As you probably already know, if you have been following along recently, I am working on Teacher Editions of the Study The Great Books guides which will be instantly available to paid subscribers as soon as I have each new edition completed. I thought it might be valuable, however, to give everyone a bit of a preview as to what these will look like so that you will hopefully see the value that is coming your way.
All subscribers will continue to have access to the basic study guides being regularly posted here on Substack, that will never change. But paid subscribers will get PDF versions of both student and teacher editions for easy printing and use in their classrooms or homeschooling. I hope to put out the first edition of a complete PDF Student and Teacher guide by the end of this month. It will be for Charles Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol. Here is small sample of the difference between a student guide and a teacher’s guide:
As you can see in these PDF examples the Teacher’s edition provides answers to each question, as well as brief descriptions of characters and places. Also there are quotes that highlight “great ideas, virtues, and vices” found in the story. As a teacher you will never be without resources to help your student(s) find the information they are looking for and you will have ready made answers to help you if you’re not sure how to best answer a question on your own.
The Teacher’s edition of the study guides will also come front loaded with explanations about how to teach your students to effectively annotate a book and find important information, how to understand the concept of “great ideas, virtues, and vices”, and it will give you ideas about various kinds of writing assignments you can utilize in your class as you go through the text.
There are many ways to use the questions provided in these study guides. 1) You can have students work on their own, seeking to find and write down the answers in the text (grammar), reasoning and inferring about possible answers and interpretations (logic), and write arguments for their position on matters of debate or individual experience (rhetoric). 2) You can also use the questions selectively to lead a Socratic discussion, inviting the students to create their own questions and participate. 3) Finally, the Rhetoric questions can be used to do Formal Disputations or serve as prompts for debate in the classroom.
I am incredibly grateful to all of you who are subscribing to STGB at any level of membership. You are a great encouragement to me and I hope this site will be an ever growing resource for you. My goal is to support you in the great work you are doing with your students, children, or as you are growing personally studying the Great Books.
Sola Deo Gloria,
Jacob Allee