A sketchy outline of Classical Writing Homer

[Lene Mahler Jaqua]

I wrote up a web page, or the beginnings of a web page, for those who want t o go on to Homer - like exercises. Please look it over and tell me if it makes sense.

home.att.net/~mikejaqua/homer.html

Hope it helps a little.

Lene

[Martha]

Lene,

Many, many thanks for providing the outline. It seems to have everything we need for next year's co-op planning. Now, if I could just narrow the choices of models...but that's a whole different problem!

Martha

[Maggie]

...and it doesn't make sense. Doesn't make sense for you to give this away. I would feel comfortable using it if I could pay for it. That "sketchy outline" encompasses a tremendous amount of work.

Please let us know how we can make a payment. (I don't have Paypal.)

Thanks.

[Kelly in GA]

I'll make it quick...

1) Do we still aim to do one model per week?

2) Where do I find models for Hercules' Labors (you mentioned your dd was working on them) -- were they on-line or in a certain book? I like the idea of my dd making her own Hercules' Labors book (someone else posted that they did this -- sorry I cannot give credit as I don't remember who it was).

3) Do we still have the child narrate the story back to us on the first day or does working on the outline with "careful repeated reading" already cover that?

Thanks so much for this...it looks great! Looking forward to CW-Poetry as well.

I hope all is well with your family.

Blessings,

Kelly in GA

[Lene Mahler Jaqua]

Yes, one story per week, unless you decide to write a writing prpoject two ways, like two different sequencings, in which case you will run it over two weeks.

Hercules can be found in different versions at the Baldwin Project. You can search for Baldwin Project on line and find the page. Here is one page with Hercules, but it is not the only one.

www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=haaren&book=greece&story=hercules

As for narration, I still do it as part of the initial discussion on the first day, and also if I am not sure the child has the story straight, I make her narrate it again on the second day.

Lene

[Kelly in GA]

Lene,

Is the length of the child's paper supposed to be the same as it was in CW-Aesop (just a re-telling) or is it supposed to be a summary (precis?) of the original? I was reading about the progym. program on another site and it mentioned condensing the original model (e.g. from 300 to 100 words) when doing a narrative and asking the reporter questions to help do that (who, what, when, where...).

I guess I am a little confused with this. Maybe you can post an sample paper for us (and note which model was used).

Thanks for the clarification.

Kelly in GA

[Lene Mahler Jaqua]

Maggie,

Don't feel guilty using what I put on the web to use for free. If I were to ask for money for it, I would have put 10 times as much effort into it. AND I would not have posted it without the careful scrutiny and feedback of Tracy on every particular, etc. Use it, see if you like it, and we will get Homer out as soon as we can. Because of the work involved in officially publishing it, we will charge for that.

Lene

[Lene Mahler Jaqua]

Kelly,

the length of the Homer projects tend to be longer, just because the narratives used are longer.

Right now, the way I set it up with key word outlines and summary sentence outlines, you tend to get just summaries of the original stories. When Homer is all written and completed, we will include more information on teaching amplification through dialogue and through descriptive writing. While I do not think that a Homer writing project will likely be as long as the original, it will certainly be much longer than an Aesop fable.

With my sketchy outline above, my rule of thumb would be that if the student has included all the essentials of the original story in a comprehensible way, the story is long enough. To amplify, at this point I can only recommend going with the tips for dialogue and description from the Aesop book. If you own the IEW syllabus you can also draw on dress up techinques from there. Only, I would not recommend demanding so and so many of each one in one essay, that just isn't the best way to enhance essays in my opinion.

Lene