Review of Hewitt Homeschooling’s Lighting Lit & Comp – Shakespeare Tragedies & Sonnets

With Shakespeare Tragedies from Hewitt Homeschooling high school students develop stronger composition skills while learning literary concepts to increase understanding how to read deeply.  For quite a few years, our second son – age 18 – has enjoyed reading Shakespeare for fun.  So when I saw the opportunity this review for Hewitt Homeschooling come up, I knew we had to take this opportunity.  For the purposes of this review, we receive the Teacher’s Guide and the Student manual that is consumable.  Four additional books are required in the unabridged form.  Those books are Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear.   This course is intended for students in grades 11 and 12.

Hewitt Homeschooling offers this as a complete pack, which includes the Teacher’s Guide, the Student Guide, and the four books.  Or if you already own or can acquire the four books by William Shakespeare, you can just order the two guides.  The Student Guide is consumable.  So if you are going to have more than one student do the course, then each student will need their own student guide.

The Teacher’s Guide includes an Introduction, grading tips, and other relevant information about the course.  Checklists for various types of papers are included as well.  Grading templates are provided as well to help guide the teacher in what should be expected from their students.  I was impressed with the sample page of grading that was provided.  Here are some pictures of the inside of the Teacher’s Guide.

The student will be completing assignments including vocabulary, comprehension questions, and written papers.  Fortunately, the Teacher’s Guide provides a place to quickly and easily record all these scores in one place to make recordkeeping and scoring easy to complete. The guide also provides a weekly schedule for a semester or a year depending on your preference.  Each week the students are required to read and do certain activities. The schedules in the Teacher’s Guide clearly lay out the requirements for each week.

If you or your student prefer a daily schedule, the bullet points for each week will allow your family to adjust the expectations. For week 1, our son read the Introduction and the section on Williams Shakespeare in the guide.  So this could be done on one day.  Then the second day, he read the introduction to Unit 1, Lesson 1 for Julius Caesar.  Finally, the third day he had to read in Julius Caesar and answer the comprehension questions.  So this would easily break down into three days of work.

Here are some sample pages of the Student Guide.

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My son loves reading Shakespeare for enjoyment.  While he thought this course was well done, he would prefer to just read the book without the extra work.  But, my husband desires to learn how to analyze literature.  So this week, he has picked up the Student Guide and started reading it.  I have a feeling he will be the one to actually complete the course.  We also have two other children who may find this course in their schedule in the future.

In addition to this course, Hewitt Homeschooling offers curriculum choices for elementary students right on up to high school students.  They offer courses including Literature, Math-It, Winston-Grammar, State Chronicles and more.   One selection I would like our 14-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son to complete is their Speech Course.

Another service Hewitt Homeschooling offers is a paper evaluation service.  For a set price, your student will get up to 24 papers evaluated.  This personalized evaluation would be a welcome addition for any parents who do not wish to grade their students’ own papers.  This service is available for junior high and high school students.  All in all I have to say I was impressed with this curriculum and the idea of the paper evaluation service- even if my son was not as entralled by it as me.

If you would like to read more reviews for Shakespeare Tragedies or other choices offered by Hewitt Homeschooling, click here or on the image below.

 

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