When I purchased the IEW writing program at the homeschool bookfair, I perused and also purchased Teaching the Classics: A Socratic Method for Literary Education by Adam and Missy Andrews, that comes with a notebook and DVD.
After watching the DVDs, I was excited by the excellent layout of ideas to teach literary analysis.
SOCRATIC DISCUSSION
Unique from most literature curricula, they explain how to use Socratic Discussions, or series of questions, to help students critically engage.
Dating back to the Ancient Greeks, this pedagogical technique is the hallmark of classical education, for the following reasons:
- actively engages students
- allows instruction of character and the good, true, and beautiful
- builds critical thinking skills
After all that is further discussed, along with a long list of many examples and procedures, including Adam Andrews showcasing the technique on the DVD, in the 97 page Teaching with the Classics curriculum.
Applicable for all levels of classical education, the DVD also explains how to start at the grammar level, grow into the dialectic, and finally the rhetoric.
Armed with all these new ideas, I set out to enhance our literature books.
WHITEBOARD
After reading one of our literature books, I drew a plot diagram on a whiteboard in prepartion of using our outline from Teaching with the Classics.
Using color markers for different literary terms, like green for setting, blue for rising action, red for climax and yellow for denouement, the elements categorically popped as we discussed the story.
Meanwhile, the kids copied this onto their own sheets of paper.
Soon they realized the pattern: greats book have the same plot structure as other great books.
LITERARY CAFE
After a few weeks, when this was internalized, we began discussing the literature book orally over lunch, which I like to call a Literature Club Cafe.
Usually saving this for Friday afternoons, I popped out to Taco Cabana around the corner, for Tex Mex that I brought home for our lunches.
Yum! And the aroma!
Enjoying the informal nature of the discussion, we read our favorite parts of the book, emphasizing points we were making.
Through this study, I, personally, came to realize why some books were my favorites, while others were boring.
Some authors do an incredible job of weaving a tale of intricacy, either through characterization, foreshadowing, building suspense, or with some other literary device.
It is a pure delight to sink into these stories, to savor the experience.
Such books easily lend themselves to teaching new literature concepts.
FORESHADOWING EXAMPLE
When my kids struggled with understanding foreshadowing, I wrote in large colorful letters…foreshadowing on printer paper.
During lunch, aka Literary Club Cafe, I asked the kids if they recalled the definition of foreshadowing.
After some discussion, they confirmed by looking up the word.
Did they see forshadowing in our recent literature book.
When they still seemed perplexed, I led the way.
Flipping in the book to my first sticky note that referenced an example of foreshadowing, I dramatically used a doomsday voice to read the sample while holding up my sign: foreshadowing.
Since this particular book was rich in foreshadowing, I asked if the kids recalled another example.
As ofen as needed, I repeated my drama as I went through my sticky notes…until finally the kids got it and jumped in, scrambling to find the pages of the sections they called so they could read the passages with a doomsday voice.
For more photos of our dialectic homeschool journey, check my Flickr set.
