Hewitt Homeschooling~ Lighting Lit ~ British Mid-Late 19th Century

One of *my* favorite things to review are Literature related, and two out of three children agree strongly! My Middlest isn't as fond of reading as his siblings, but I was very interested to see what he thought about Hewitt Homeschooling's British Mid-Late 19th Century Lighting Lit Guide. I chose this (one of 12 high school units being reviewed by the Crew) because I hoped it would offer him some literature, stories and poetry that would be a little more up his alley, with authors like Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Oscar Wilde. Also studied are works by Rudyard Kipling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot,  and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Other Crew members reviewed Lightning Lit for grades 1, 2, or 3, "My First Report" or Grades 7 or 8 Lighting Lit sets as well as the above-mentioned high school sets. Be sure to click on the linky at the end of the review to see what they had to say. You can also check out my previous reviews for Shakespeare: Comedies and Sonnets (2014), and Early 19th Century American (2012) to see what my impressions were about those titles.

One of the things that my son particularly appreciated about Hewitt's program is that while there are four physical books (See the complete set pictured below) that need to be available to complete the course, all of the shorter works are self contained in the bound Student Guide, which makes it more compact and efficient, with fewer things to be misplaced. ;)

Because my son was just coming off a Novel Study, and it is summer-time, I chose to have him work through some of the portions of this guide that were a little lighter and/or self-contained~ Poetry and Short Story selections from Tennyson, Carroll, and Stevenson, which will give him a head start on his Literature requirements for the coming school year

The High School Lightning Lit courses include a Teacher's Guide (Stapled, 3 hole punched papers that need to be put in a folder) with grading helps and rubrics as well as a couple of well-laid out schedules for Semester or Year-long coursework.

Each Lesson includes an Introduction, Comprehension Questions, a Literary Lesson, and four to six writing exercises to choose from. If following the Hewitt Basic English, English, and English Honors programs, it is suggested that the student submit two written papers for each book-length work, and one for shorter selections. This can obviously be adjusted according to your student's proficiency and exercise choices.

If correcting those written papers seems to be too daunting of a task, even with the included helps,  you may be pleased to know that Hewitt offers a Paper Evaluation service which some Crew members also reviewed (again, click through the link at the end to find those reviews).

I particularly enjoyed going through the Lewis Carroll selections (Jabberwocky is one of my long-standing favorite poems) with my son, and I even learned something about Rhyme Scheme that I didn't know before (Or maybe that I forgot...?): that there are masculine and feminine  rhymes, and an explanation for words in poetry that *almost* rhyme like "again" and "plain" (Slant Rhyme).



Here is a sample of my son's couplet writing
Like Carroll, and possibly Ogden Nash,
he has a droll sense of humor :

The wish of a fish
Was to eat from a dish

While a frog in a bog
Hoped to go for a jog

And the bee's only plea
Was to sip some green tea ...



Once again, I thoroughly appreciate Hewitt's approach to teaching "college-level composition skills by responding to great literature." I will continue to use selections from their guides to flesh out my son's high school literature courses over the next two years.

You can check out samples of the Student Guide and the Teacher Guide on their individual product pages.


Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: Hewitt Homeschooling
• Product: British Mid-Late 19th Century 
• Ages: High School 
• Price: $58.23 for complete set including 4 novels

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Blessings~