High School Literature

The following is a review of the Ninth Grade Literature Guide Set from Memoria Press with the TOS Homeschool Review Crew. Affiliate links are included. 

When options were shared for this review, I chose the set featuring Old English and Medieval Works for my son as they paralleled some of the works also covered in my daughter’s summer semester college English literature class. Because of the content she has already completed, I knew she would be able to discuss his assignments with him. 

We received the entire ninth grade level set minus the books. (It is available to purchase both with and without the books.) Our box included four consumable student guides and four corresponding non-consumable teacher guides written by David M. Wright for The Canterbury Tales, Henry V, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Beowulf the Warrior. We obtained the corresponding books from our library, our bookshelves, and online. I would recommend if you order these, go ahead and invest in either the complete set or specific editions and editors of each book. We were unable to complete assignments related to introductions written in specific editions of books that we did not have. Two additional books are also available and required if you choose to follow their lesson plans exactly: Poetry, Prose, & Drama Book One: Old English and Medieval Periods and The Book of the Middle Ages.  

It has been interesting studying historical literature and comparing real life to works of fiction. The Henry V Literature Guide Shakespeare’s Henry V does tell the story of a real king, but with the author’s own style. So many places in it have been used to name streets in New Orleans that I started craving beignets as we read. Simple things affect our personal preference. I liked the small size of the Henry V student guide best as we just tucked it inside the book. The other three student guides are full size workbooks which match the teacher guides. 

I appreciate the depth of these lessons. Students are required to do much more than just reading assignments. They have to analyze what they have read, answer questions, learn vocabulary, and more. This follows Memoria Press’s Trivium based learning. Completion of the set will definitely count for a high school English credit. 

“The Upper School guides require students to think in increasingly rigorous and complex ways, to make connections from the particular to abstractions and back again, to compare and contrast, and to sort and classify. 

  The guides feature helpful reading notes, extensive vocabulary training, comprehension questions, Socratic discussion questions, work with quotes, and literary and rhetorical devices presented in bold to prepare students for sophisticated literary analysis and/or future work in AP Literature and college classes.

 The guides also feature essay prompts with space for students to write the essay. The prompts are related to their work in the guide, and in particular to what they have determined to be the Central One Idea of the story or poem. This then becomes their thesis which they must argue for and defend in their essay.

Active reading and thinking leads to good writing; and these three to wisdom and virtue – the directed aim and purpose of the Upper School literature guides.”

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