Illuminating Literature for High School (A Homeschool Coffee Break Review)

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I'm getting lesson plans lined up for the co-op classes I'll be teaching this year, one of which is new for me. We'll be studying Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crisis and I'm really looking forward to it! Last year we did Illuminating Literature: When Worlds Collide and the way the two courses are set up are very similar. Today I'm recapping When Worlds Collide in order to update my previous review of this excellent literature study for high schoolers.

Writing With Sharon Watson has become a favorite of mine, as I've used these courses at home and at the co-op for a couple of years now and they are easy to use and adapt, and they make writing and literature a lot of fun. Sharon's other writing courses  include Jump In!, The Power in Your Hands, and Writing Fiction [In High School]. She's a veteran homeschool mom and teacher of literature and composition, and her relaxed and conversational style makes these courses attractive to even reluctant readers and writers.

Illuminating Literature: When Worlds Collide is designed to teach literature in a relaxed atmosphere, guiding students through seven novels and one memoir, teaching literary terms and elements, and helping them become familiar with the hero's journey and gain an appreciation for fine literature. The text is written from a Christian worldview perspective so it's a good fit for Christian schools, homeschools, and co-ops. Of course, not all the novels studied are written from this same perspective, but the curriculum teaches students how to analyze stories and to be discerning readers.

 There are 70 lessons in the two-semester course,  so students earn one full credit for Language Arts or English. The guide is written directly to the student, with clear lessons and reading schedules. For those using the curriculum at home, the student can easily work on their own. The Teacher's Guide provides answer keys and grading grids to make the instructor's job easy! And with the tips and suggestions for using the curriculum in a co-op class or book discussion group, I had very little trouble figuring out a lesson plan to use in our once-weekly co-op classes.

The Teacher's Guide starts off with an overview of the course and how each book was selected because it was an example of the overall theme of colliding worlds, as well as its literary value. There is a suggested grading system which is easy to follow or adapt to your specific teaching situation. There are guidelines for evaluating the student's participation in discussions and completion of assignments, and course objectives are clearly laid out. In our co-op class, I graded quite generously, focusing on whether the students read the novels and participated in the discussions, and completed the assignments. The Teacher's Guide provides notes on each lesson, as well as the answers for questions and the suggested reading and assignment schedules.

The novels studied in the course are:

Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
The Friendly Persuasion by Jessamyn West
Peter Pan by Sir James Barrie
Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

The student guide is written directly to the student, and has a conversational tone. In fact, it's humorous in many places! It's not a dry textbook lecture, so I didn't feel like I was burdening students by asking them to read the textbook in detail even though we discussed the lessons in class. We had a lot of friendly discussion that invited questions and opinions, and although this type of course is best when students can have that kind of interaction with an instructor and peers, the relaxed and friendly tone of the textbook makes it easy enough for students working on their own.

For each novel studied, the theme of conflict of worldviews or values is highlighted, and literary terms and devices are explained and studied. There's plenty of background on authors, settings, and styles, and for each novel there is a choice of related activities that's varied. From the half dozen or so activity choices related to each novel, I assigned one or two to my co-op students, and allowed them a choice of which ones they'd like to do. There are always a few different kinds of research and writing assignments, but also some things that students who are reluctant to do more reading or more writing can enjoy. Hands-on things like creating art, performing music or researching and preparing recipes. And other fun things like watching the movie version of the book and reviewing it. In the co-op setting, we agreed that it was a Lit class rather than a writing class, so I didn't want to be assigning a lot of writing or grading harshly on writing. That approach worked out very well for us.

There is a Quiz and Answer Manual that is optional, because the quizzes are available online. There are three kinds of quizzes - "Yes, I read it", literary terms quizzes, and opinion surveys. In the co-op, we did quizzes both ways - on paper and online. On a couple of the quizzes, a couple of students had trouble logging in, and we never did figure out why, other than it was a temporary glitch. The opinion surveys have no right or wrong answers, but the website would report a score of 0/7 for some reason. If the student answered the question, I gave them the full grade on the opinion survey! For the comprehension and literary terms quizzes, in general it was very helpful for the students to do those online because the automatic grading saved me some time.

There is also a Novel Notebook that goes along with the textbook, which is a required element of the course. It is available as a free PDF download from the website. Students use the notebook to record favorite passages and quotes from the books they read, collect examples of the literary devices and themes they see in the literature, and jot down some of their own opinions and conclusions about the books. I know my students didn't always use their Notebook, but it's definitely a convenient system for taking notes and keeping track of what's being learned.

  

It's very important that students use the suggested versions of the novels, especially when in a group setting. The student book and teacher's guide often refer to specific pages in the books, and it's a big time-saver (not to mention so much easier!) to just turn to the page instead of needing to hunt down that sentence or paragraph in a different edition.

Read our original review here: Illuminating Literature: When Worlds Collide

Visit the website: Writing With Sharon Watson and get more details about this course here: Illuminating Literature: When Worlds Collide.

Age Recommendations: Teens in 9th through 12th grades

You can also find Writing With Sharon Watson on Facebook.

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