Title: The Killer Angels
Author: Michael Shaara
File Under: Historical Fiction
Age Group: Young Adult, maybe 14-15 on up.
One of the fantastic things about homeschooling is that you can use your intimate knowledge of your children, combined with the flexibility of home, to make your curriculum work for you.
Instead of having history class and literature class and then making a lame stab at “outside reading,” you can combine them into one nifty package: a book that they will love to read because it's just that good.
The Killer Angels counts as all of the above. Well written, gripping, based on primary sources yet brought alive by the novelist's imagination, it's a great story about a great moment in history.
A book like this can help you figure out how to go about homeschooling the older child — with the two (plus a bonus) tips I am going to give you.
Maybe thinking about it can help unbend the part of your mind that curls up into a spastic ball when you look at Ambleside, with its extensive booklists; or in general think about homeschooling the older child.
If I had known these things from the get-go, I would have been better off, and so would my kids.
- If you have some method of keeping a history timeline (and even multiple timelines, for certainly American history alone will require several), history will be easy to teach and learn. I like the forms found on Donna Young's site. You can make your own, of course, but these are great. Choose whichever one appeals to you and works with the amount of detail you are looking to put in there, print them out, punch holes in them with your 3-hole punch that yes, you have handy, and put them in a 3-ring binder. (Sometime I will go into detail about this, but consider: If you have a binder, you can pop in other materials such as papers, drawings, short bios, “letters” from a historical figure, and whatever your child has produced relating to the particular moment in time you are studying.)
- And if you (parent/teacher and child/student) have a commonplace book (or florilegium) and learn to keep it as a record of your thoughts on what you read. Think big and wide with this. You want to make note of particulars about the book — the title, author, chapters, characters — but also any quotes that strike you, any thoughts on developments in the plot, and any questions you might have.
- Extra bonus tip: The amazing internet will offer you many ideas for study and essay questions. Simply search for something along the lines of “Study questions the killer angels shaara.” Do not spurn these. They are your friend. Some can be just questions you use to spark discussion with younger students or students who are working on other things. Others can be actual essay questions, the background preparation for which can be carried out in the commonplace book (finding quotes, musing on possibilities, making connections). You can also search for something like “civil war timeline.” Trust me.
These two things — timeline and commonplace book — work for every age of reader. A third-grader can keep a lovely “overview” timeline and a simple journal. A senior in high school can keep a detailed timeline and a commonplace book that will serve him well in college.
Searching online for study notes and timelines will make life much easier for you.
In any case, The Killer Angels is a great read, perfect for late summer. Even if you aren't specifically studying the Civil War, don't miss out on this book. If you plan a trip to Gettysburg (in reality or just in virtuality), it's a must-read before you go, to be revisited during and after.
What is the Like Mother, Like Daughter Library Project?
Carol Kennedy says
Thank you for this! Helps with thinking of the future. Right now we have a pretty extensive timeline up in our upstairs hallway and we occasionally add book titles, characters and real people, things, events to it. I have wanted to start a common place book for myself (and even thought of my neglected blog as a sort of commonplace book), especially as an example for my emerging scholars, but I have struggled with HOW to keep it. Do you just do it journal style: date at top, name of book, quotes questions etc.? Or by topic? (in which case you would want a binder right? instead of those already bound (and pretty) journals you can get at Hobby Lobby?
Leila says
Carol, I like them to keep the commonplace book like a subject notebook, but in the style of a log. So yes, date the entries. Since the book being read will take up some space in the notebook, one entry for the book (title, author, edition if applicable, translator, etc) will suffice.
The “log” aspect of it is key. No wasting energy worrying about categories or topics. Just enter things as they occur. This makes for an interesting notebook! (Hopefully 🙂
For school purposes, I like the good college-ruled one subject spiral-bound notebooks. If it’s a personal commonplace book, then of course going all fancy journal is up to the person! If they are not into it, the “business-like” aspect of the notebook is actually helpful.
Dixie says
Books like this, which responsibly imagine what historical figures’ perspectives were like, are also a great tool for talking about critical reading and historical interpretation (as well as fueling our own historical imagination). It could tie into a visit to the local historical society, for example, where the young people could read some old letters or journals and think about what would have gone into writing “Killer Angels” based on such sources. Maybe they could write a short story themselves.
That leads to the question: when someone (author, politician, pundit, whoever) makes a historical claim, how can we tell whether or not it is probably true? An indispensable question!
Leila says
Dixie, I think that questions like these make good prompts for commonplace book entries. When a claim is made in the text (“Washington kept aloof from his subordinates,” e.g.), thoughts about it can be worked out on paper, including finding quotes from other sources, which should be duly noted!
