Classics in the Classroom: Using Great Literature to Teach Writing

this is a great book for teachers or parents - to give ideas on how to present the classics and improve your writing skills along the way.

_Classics in the Classroom_ was given to me by a colleague after a conversation on how to make Homer accessable to my inner-city students. The book provides many solid ideas and honest discussions about successes other teachers have had exposing their classes to formal literature from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Kafka. There are no canned lesson plans here, a strength, I believe, as it allows the teacher to be creative and flexible. Each chapter is an essay by a teacher disucssing how they exposed their students to the stories or poems with examples of student's work. This appealed to me. The grades of students using the classics varied from elementary (4th and 5th grade) to seniors in high school) with a remarkable results. Certainly not every teaching method or idea will work for everyone - but the variety, approaches and voices of the teachers have something for everyone. In some cases reknowned scholars (such as Richard Lattimore) provided assistance in the classroom in dissecting and disucssing works, not always an option for teachers. (Hence the 4 stars). However there is plenty of material here for instructional support and to get students to be not only familar with but embrace and understand great writing. Recommended.