Michael Beckwith via Flickr, licensed cc.
One of the things that really inspired the way that I home school high school, was this quote from Lee Binz at the Home Scholar.
We’ve been taught to assume that a college-prep education is only for college-bound kids. But college preparation is GREAT life preparation. The first big mistake that parents make in their homeschool is failing to aim for college!
I have tried to keep that in mind as my kids entered the high school years. No matter what they plan to do after high school, I wanted them to experience the world’s great literature, at least once, in our homeschool. I also discovered that a high school curriculum rich in literature would be helpful to my students taking essay portions of the ACT or SAT,
This year, we are doing British Literature and British History. I would have preferred to do American History and American Literature first, but our co-op is doing British Lit, and so I thought it would be better if my daughter could have some familiarity with what her friends are studying. I also thought it would make for a smooth transition to American History next year when we go over the Revolution and everything that preceded it.
The main textbooks I use for High School Literature are from Master Books. I like them because they fit beautifully with their history curriculum and I like the idea of studying the literature that goes with the period of history that we are studying.
For this course, I also have some favorites that I like to use from Bob Jones University Press. For Shakespeare, I use Lightning Literature.
At the end of the year, I would like my student to be able to pass the CLEP Test in English Literature and we will be following this Free Course recommended by the College Board to make sure we have covered everything that will be covered on the test.
But first things first – We have to get through the summer reading that is extensive. Luckily, some of it was covered last year in 8th grade.
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- Beowulf
- The Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Venerable Bede
- The Pardoner’s Tale and The Nun’s Priest’s Tale from Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- The Fairie Queene by Edmund Spenser
- Macbeth by Shakespeare
- Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
- Holy Sonnet XIV by John Donne
- Silex Scintillans by Henry Vaughan
- Paradise Lost by John Milton
- An Essay of Dramatic Poesy by John Dryden
- Evelina by Frances Burney d’Arblay
- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
- The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
- The Rivals by Richard Brimsley Sheridan
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge William
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Witch by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
- The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
- Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
- Are Women Human? Dorothy Sayers
- Terence, This is Stupid Stuff by A.E. Housman
- An Irish Airman Foresees his Death William Butler Yeats
- Mere Christianity by C. S. lewis
- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot
Shakespeare
We will also be studying Shakespeare Tragedies and Comedies this year. Rosie already has a good foundation on that and will also be attending Shakespeare camp in a few weeks, so I will touch more on that later.
Along with the above reading, Rosie will read the assignments in her texts and then do an essay a week as provided in the Teacher’s Manual. With all of that, she will be very prepared for the test at the end of the year and have an excellent working knowledge of British Literature.
A couple of things, Rosie has read The Lord of the Rings, Beowulf, Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein already, so she’s a little ahead of the game there. Mere Christianity will also be a good source for Religion this year so I feel that I am covering that as well.