum
Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at 3:45PM Once upon a time, I attended a homeschool group function. Towards the end of the evening, I found myself nodding sympathetically while a slightly hysterical woman told me about the problems she was having with her current literature curriculum. I nodded sympathetically for twenty whole minutes. Finally she wiped a tear from her cheek, took a deep breath, and asked, “So, what do you use for literature?”
“Well,” I replied, “We don’t use a program. We just read books, and then we write about them.”
“Oh,” she said, backing away from me. “That’s interesting. There’s Sally. I need to speak with her about something. Oh, Sally!”
I had stayed away from the stinky garlic bread sticks, so I know it wasn’t my breath that had offended her. Perhaps she thought I was one of those dangerous unschoolers. Ha! No, I’m not an unschooler. It’s just that I’ve spent all my curriculum money on various Latin programs. But since Mrs. Slightly Hysterical wasn’t interested in hearing how I manage without a literature curriculum, I’ll talk about it here instead.
Wait, where are you going? Come back!
The hardest step of the whole process is making the book list. I was born lazy, so I take the easy way out and use the lists published in The Well-Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise-Bauer. First I turn to the literature list for the appropriate grade. (Anemone is in 6th grade this year, but I am using the 7th grade list. Yes, you’re allowed to do that!) Then I go through the list and cross out the books she has read (all the fairy tales, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Pride and Prejudice, “The Raven”). Then I cross out the books I have not read (The Pilgrim’s Progress), and the books I just don’t like very much (Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe). This leaves me with the following:
- “A Voyage to Lilliput” and “A Voyage to Brobdingnag”; Jonathan Swift
- “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”; Washington Irving
- “The Way to Wealth”; Benjamin Franklin
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; Jules Verne
- A Christmas Carol; Charles Dickens
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
- Poetry by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Browning, Rossetti, Tennyson
I don’t think that’s quite enough to fill up a year, so I’ll replace Robinson Crusoe with Treasure Island and Pride and Prejudice with Emma. I’ll throw in some books from the Bible and Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, and now I have:
- “A Voyage to Lilliput” and “A Voyage to Brobdingnag”; Jonathan Swift
- Treasure Island; Robert Louis Stevenson
- “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”; Washington Irving
- “The Way to Wealth”; Benjamin Franklin
- Emma; Jane Austen
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; Jules Verne
- A Christmas Carol; Charles Dickens
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
- Poetry by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Browning, Rossetti, Tennyson
- Selections from the KJV Bible
- Martin Luther’s Small Catechism
Now it’s up to Anemone to read through this list. She is supposed to spend an hour every day reading literature, but honestly, getting her to read for twenty minutes is a triumph. (If Anemone were in school, she’d be classified as a jock. Not a dumb jock, but a jock all the same.) I can’t let her go up to her room or outside or even to the sofa in the other room to read, because she will put her book down to practice ballet. Even when she is right in front of me, she will pretend to read while thinking about practicing ballet, so after every reading session we have a quick discussion. During these quick discussions, I ask her tell me what happened. That’s it. It takes about two minutes. This goes on for however many days (weeks) she drags out that particular book, and then it’s time to have the big discussion.
Cue the scary music!
No, not really. We sit down, and I ask her questions. The list of questions in The Well-Trained Mind (what is this book about, what do the main characters want, what keeps them from getting it, etc.) is very helpful in getting the conversation started. We talk about any historical connections she may or may not have made. I ask her what she would do differently from the main characters in a similar situation. If she hated it, I ask what made it so horrible. This usually takes about fifteen minutes. Then I sit her down and say, “Please write one page about this book. Feel free to use anything we talked about Or don’t. It’s up to you.”
After she has written her page, I point out the spelling errors and grammatical train wrecks, and we talk about how she might have organized her thoughts better. Then she files it away in her English binder and goes on to the next book.
See? It’s easy! Read books, then write about them. Save your curriculum money for Latin.
Wait, where are you going? Come back!
And be sure to check out How to Teach Literature Without a Curriculum Part 2: The Early Years.
Reader Comments (11)
That is interesting. Oh look! There's Kristy's blog. I need to go read it.
*runs away*
**secretly comes back to write down the list of books above, but crosses off the ones we have already read.**
***Top-secret. I don't use a literature curriculum either. If my kids happen to take a literature curriculum class at co-op; then yay. If not, I'm not going to tell anyone.***
LOVE this post. It's just what I needed right now.
I have been using a literature curriculum, and the whole "read this many pages this day" thing is killing us...KILLING US!
I've been looking for a change, but didn't want to swing too far to the "loosey goosey" side of things either.
This is for us! THANKS.
*Simply* brilliant; your method cuts to the chase.
Now I guess I will follow Applie over to Kristy's.
