I am planning a Rhetoric Level Lit class for our co-op next year. The older class will be doing the continuing level, so I want to include the Literary Analysis & Comparision, & Personal Response papers as outlined in the the Loom document "Using Tapestry's Rhetoric Level Literature"(p25). I am having a hard time finding where these papers are assigned. Can someone direct me to the weeks these assignments are introduced?

Also, would it be appropriate for me to skip these assignments for a beginning level class comprised of 9th graders?

Thank you,
Leanna

Hi Leanna! We only recommend one Personal Response Paper in Year 2, and I believe that the information for that is in the Glance Ahead at the end of Week 7.

I think that the Personal Response paper is probably the easiest and shortest of the literary papers that we assign, so you might want to go ahead and give it to your younger students. Does anybody in your co-op have our Writing Aids? If so, you can look up the Personal Response Paper in it and see what is involved. That may help you to make your decision.

Finally, I just want to be sure that you know that Year 2 is a PACKED year, and though we do provide a ton of materials for students who have time or interest to do them (on the old sewing principle that it is better to cut too large than too small), we also STRONGLY recommend that for average students and co-ops you go ahead and tailor the year by cutting about 9 weeks worth of assignments.

If you've read the "Using" document that you mentioned in your post, you've probably already seen this, but in Appendix D of that document there is a chart showing our suggestions for what to cut and how to spread out the readings that are left. It is also directly linked on our new Loom interface, and is called "Customizing Year 2 Rhetoric Literature": http://www.tapestryofgrace.com/loom/year2/literaturehelps.php

If you don't already have plans for tailoring your literature studies, I highly recommend that you look at these resources, because we really did write Year 2 with the expectation that most folks would do only 3/4 of it, and your students may find themselves frustrated and exhausted mid-year if you try to do everything!

Also, just two more suggestion from our experience of co-ops working with Year 2 Rhetoric literature: we really recommend that you try to split the year up between as few teachers as possible and have each one cover as much of the same kind of stuff as possible (have one person teach all the medieval literature and another all the Renaissance, or one teach the epics and another teach the plays, etc.). This means that not everybody has to deal with all the Frameworks documents, and (or) that they only have to read one of the Analysis documents (Poetry, Story, or Drama), if they are teaching only one genre. If you're wondering which works belong to which genres, you will find that the chart I mentioned above gives that information for each work.

Finally, we hope that you will have your teachers read whichever Loom documents (Frameworks and literary analysis) they will be teaching from before they get started, so that they aren't lost!

I know that much of this is unsolicited advice, but I really hope it will be helpful to you! God bless your efforts this year. :-)

c.j.somerville

CJ, Thank you for adding the extra advice. I am trying to decide how to do Literature with a co-op next year. I did not want to dumb it down but saw the need to make changes. I have been reading the article on how to customize year 2 but you clarified things for me. Thank you again!
Joy Nyeste

This is the first I've seen of the "Framework". What is that and how/when is it used?