have any of you had your students take either the AP literature or SAT II exams after doing TOG lit at the R level? What did you do to prepare? What results did you have? I'm considering this for my R level lit co-op, but only want to pursue it if I know the best way to go about it. (I'm also considering it for Government and/or history, but probably after year 3 or year 4)

thanks for any insight you have!
Blessings,
Jana NC

If it turns out that you are the first to try that, Jana, I'd love to hear what your results are. :-)

Christy Somerville

Hi Jana!

Yes, please let us know what you find out. Can we drive over and participate when you get it all figured out I have been reading about this as well and trying to figure out which tests to take and then to take them.

Hope you're doing well!
Eia

Just a heads-up from the latest HSLDA newsletter:
"Advanced Placement courses and honors courses designate that the work involved in the course is more substantial than the standard high school course. Beginning in 2008, in order to label a course “Advanced Placement” or “AP” on a high school transcript, the syllabus for a particular course must be reviewed and audited by the AP Central Department of the College Board."

If you are just going to have them take the test it may not make a difference. But if you want to give them credit for an AP course you may want to check the college board website: http://www.collegeboard.com/html/apcourseaudit/

Oh, come on guys! I didn't want to be the one to blaze this trail! I wanted to just follow the well-appointed signs put up by some brave soul who went ahead of me! Not sure if I'll try this with my ds or not -- maybe after one more year of rhetoric...

Sharon, I'm not thinking of calling the class AP on the transcript, but instead was wanting to take the exam for the credit (and for some extra justification for "mom grades" on my ds' transcript).

Anyone else have any input??

blessings,
jana

Ladies,

I have been thinking and pondering this and have not come up with an answer of how to pave this road with AP and TOG. More and more colleges are wanting AP classes...not just the tests. The kids with AP in the transcript certainly have an advantage.

A couple of years ago there was a co-op in NC...Charlotte I believe...that struggled with this issue. They wanted their kids to have AP classes so they ended up dropping TOG for the high school students and making AP classes. I believe they even got their classes OK'ed by the Collegeboard.

My 16 year old is doing RH Lit with our co-op AND doing AP Language and Composition with FLVS. I knew we wanted him to do AP and I just didn't have it in me to make TOG into an AP class. Next year he will do AP Literature. He actually really likes literature so this hasn't been over the top for him...we will see if as the year goes on how he is doing.

I have not totally looked at all of this but I would say that if you did try to make RH Lit an AP course...which I think is a great idea because these kids are doing AP work but not getting credit for it on their transcripts....I think you would need to drop a lot of the reading and add in a lot more writing. At least for the Language and Composition class this seems true. My son will only read 3 novels this year for his AP class and then he will be reading speeches, excerpts, short stories and writing about them. A lot of the writing seems to be about tone from what I have seen so far. They will also be practicing the exam a lot.

If you are wanting to do this then I would check out courses that have been approved by the College board and go from there.

Blessings,
Barb Spanier

You can download the course description for English Literature from the College Board website: http://www.collegeboard.com/st...b_englit.html?englit

I would think you could take the materials from ToG and put them together to make a course, you may just have to pull from more than one ToG Year to do so. If your students have been through one round of ToG in earlier grades, they probably already have the sequence of history, so studying out of chronological order should not be that big of a deal in high school. Then you would just have to go through the process of submitting your syllabus to the College Board for approval. I'm not sure how time consuming that would be or if it would even be worth it for just one child.

The colleges my oldest two children have gone to give college credit for high scores on AP tests, even if you do not list an AP course on your transcript.

You can also list a course as "Honors" without having to go through any approval process. You can even designate on the transcript that it is a "weighted" course (5 point scale instead of 4). That, coupled with a high score on the AP test, should be sufficient for any college and should allow you to use ToG as written.

Another idea, instead of AP is to take the CLEP exam for the course. Many colleges accept AP for credit but still require the student to take a higher level course to meet the credit hour requirements for graduation. With CLEP they generally will count the credit hours as completed.

Hope that helps.

Thank you Barb and Sharon. That was very helpful!

blessings,
Jana

We were not using TOG when my oldest was in high school but just started last year for a sophomore doing Rhetoric and a 9 yo that crosses between UG and DC.

My son used some of the AP classes from PA Homeschoolers online and than took the AP Literature test which he got top scores on. The amount of practice that Mrs. Bell put those students through to understand how to read and how to write was amazing. One of the main reasons that we even found Tapestry was because of a recommendation from kids in her class that they felt very prepared for her class, but Mrs. Bell's class was still quite difficult.

The amount of writing for that test is quite extensive and I don't recommend that you send a kid in unprepared. They need to have 5 good novels that they know VERY well to answer any question comparatively (understanding irony, theme, and so much more) They also need to be very comfortable with Poetry analysis as there are several poetry selections as well.