My Approach to ELA This Year

I was trying hard to figure out how I could incorporate more Charlotte Mason-style things into our homeschooling. Although I absolutely love the Montessori approach, the reality is that the older the student, the more collaborative work is part of it. And collaboration in groups larger than just student and teacher so they get the full benefits of group discussions and more.

But I couldn't figure out how I could incorporate Charlotte Mason into what we have to do to cover the Alberta Program of Studies. I came up with something that I'm quite eager to do, I just have to make sure that I either figure out the specifics of what we're going to cover--and what we'll cover after we finish something.

What I did is take the CM idea of looking at a particular book/text only once a week and took our ELA and broke it into days:

Mondays: essays
Tuesday: poetry/song
Wednesdays: short stories
Thursdays: popular nonfiction/multimedia/play/film study
Fridays: novels and book-length non-fiction

From page 10 of the Program of Studies:

My son will be doing 20-2 this year, so technically, we only need to do the non-fiction OR the film study, but I would like to have him do both. I may do the non-fiction more lightly, or maybe do it more Charlotte Mason-style rather than concerning myself with making sure he writes the kind of texts that are required. (Although a sudden thought: Maybe it would be better to start of with more Charlotte Mason-style, get him to do lots of narration early in the year, then get to the required writing later.)

The idea with my schedule, too, is that if, after several weeks/a few months, I feel like a particular area has been covered enough (say, poetry or essays), then I might move the schedule around or add in extra literature so that his education goes beyond just what is required of the APS.
Essays: I don't have essays decided yet, but since we're starting school on Tuesday, September 6th, I have until the 12th to have at least the first essay picked. Martin Luther King Jr's essay/speech (really, speeches can just be essays said out loud, right? pretty sure this was part of an essay assignment I found online) "I Have a Dream" might start off our year. It brings back up the legacies of globalization (covered in social studies last year) while also kicking off some of the racism topics that will be covered in this year's social studies. At some point, I'll be having us look at student-written essays, including grade 9 PAT essays and grade 12 diploma exam essays, to really look at how he is expected to write essays. And have him find a poem he'd like to share with me. (Ooooh. lol)

Poetry/song: So far, I've decided to start the year off with something light-hearted, and Canadian, The Barenaked Ladies. hehe. We'll look at "If I Had a Million Dollars" and what kind of poetic elements are in it. The offshoot, "text creation", assignment will be for him to write a "response" of his own, in any format he wishes, be it poetry, prose, fictional story (yeah, right!), comic... with the same title or something similar. I have a couple of poetry books, plus a literature anthology that I had first year of university, so I've got a whole bunch of poems I can select from. I might also look up great poems for teens.

Short stories: I have a book of Canadian Short Stories that I can skim through some and see if there are any particularly interesting ones. Otherwise, I might go for an Edgar Allen Poe to start and then figure out what we'll do after that.

Popular nonfiction/multimedia/play/film study: We are starting off with looking at YouTube videos. Why is YouTube so popular? What makes a good YouTube video? Why do some videos go viral? How do people get so many subscribers? How can you make a YouTube video? Evaluate and compare different people's videos (include some Canadians; I know there's one he follows). Part of this will be to record a video suitable for YouTube (whether he actually uploads it or not). Once done looking at YouTube (maybe a month? more? not sure), we'll move onto a yet-to-be-chosen play.

Novel/non-fiction study: We are starting off with the novel study and after having looked through the list of Alberta Education-approved books, I have picked The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the novel and Catch Me If You Can for the non-fiction. The first week, we'll have a look at the author and then I think I'll assign some reading to do during the week. There are 35 chapters, 180 pages. We will not be doing just one chapter a week; it'd take the whole school year. I'll have to break it down, with factoring in assignments to do with it, so that it'll be done for sure by mid-January, so we can do Catch Me If You Can afterwards. Charlotte Mason would have the reading, and subsequent narration, be done in class. I think we may need to get through the book faster than how Charlotte Mason would have it done, though.

*As an extra note here: I will be doing read-alouds or playing audiobooks to really bring more literature into his life. One of the books I'll read or we'll listen to is A Tale of Two Cities, seemed a good choice given the social studies link to the French Revolution (it is also a book on the ELA 20-1 list).

Phew, there we go, my ELA plan outlined and things selected to get the year started. Now to just do this with other subjects. ;)