Lightning Lit Review

All my children have a love of reading! Typically, getting them to read for their homeschool literature assignments isn't too difficult. One of our favorite literature and composition company's is Hewitt Homeschooling. They have a variety of Lightning Lit and Comp courses ranging from elementary all the way through high school. We recently had the chance to try out British Christian. This course is typically aimed for grades 10-12.

I had let one of my high school daughters pick which course she wanted to try out. After looking over and researching the books that this course covers, she chose this course based on the reviews she saw of the books.
The books in this course include:

• The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis
• Why Does God Allow War? by D. Martin Lloyd-Jones
• Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterson
• Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

When purchasing a Lightning Lit & Comp course you receive a student workbook along with the teacher's guide. You also have the ability to purchase the 4 books to go along with the set (which was not included for us). The books are also easy enough to find at the local library.
The student workbook is a soft cover book consisting of 195 pages and is not consumable. This aspect makes it nice if you have several children who will end up using it over the years! Lighnting Lit recommends using this course over the period of 18 weeks, making it one semester long. Though they do also give a schedule on how to use it for an entire years course with doing some extra supplementing with some grammar and composition. Typically in the past, we've used it as a one semester course though I admit this course seemed to have a lot of meat to it so we did take a little longer working on it and will probably draw it out into a full year course.
There are a total of 4 units with each unit being broken down into 2 lessons. Each lesson is broken down into 4 sections:

• Introduction- This talks a bit about the author, describes the reading section that is included in the student guide and gives the student some things to think about as they read it.
• Comprehension  Questions- The answers are included in the teachers guide.
• Literary Lesson- This sections uses a specific type of literature to teach the student how to write something similar.
• Writing Exercises- This gives the student a chance to put into practice what they had just learned.

The teachers guide gives a break down of assignments for each week that the student is to complete. This is one of my favorite parts as it takes the work off of me on trying to figure out what needs done each week.
The teachers guide came as 65 page, loose leaf guide. It had a set of 3 hole punches to it so I just slipped it into a binder. This guide is really invaluable. At the beginning, it gives a lot of grading tips as well as a checklist for nonfiction papers. I personally am intimidated at grading writing papers so this is a huge help. It then goes on to give a template for grading the writing & comprehension questions.
After that, the guide goes into giving a weekly schedule for either the one semester or full year course. It's up to the student what they specifically work on each day. My daughter typically would look at the amount of work for the week and then break it down into either 3-5 days worth of work. Following the schedule is all the answers to the comprehension questions which made it easy to quickly grade.
Also included in the teachers guide are writing exercises for each unit as well as discussion question. They suggest using these questions around the dinner table as it gives the student a chance to summarize what they have been reading, especially for others who may not have read the book. 
There is also a section for project suggestions, which are especially handy if your student enjoys doing something hands on and cover a multitude of different subjects such as art, history, music, etc. I definitely see utilizing these sections when making the course a full year instead of just a one semester course.
 One of the first writing assignments was about writing a 5 page essay and it also went into writing a thesis. My daughter liked how it walked her through the specifics and "how-to's" of writing an introductory paragraph, the body, and the conclusion of an essay. She said it helped her understand how to write with more detail. Just as the student guide states, this level works towards preparing the student for college-level composition skills, and I completely agree!
Many other reviewers reviewed other levels so click on the banner below to check out the other courses Hewitt Homeschooling offers!
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