We are working our way to this, but we use Sonlight's list of books and then add in others of interest. It is the darn writing part that we fight with in every subject.
I LOVE THIS.
I love this post, I love this idea, and I might just love you a tiny bit.
Also, I have The Well-Trained Mind. Maybe I should crack it open once in a while.
You are a genius! You must be old in homeschooling years. :)
Seriously though, this is a great idea. My problem is coming up with the things to write about. I need someone else to do that for me. I do use Cliff Notes and Sparknotes. They help. I am just lazy.
Thanks, everybody! I'd blush, but I really just ripped off The Well-Trained Mind.
Tressa, I didn't bother coming up with things to write about until JM hit the end of 8th grade. Then I started using the essay prompts in Sparknotes. There is no shame in that. At least, that's what I'm telling myself!
Sure...come on over here ladies and glare at Melanie with me. She's such a freak. She doesn't even use a literature curriculum...can you believe that????
I, too, homeschool and I have had people walk away from me when they've asked how we do "________" when my answer did not meet their expectations. I am sure I am considered a whack-o for not doing spelling...but I am completely normal and my kids spell just fine. But, really I want say thank you for this post...my children LOVE reading but I was at a loss for what to do with all the book lists I've accumulated over the last 11 years. You just gave me "permission " to chuck some books off the list and replace them with others...duh (insert forehead slap, here). Books that I have read and therefore can discuss with my children. Yay!! It is so refreshing to have a new persepective after all these homeschooling years!!
I have a very politically incorrect suggestion: readings should be divided up into boy's reading and girl's reading. I distinctly recall disliking what we were assigned to read in grade school. Now that I am older, I find that there is a wealth of things to read that would far more interest me than what we were assigned.
In general, English teachers tend to like large amounts of quantity. A short work of very high quality, such as Ecclesiastes, takes longer to read per page than some work of fiction. English teachers shy away from such reading as "too hard". My reccommendation is to assign works of high quality, that take some real brain cells to read, and let the person read slowly, using a dictionary as needed. A slow reader of fiction might correctly be assumed to be a bit of a dullard, but a slow reader of nonfiction is probably an intense reader, one who is willing to take the time to extract the meaning from the text at hand. In other words, a guy would far rather spend an hour of heavy, intensive reading of something that will be of some use to him and his life than spend an hour reading about Mary Marple and her Ray Gun.
Guys generally prefer nonfiction to fiction, not just a little, but very much. Furthermore, it has long been noted that guys are "thing" oriented (double entendres aside) and girls are "people" oriented. Works of fiction with highly involved, intricate personal relations may be absorbing reading for girls and for their teachers, but they generally bore guys to tears.
Of works that I think boys would like to read, I have these:
Plutarch's Lives. Very good stuff, with good translations to English. Select one or two lives, such as Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. If the reader likes it, there is more Plutarch to read.
Bacon's Essays. Again, one essay, filling one or two pages of text, is of more weight and has more substance in it than an entire novel of fiction.
Bacon's Wisdom of the Ancients. Very interesting stuff. Read as much of it as you please.
Federalist Paper #3. Any one of the Federalist papers is good reading.
The Proverbs of Solomon. Bite off as much or as little Solomon as you wish. Good for the younger set.
Ecclesiastes for those who are a bit older. Then Job, for the more advanced. Use "The Jerusalem Bible" translation: it is very good, is of fine, literary quality, is very faithful to the original Greek and Hebrew, and is not dumbed down at all.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. The Way to Wealth, as noted in the article, is very good stuff too.
One may wish to go to a good bookstore and survey the non-fiction section. There are several titles on science that are excellently written, such as the work of James Gleick. The work "On Death and Dying" is another example.
The Declaration of Independence, especially the final paragraph which is strangely neglected.
The Constitution of the United States, though it is now problematic whether to classify it as fiction or non-fiction, so far as the U.S. Government strayed from its Constitutional moorings.
A well-written piece of law, such as the Northwest Ordinance.
Again, if any English teachers would find it borign to read the Northwest Ordinance, then you will know how boring guys find the work that English teachers assign them to read.
I approve of your nonfiction book list, Justinian. By the time they graduate high school, my children will have read all or part of everything on it. Those works, along with many others, make up the history component of our Great Books course of study.
The rest of your comment is both absurd and offensive. Boys do read and enjoy English literature (I'm not sure what "Mary Marple and her Ray Gun" have to do with English literature, but perhaps you'll come back to enlighten me). Girls do read and enjoy nonfiction. Most serious readers, male and female alike, are perfectly capable of appreciating both. It isn't a matter of being male or female; it is a matter of personal preference. And call me crazy, but I fail to see how ignoring an entire discipline just to suit a child's personal preference could be anything but shortsighted and detrimental to his (or her) education.
Dammit, now my eyes are bleeding.