CW Homer suggested ages?

[Kym]

I know that you recommend for CW Homer to begin around 4th or 5th grade (or so I understood).

How high can one use it? Would a high schooler benefit or will it be too easy?

Thanks, Kym

PS I am anxiously waiting for it to come out.

[Tracy Gustilo]

This is under active discussion between Lene and me right now, Kym, so no guarantees! CW-Homer has always been aimed primarily at the 4th-5th grader, and that has not changed. We are also tentatively planning on offering a schedule for "gifted" 3rd-graders (meaning, basically, kids who've had their fill of CW-Aesop, are good writers, and are ready to move on). And, we are also tentatively planning on a schedule for older students, to go faster and use harder models (or move from easier to harder models more quickly). So the idea is to cover a broad range of student ages and abilities. As usual, a hallmark of CW is to be flexible.

Both the a & i and writing projects are definitely meaty enough for older students, even high schoolers, esp. if they are working on challenging models. A & i is focused on heavy-duty grammar. We won't get into logic -- yet. So if high schoolers have had a lot of grammar and know how to diagram they will go through this very quickly. However, there are "optional" lessons that, assuming we include them, will be targeted to "older students" (meaning, older than 5th grade). This is similar to what we did in Poetry. Also, the parsing we are asking of younger students can easily be expanded by older students to cover more details. On top of the grammar theory and analysis, the imitation work is extensive and should be good for everybody. (I think doing a lot more of this would be excellent for ME! <g> I learned a ton myself just working out model sentences for examples. It's good stuff.)

Lene can give you more details on day 1 content analysis and the writing projects. For invention, we use Theon to dig deeper into the narrative questions (so not only person, action, place, time, manner, cause -- aka "reporter's questions" wwwwwh, but also sub-questions under each of these). Students will consider author's emphasis on these different facets of narrative and the differences between writing fiction and non-fiction narratives. While one might make up details to rhetorically "amplify" a fiction narrative, for example, one is not to make up details for nonfiction history or science!

For arrangement, they will work on in media res and "backwards" retelling. Though it sounds kind of silly, the latter is surprisingly good at getting kids to think about causes -- which is an important rhetorical topic. For style, they will work on the narrative qualities of credibility, concision, and clarity. Style projects will tie into their analysis and imitation work at the word, sentence, and paragraph levels. At that point, they will be reworking some of their own papers, so we're hoping to teach important revision and editing skills.

So I'd say, yes, this is excellent stuff for any age. You could probably compare it to CW-Poetry in terms of heft and difficulty level. It is a large step up from CW-Aesop. We're digging deep into grammar and the underlying components of narratives and how to work with them and write them well and appropriately. On the other hand, we hope there is an adequate transition from Aesop that, combined with slower or faster scheduling, can allow customization for students of different abilities.

Lene and I both are right now and will continue to pull our middle and high schoolers through a lot of CW-Homer that they have not had previously. We have been surprised at how much we have learned from researching this book and digging ever deeper into the classical sources. So not all of it, I'm afraid, is fully tested on our own kids -- though obviously it has been tested for centuries and millennia by all those who had classical educations in the past! It is pretty exciting stuff. (Keeping in mind that I'm the kind of person who actually gets excited about grammar! LOL)

Tracy

PS We're anxiously working for it to get out! LOL The good news is that we've made a ton of progress in the last few weeks. But it still has many, many weeks to go. Lene and I promised each other not to give any actual targeted release dates. Life is too unpredictable! But we're working very hard on it. :-)