Teaching the Classics from IEW comes with a notebook and DVD on different aspects of basic literary analysis. After watching the DVDs, I was pleasantly surprised that I knew more than I thought I did.  Armed with the basics and a few good tips, I set out to enhance our dialectic literature studies.  Instead of using worksheets, I used our white board.

After reading one of our books, I put a plot diagram on a whiteboard…isn’t that more fun than a worksheet? I like to use color markers for different points, perhaps green for setting, blue for rising action, red for climax and yellow for denouement.  I talked the kids through the book, and jotted down answers on the correct parts of the diagram. Soon they got the idea that a good book has the same plot structure. Here’s an example of how we analyzed plot structure inThe Odyssey.

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.  We liked the informal nature of the discussion. Sometimes we’d even read our favorite parts of the book, emphasizing a point we were trying to make. I got a lot of ideas from having done Teaching the Classics. One day, I got so caught up in a favorite scene, that I made a scene, acting it out in the kitchen!  The kids thought I had lost it, but I made a dramatic point!  Isn’t that the fun of teaching?

Another way to informalize the literature discussion for a Literary Club Cafe would be to do it over tea, snacks, or a cup of hot chocolate in the winter time!  Part of my goal was to make it fun and informal! I new by the time my kids were in high school, they would be doing more formal literary analysis.  At the time they had other meaty subjects to work on. This was an opportunity to relax a bit and still learn, in a unique way.  I truely wanted books to be fun and the beginning concepts of literary analysis to be fun instead of laborious.  I think my goals were met! 

In preparation for the discussions, I’d read the book myself and tag the pages with a sticky note if there was something special I wanted to be certain to share.  From watching Teaching the Classics, I learned how to find different literary devices in books. 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 lend themselves to teaching new literature concepts.

One book from our ancient history studies, Hittite Warrior, was full of foreshadowing. On printer paper, I wrote in large colorful letters…foreshadowing. During lunch, aka Literary Club Cafe, I defined foreshadowing. Then I flipped in the book to each sticky note that referenced examples of foreshadowing and dramatically read a sample of foreshadowing while holding up my sign. I did  that for each quote. By the time I was done reading quotes, the kids had gotten the point! The fun part was that it did not require a worksheet!

Disclaimer: My apologies for the ads which HSB put on my blog. I don’t mind the ones for Williamsburg though!