Josie says
I loved this book, too!
http://tellmeastoryjosie.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/civil-war-reading-the-killer-angels/
JosieO says
I can’t believe there are two of us! I love your name;)! I’ll add an O when I comment so no one attributes my crazy brain to your comments;)!
Karen says
I love reading your posts, Leila, because you have so many children and they are grown up. Great experience and wisdom under your belt.
Could you be specific about using the timeline and the commonplace book? How many of your students used/made a timeline or commonplace book? Which gender? (Were the boys as happy to do these as the girls?) And for how many years? (Did your students wear out on these projects?)
You seem to indicate that these are a good idea and your homeschooling would have been better. Were you able to actually use these ideas?
Leila says
Karen, thanks! I will try to post on this subject later.
I did use both timelines and commonplace books for my younger children, a boy and a few girls, and found them just so helpful.
For now, I would say that for the timeline, do peruse the downloads on Donna Young’s site. I find that just looking at them sparks ideas on how to use them — in a way that simply pondering a notebook for a timeline does not.
The binder approach allows flexibility between just entering important dates (and I am a dissenter from the popular notion that dates do not matter, having suffered under an education guided by that notion) and delving into particulars.
You can do both, inserting more details by means of placing papers into the timeline.
The binder timeline can be used for several years, helping the child to move from World History to a specific era without feeling that he’s leaving work behind. You simply add it!
As to the commonplace book, it’s particularly helpful with boys. It enables them to engage in the work at hand without the struggle that they often have to overcome the desire to clam up!
They are not projects. They are tools for learning that can be carried from year to year. These two tools help a child assimilate the information and the books they are reading and move along the path to synthesizing, rather than just leaving it at passive absorption.
Emily D. says
Heartily agree. The Killer Angels is AMAZING! One of my favorite novels, and it makes the entire Civil War come alive.
Lisa says
Wow. I’ve been going crazy over my homeschooling preparations. I will have grades 11,7,5 and 1 at home this year. History is one subject that I cannot figure out how to do. One Charlotte Mason style website has a 6 year cycle approach, while ambleside gives eras to be studied in specific grades. Leila, I know you’ve commented on not necessarily liking Mason’s approach to history (unless I have remembered incorrectly) in that she presents it chronologically, but I can’t figure out with my little ol’ brain what to do! I love the living books (and so do my boys), and my husband knows history inside and out which will be great. But how do I know what to study when, as well as know what we’ll study later on (long term goal)? I am definitely making this harder than it needs to be, but that’s just what I do. I wish I didn’t. Can you help?
Leila says
Lisa, the only objection I have to the CM approach to history is that it is Protestant — that is, it views, necessarily, history as *progressing* to a better place. You can call it the “Whig” view of history, and it’s something that follows from accepting the Reformation as an improvement on the church — the starting point for enlightenment — as opposed to accepting the coming of Christ as the pivot. It isn’t that it’s chronological per se, although that can also be a problem for a child, but that it has an erroneous philosophical view of time.
But as to having a 6-year cycle for studying history, that is a different question. I don’t know what site you are looking at, but here are a few thoughts.
You can see that a site might offer a cycle for organization’s sake — but you shouldn’t feel like you need to teach history in a cycle! Following Aristotle, we know that a person learns from what he already knows. Thus, I strongly advise (contrary to, for instance, The Well Trained Mind) against starting with World History. Start with the history of where you live! At least, with American History.
For the 11th grader, start with what he wants to learn. Pick a period and delve into it. If he’s never done World History, then maybe start with that, but I would suggest using Christ the King, Lord of History — but as a guide/outline to be supplemented with many original sources (found easily on the internet), not as a textbook.
http://www.amazon.com/Christ-King-Lord-History-Catholic/dp/0895555034/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406732575&sr=1-1&keywords=christ+the+king+lord+of+history+anne+carroll
Or American History if he’s never studied that. Bridget used Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People. It’s a big tome and requires a lot of consulting of outside sources (time-line style for an overview), but it’s lively.
http://www.amazon.com/History-American-People-Paul-Johnson/dp/0060930349/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406732623&sr=1-1&keywords=paul+johnson+a+history+of+the+american+people
For American History there are so many audio books as well (Thinking of McCullough’s 1776 and such like) that it’s hard to know where to start and end!
The 7th grader can do what the 11th grader is doing, only in a much more simple and timeline oriented way, and using different biographies.
Then you can do a more conventional course — why not take a classical school as a model? Check out what they do in Hillsdale College’s high school curriculum
With history, it’s a lot of work for you, but the internet is your friend!
Lisa says
Got it! Thanks for all that. It really helped!