Middle School Literature

Memoria Press Seventh Grade Literature Guides

Homeschool Review Crew

In our house reading is mandatory.  It’s something we do every day.  It is also something I have to go and pull my kids away from books so that chores get done. But I don’t mind that so much because one of my goals was to raise kids who love reading.  I’ve succeeded!  Now we just need to work on comprehension and pulling from books.  We’re getting help with this from Memoria Press.  We received their Seventh Grade Literature Guide set to use for middle school literature.

Included in the Seventh Grade Literature Guide set are both student and teacher guides for four books.  These four student guides and teachers guides are Anne of Green Gables Memoria Press Literature Guide (a personal favorite), The Hobbit Memoria Press Literature Guide (I personally had never read this one!), The Bronze Bow Memoria Press Literature Guide (had read with another set of children for a different curriculum), and The Trojan War Memoria Press Literature Guide (another one I personally hadn’t read yet).  While the books were not included in our set you can buy a set with books through Memoria Press for your own middle school literature course.  

About the Curriculum

This curriculum is fairly self-explanatory in that you read a section of the book and then work through some questions and such on it in the student guide book.  The teacher’s guide book is there to help you know what to do and when to do it plus give you the answers if you need them.  

Memoria Press as a company and all of their products are based on the Classical Education Model.  We primarily school the Charlotte Mason way but I really really love Memoria Press products.  They are full of such good information and really work well for both my advanced and my special needs learners.  

How We Used

We love these things!  Okay, so I have two girls doing a combo junior high year this year.  One is doing more 7th geared while one is doing more 8th grade geared.  Both are going to be doing these guides.  I will be purchasing a second set of student books to use with the second child, but for now, I’m just having them work on different guides.  It’s best to have them not do the same book anyway as then one will tend to just let the first do all the work and ride on their coattails so to speak. 

We are working on these four days a week.  I plan to have each girl work through all four books this year.  Because we school year-round I’m actually hoping to get and do some of the 8th-grade literature guide sets as well.  They look like they’re good ones as well.  Oh, who am I kidding!  All of the literature guides through Memoria Press look like good ones.  Most of the books are ones we know and love. 

The Study Guide

The study guide is very thorough.  Before reading you do the Reading Notes section.  This contains things like the key characters and places or terms that are going to be encountered in the reading.  Some may be ones that you’ve never heard of before and some are just refreshers if your child has used them before.  Also before reading, it’s a good idea to look at the vocabulary and comprehension questions so you know what you’re looking for. 

For us, I have found that it works really well to have a notebook when we’re reading.  I will read the section aloud and have my daughter write down anything that she might remember from the comprehension questions.  Another option is to have the child read the section aloud.  Sometimes I do have her read it to me, but mostly my other kids are sitting and listening to and they would rather I read.  I don’t mind at all.  Read-aloud time is definitely a favorite of mine.

Okay, so after you’ve read the passage it’s time to get to work!

First off you’re going to work through a section on vocabulary.  These are some of the words within the reading that might have caused the child to stumble or maybe they don’t know what they mean.  It’s hit or miss whether my children already know these or not.  All of them they’ve heard but sometimes it’s interesting to ask them what they think a word means.  I have laughed at how way off they were before.

Comprehension questions come next. My daughter does this on her own and I go through and check when she’s done.  I do this the day she does them.  Then if she didn’t answer correctly we can chat about it and hopefully arrive at the correct answer without too much input on my part.  I like that it’s still fresh in her mind this way and it gives us a chance to reread or go back over the passage while it’s also still fresh.

With the comprehension questions, one of my daughters does really well writing things down while the other does a much better job telling me about it.  If I try to have the second daughter write things down she will most likely write it straight from the reading whether it answers the question or not.  But when I have her talk and tell me the answer she gets it right 90% of the time. 

The next section of the study guide is the quotations and discussion questions.  These are so much fun!  I love the discussion questions.  They are so fun to see what your child really thinks of what they’ve read.  It’s not so much on whether they comprehended the information but on how it made them feel and what they think.  Love it!

Next is enrichment.  This includes activities such as composition, copy work, dictation, research, mapping, drawing, poetry work, literary terms, and so much more.  This section has a lot of stuff going on.  You’re not going to do all of the things listed each and every day, but you do get to do each of them at some point in the study.  My favorites are the copy work and poetry work.  

This is the section you’re going to focus on handwriting and grammar.  Before we might just let those slide by as long as the concept is right but here they are key.  This section is pick and choose.  You can choose one to do one day or do all of them.  It’s a parent decided thing. 

