World Literature

This high school level (grades 9-12) world literature course will focus on great literary works from Germany and Great Britain.  It would be a wonderful accompaniment to a world history course.  Using Progeny Press study guides as well as The Complete Grimms’ Fairy Tales and Heinrich Hoffman’s comical cautionary tales in Struwwelpeter, we will be reading and studying several original German fairy tales/children’s stories as well as two British novels:  Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (first half of the semester), and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (second half of the semester).   I have used Progeny Press for years and I like how they are written from a Christian worldview and incorporate scripture verses with the novels students will be studying.  They do a great job of tackling controversial issues as well.  Included in the cost are both novels and a printed study guide for each book inside a binder. (I will supply one binder with a clear front so you can swap out study guides when we switch novels.)

Students WILL be expected to come to class each week with their Progeny Press study guides completed and prepared to discuss in class.  Please do not sign up your student if homework cannot be completed, as this course requires a lot of student participation.  The only homework required for this class will be for the British novel portion.  There will be a pre-reading assignment and one essay assigned for each book in addition to the weekly study guide assignments.  Students will need to begin reading and completing the study guide two weeks prior to the first class since these are lengthy novels.  Work will also be assigned over the break week (October 20).  I will have other fun activities planned for class in addition to the study guides/German tales.

According to Progeny Press, completing two of their study guides is equivalent to a half credit for high-schoolers.  I will offer this class again in the spring–we will read Frankenstein and The Screwtape Letters.  If your student takes this class in the spring as well, Progeny Press has stated that it would be equivalent to a full credit.  (This information is printed in the front of their study guides on the “Note to the Instructor” page.)  I personally will not be “formally” offering this credit (or half credit) as that is up to you as the homeschool teacher to decide if your student earned that.  You get to decide about issuing credits and adding them to your student’s transcript.  On that note, I also do not grade any of your student’s assignments.  That is also up to you as the homeschool teacher as well.  I will post answer keys in the Basecamp project I will create for communication during this semester (I will not hand physical copies of the answer keys to students as I have done in the past).  You can use the answer keys to grade your student’s assignments if you decide to do so.  We do go over a lot of the answers in class and I give students the option to share essays, but I don’t give out grades.

*This is a high school level class.  Although classical novels, they do contain mature thematic content such as violence, death, alcohol, smoking, etc.  Feel free to check out commonsensemedia.org for more details.  With that in mind as well as the higher reading level of these novels, I do not recommend signing up a junior high student for this class.  This class is designed for grades 9-12.  The study guides do a good job of tackling those controversial elements in novels.

**Please note, there will not be homework for the German literature portion of this class.  That study will take place during class time only.