Well, I've morphed the dialectic and rhetoric assignments in TOG year 3 and plan
to do a literature course for my 7th and 9th grade boys. My 9th grade is bright,
the rhetoric literature looks REALLY hard. My 7th grader reads MUCH more than my
9th grader (just don't ask about math!)
TOG had Faust, Crime and Punishment, Heart of Darkness & Secret Sharer, and
Ideal Husband as works for my rhetoric boy that I think are too hard for a 9th
grader.

My boys have already read/studied 1/2 of the dialectic selections. I
have a readaloud to read to everyone including my 2nd grade girl. The rest they
would read on their own. A Tale of Two Cities is one of my all time favorite
books. I know it isn't on the list. So does this look ok?


1st quarter
Readaloud: A Tale of Two Cities
Diary of Napoleonic Foot Soldier
Frankenstein
Poetry: Wordsworth, Cooleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats

2nd Quarter
Readaloud: Princess and the Goblin
David Copperfield
Billy Bud Sailor
Scarlet Letter
Poetry: Longfellow, Poe

3rd quarter
Readaloud: Huckleberry Finn
Tom Sawyer
Great Expectations
Poetry: Browning, Dickinson, and Whitman
Alice and Wonderland???

4th Quarter
Readaloud: To Kill a Mockingbird
Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde
Invisible Man
Hound of the Baskervilles


I plan to do a mixture of dialectic worksheets and going through some of the
rhetoric vocabulary, frameworks, etc.
Christine

Hi Christine,
If you want to morph the two, I'd encourage you to do at least one non-poetry rhetoric book in unit 1, so that you can get some basics for later rhetoric studies. If you have to leave out one dialectic selection, I'd suggest Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier.

In unit 3, I'd suggest doing Alice in Wonderland rather than Tom Sawyer since you are doing Huck Finn as a read-aloud.

Lastly, To Kill a Mockingbird is a Year 4 book, if your goal is to stay in the right time frame. You might instead want to read-aloud An Ideal Husband and watch Patience (DVD).

Hope this helps...

Thanks Dana,

I'll do Pride and Prejudice in the first quarter. That one isn't too hard. Will To Kill a Mockingbird be a literature selection for year 4? Or will it be an alternate? Both boys have asked about it and I've taught it before, so I'll probably go ahead and do it even though it isn't in the time period if it isn't one of the in depth literature selections.

Christine