The last thing is unit review and tests.  This is not a once a week or once every other week or even after every fifth lesson.  They vary by the timing.  But you will get a unit review after every few lessons and then a quiz or test will pop up too.  I don’t treat them as anything special.  The only difference in the quiz or test is that I don’t give my children their book to browse through like I do on normal lesson days.  The final comprehensive test will be the same way.  If I stress that it’s a quiz or a test then my girls tend to get nervous and anxious and they will not do well.  So we keep it low key and treat it like any other assignment, just no book allowed. 

Anne of Green Gables

First up is, of course, Anne of Green Gables.  It’s a favorite of mine and one that we have used as a read-aloud on numerous occasions.  

Anne is such a fun read!  I assigned my girl doing more of 7th grade this one since I knew she would already know the story which would make doing her first middle school literature guide easier for her.  She’s doing really well so far!  I love the discussions it’s bringing out as well.  Some of the questions that are asked within the guide are things that I would never have thought to ask.  But they’re good ones.

A special stance we have for this book is that my daughter is adopted.  So as she ages she has asked more and more questions about this aspect of her life. It’s nice to have some “positive” stories about adoption to read.  I mean, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but a lot of books that talk about “orphans” portray them as growing up in these horrible situations.  Sometimes we need some feel-good stories too!  

I love the expressions for discussion within this study guide!  They are so fun!  This is by far one of my favorite books and I love helping my children get to know the book and finding what parts are their favorites too. 

The enrichments are fun too.  We’ve printed out a map and made our own little mini settlement on it to show where Anne was from, where she lives now, as well as where all the important characters live.  Such fun!  Also compiling a notebook full of Mrs. Lynde sayings.  

The Hobbit

I have not read this book before.  We plan on using this one in our second round of readings.  My daughter doing Anne of Green Gables now will do this one next.  It will probably be 4th for my daughter currently working through The Bronze Bow.

My plan is to read the book myself before I try to teach it to my girls.  I don’t think I’ll have a problem with the content of the book since I know this is a Christian company and they’re not going to have my children read questionable books.  But I do want to make sure I’m familiar with the storyline and can answer the questions from the study guide in my own mind.  I teach better when it’s from personal knowledge versus just reading the answers out of a book. 

The Bronze Bow

I read this book once.  A long long time ago it seems.  It was just a pleasure read too, not one we covered in school.  I have to admit that I am learning as much if not more than my daughter doing this guide.

This is a Bible times book and deals with Daniel.  I love that while reading and studying literature we’re also getting a Bible lesson.  This study guide is one of the shorter ones.  My daughter doing this one will get done with hers and start on The Trojan War before my other daughter doing Anne of Green Gables is done with her first study.

The set up of this study is the same as the others.  I find us using our Bible as a reference a lot for this study.  Not quite as much as using the actual book but definitely reaching for it for some context of what is going on around where the book is.  I’m toying with just assigning reading the whole chapter of Daniel from the Bible as part of the study or not. 

Middle school literature can be fun and fascinating in this book.  We are doing four lessons a week which does not take much time.  Reading takes 5-10 minutes.  This daughter doing 8th grade this year is a slow reader and tends to try to just make up or guess her own word if she doesn’t know the word.  We spend more time going over the pre-reading section of words or places that might be hard to say than I do with my other daughter. 

For this daughter, I also tend to let her read the section aloud to me to help her practice reading and then I read it aloud to her.  This reading it twice and letting her hear it helps her to understand and retain better.  She’s an audio learner but I still want her to have that reading practice so this is the best way for us to do it.   

The Trojan War

This will be book 2 or the second study guide done in our middle school literature series for my daughter now doing The Bronze Bow.  I want to keep the girls doing different books and leaving other books between them so that one girl is not just following on the other’s tail.  This makes sure that they’re not just talking to the other girl to find out what they thought and learned but rather truly learning on their own.

I think this one is going to be a good one as well.  This book will definitely be one I see my boys grabbing once the girls are done with it.  Though they’re not doing any middle school literature studies this year I forsee them all doing this one at some point.  I love that all I have to do to have another child do the study is buy a new student book.  The teacher’s book can be used for all of them as you don’t actually write anything in it.  Unless you’re me. And then I put notes in there but those are actually super helpful with taking the next child through.

Learn More

You can learn more about Memoria Press by visiting them on their website or on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram.  But for more specifics about how to use the literature guides or for other sets of Middle School Literature books please visit the Main Blog Post over on the Homeschool Review Crew blog where all our reviews are linked up.  You’ll find lots of different grade levels (second through high school) as well as some storytime treasures.

We have previously reviewed the Third Grade Literature Guides set.  You can check out that review HERE.