High School Homeschool begins in a few weeks. It’s hard for me to believe that my little boy is now a freshman in high school! I don’t know when that happened. I suppose I just blinked too much.
We have been discussing curriculum a lot this summer. It is important to me that Ben continue with as much delight-directed learning as possible, while we create a year that will be both successful and enjoyable for him.
He will be using more “curriculum” than is usual for our homeschool this year, but not everything is nailed down yet. One thing is though — Literature.
Writing with Sharon Watson has just released a brand new literature course, Illuminating Literature: When Worlds Collide, that we are both very excited about. Ben is a voracious reader, so it makes sense that his high school years will be strong in literature. This is the curriculum we will be using for English/Literature class for Ben’s first year of high school.
Take a peek at some of what he will learn this year:
Text and Context • Pseudonym (nom de plume) • Foreshadowing • Conflict types • Protagonist and Antagonist • Satire • Irony • Theme • Allusion • Genre • Mood and Tone • Symbol and Motif • Memento mori • Tense • Narrative shift • Deus ex machina • Memoir • Hero’s journey • Voice • Style • Backstory • Christ figure • Plot • Ironic ending • Plot stages • Connotation and Denotation • Alliteration • Assonance • Simile • Metaphor • Analogy • Apostrophe • Authorial intrusion • Hyperbole • Euphemism • Empathetic character • Reaction • Prolepsis • Mirror scenes • Setup and payoff • Telling detail • Loose (cumulative) sentences • Periodic sentences •
This new course combines 8 books — covering apologetics, classics, and modern literature — into a biblical worldview course that I feel confident will help Ben to develop the ability to discern anything he reads in the future.
The books Ben will be reading include:
- 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 70 student-led lessons provide for 1 high school credit in either English or Literature. You can download the first 2 lessons for free to try it out.
I will be blogging about every 6 weeks or so about our time with Illuminating Literature. Be sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter for updates.
