For teens who want more rigor on their transcript: How to create honors credit for Great Christian Writers.
How to Create Honors Credit for Great Christian Writers
Many of our local homeschool high schoolers have loved 7Sisters’ Great Christian Writers course. 7Sister Sabrina taught it for several years at our local umbrella school.
We found that many of our teens took the course because it was interesting to them, not so much for creating a powerful transcript. These homeschool high schoolers were going into a trade or military after high school graduation so an average transcript credit would do.
However, a number of our teens were aiming for state colleges or other more competitive colleges. These homeschool high schoolers needed their Literature credits to show more rigor. They aimed for an Honors-level credit in their Great Christian Writers course.
Here are two ways they created their Honors credits:
- Honors Great Christian Writers Literature, requirements adjusted for grades 9-12
- Honor Great Christian Writers Classic Literature
We will discuss both in this post. Starting with the former.
As you know, high school Literature/Language Arts credits require books and papers. For a post explaining more on how to earn high school Literature credits, click here.
Remember, there’s not ONE right way to homeschool high school…and there’s not ONE right way to create an Honors-level Great Christian Writers Literature credit.
Great Christian Writers Literature, requirements adjusted for grades 9-12
The anchor of your homeschool high schooler’s Great Christian Writers Literature credit should be 7Sisters Great Christian Writers Literature Study Guides bundle. It is a solid mixture of Christian classics and inspiring, modern biographies, as well as being a good balance of longer and shorter books, with varying levels of reading challenge.
- The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
- Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (Here’s an excerpt from the study guide.)
- The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence
- God’s Smuggler by Brother Andrew
- Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge
- Joni by Joni Eareckson Tada
- Born Again by Charles Colson
- The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
- Hymns and Creeds
(Many of our teens have named this as their favorite course.)
As you can see from the lists below that these books will be the backbone of the credit, but other books should be added. Also, you will note that Literature topics are the title of a Language Arts course, but to earn a full Language Arts credit, teens also need to get analysis and writing in.
- For the analysis, you will have the no-busywork 7Sisters Literature Study Guides for at least 10 books.
- For the writing component, we suggest 7Sisters adaptable, no-busywork Writing Guides.
For more information about Language Arts credits, check out this episode of Homeschool Highschool Podcast.
To fill out the book list some suggestions our 7th Sisters and teens have given us include:
- Wounded Spirit by Frank Peretti
- That Printer of Udell’s by Harold Bell Wright
- Any book by GA Henty
- The Chronicles of Narnia (if done at high school level with 7Sisters Study Guides)
9th Grade
- Reading:
- 22 books (at least half should be written by a Christian author with some sort of religion theme or plot, at least 10 should have literature study guides, 7-10 can be books of the Bible)
- Writing:
- 6 short – at least 3 creative
- 6 essays
- 8-page paper (7 pages + references) or 2 5-page papers
10th Grade
- Reading:
- 22 books (at least half should be written by a Christian author with some sort of religion theme or plot, at least 10 should have literature study guides, 7-10 can be books of the Bible)
- Writing:
- 7 short – at least 3 creative
- 7 essays
- 8-page paper (7 pages + references) or 4-page and 5-page
11th Grade
- Reading:
- 11th grade: 25 books (at least half should be written by a Christian author with some sort of religion theme or plot, at least 10 should have literature study guides, 7-10 can be books of the Bible)
- Writing:
- 8 short – at least 4 creative
- 8 essays
- 2 8-page papers (7 pages + references) or 1 8-page and a 4-page and 5-page paper
12th Grade
- Reading:
- 30 books (at least half should be written by a Christian author with some sort of religion theme or plot, at least 10 should have literature study guides, 7-10 can be books of the Bible)
- Writing:
- 8 short – 3 creative and 3 response papers
- 8 essays
- 2 10-page papers (9 pages + references) or 1 10-page and a 6-page and 5-page paper
How to create Honors credit for Great Christian Writers, focusing on classics
Additional classics needed for an Honors-level Great Christian Writers credit is a bit trickier to classify than simply an Honors-level Great Christian Writers. How do you define a classic? It can be a little vague. For our purposes, let’s just say that a classic can be loosely defined as a book that many literary scholars would agree has great merit in regards to content and style as well as enduring appeal and value. There’s a lot of room for wiggle in there, as you can see!
In the Great Christian Writers course, you could classify these as classics:
- Pilgrim’s Progress
- The Practice of the Presence of God
- The Screwtape Letters
- The Hiding Place
- (The other books in the series are great but have not been around long enough to be a classic.)
Use the above list of books and papers adjusted to grade-level, but make sure most of the remaining required books fall into the *classic* definition. There are a lot of different ways to do that. I’d approach it something like this:
Read the 4 classics in the Great Christian Writers bundle plus two of the recommended extra reading for leveling up (this is in the introduction of the text). Some good titles might include:
- Mere Christianity- CS Lewis
- The Normal Christian Life- Watchman Nee
- The Cost of Discipleship- Dietrich Bonhoffer
- The Pursuit of God- AW Tozer
- Orthodoxy- GK Chesterton
Instead of completing a Literature Study Guide for these books, have your student write a short personal response paper or an essay after reading each to document some thinking that took place as they read.
Also, include:
- Read 10 books of the Bible.
- Read the other books in the GCW bundle – the ones that aren’t really classic literature (that covers 5 of the 26 still to go). You can do this because in a Literature course not every book has to be in the category of that Literature genre.
- Read a few more good Christian works that are a bit less challenging – well-written Christian fiction, a devotional book or two, another biography or two.
- Some suggestions our 7th Sisters have given us include:
- Wounded Spirit by Frank Peretti
- That Printer of Udell’s by Harold Bell Wright
- Some suggestions our 7th Sisters have given us include:
- Remember to count books that are read to accompany other subjects like History.
- Books that you read as part of your research paper preparation count.
- Record all read-for-pleasure titles as long as they are on an appropriate reading level for high school (no Dr. Seuss, right?).
An Honors credit is a lot of work, but for a motivated kid who likes to read, it is totally attainable. There is no precise formula for earning it, but something like my suggested game plan seems to work well for many families.
Download Great Christian Writers and get started on a meaningful Honors Literature credit.
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