The High School English/Language Arts credit is complex. By request, we have compiled everything in one place. You have found your all-in-one-place curriculum right here with A Full Year of English/Language Arts: Cinema Studies for Literature Learning and Composition (a good fit for 9th or 10th grade).

As always each guide in the ELA bundle works from 7Sisters’ commitment to no-busywork and ways to level up to Honors for those who need it!

Credit Information:  

This is a one-credit high school level ELA course. Our recommendation is that this course be recorded on the transcript as an Average (Level 2) course. Adapting this bundle for use at a College Prep (Level 3) or Honors (Level 4) level will require significant supplementation by the teacher.

Your PDF curriculum is ready for immediate download after purchase. 

This full-year, no busy-work English/Language Arts curriculum for your high school student provides:

• Watching movies and engaging in literary analysis,
• Reading with literary analysis,
• Writing instruction (for 4 types of papers),
• Vocabulary,
• Grammar,
• Public speaking
• A suggested schedule and
• Tools to help with grading!

The Cinema Studies, Literature & Writing guides included in this downloadable text:

•  will inform and inspire your homeschooling high schoolers without boring or burdening them with busywork.

Cinema Studies guides contain brief background information

• important literature terms and themes,
• vocabulary and analysis questions,
• using the storytelling in MOVIES for a gentle introduction into literary analysis.

Similarly, Literature guides contain 

• brief background information, 
• important literature terms and themes, 
• vocabulary and analysis questions - NEVER enough to kill your teens’ enjoyment of the book.

What's more, Writing guides contain concise daily lessons that teach four different types of writing skills important for high school students to master (creative writing/short story, essays, research papers, and poetry). The lessons contain brief information, instruction, and assignments. And by the way, rubrics for grading are included.

Here's what each 7Sisters High School English/Language Arts one-year bundle includes:

• Study Guides for literary analysis of books (and movies!)
• Research Paper Writing Guide
• Essay Writing Guide
• Poetry Writing Guide
• Short-Story Writing Guide
• Public Speaking Experiences
• Grammar Pocket Guide
• Grammar Resources
• Vocabulary Resources
• Clear and friendly How-To-Use section for parents
• Suggested schedule for a 9-month academic year
• Suggestions for varied daily rhythms of learning
• Rubrics and suggestions for grading

One important thing to mention:

If you use this bundle in 9th or 10th grade, your student will have completed a few of the cinema studies guides that will be included in the other one-year ELA bundles (1/ea. for Great Christian Writers ELA, American Lit ELA, and British Lit ELA; two for World and Ancient Lit ELA).

For example, if you use this bundle for 9th grade, and then choose the American Lit. ELA bundle for 10th grade, your tenth grader will already have completed 12 Angry Men.

• Is it okay to do those movies a second time, to analyze them with another year of maturity? ABSOLUTELY!
• Can you purchase a movie guide that was NOT a part of the bundle you used in 9th grade and use it instead? SURE! We have lots of other Cinema Studies guides that were not a part of the Cinema Studies for Literature Learning bundle. Choose a title that looks like it could fit well into your year.
• Is it okay to choose to do only book-based lit. analysis, and leave out movies for the year? YOU BET!

As always, we want you to make our curriculum fit your homeschooling needs. We just wanted to be sure you knew about this potential duplication before you made a decision about this bundle.

And customizing your 7Sisters ELA bundles is easy when you use this simple rule of thumb: in a very general sense, when substituting titles to fit your homeschool:

1 book replaces 2 movies

OR

2 movies replace 1 book

After downloading and saving your curriculum files to your device, begin exploring by opening the file called "INTRO and How-to-Use."

Which Cinema Studies for Literature Learning guides are a part of this year’s bundle?

(You will need to buy or rent these movies; many are available on streaming services like Amazon Prime, Hulu, or Netflix, or borrow them from a friend or from the library.)

1. 12 Angry Men (starring Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb)
2. A Christmas Carol (starring George C. Scott)
3. Field of Dreams (starring Kevin Costner and Amy Madigan)
4. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (starring Katherine Hepburn & Spencer Tracy)
5. High Noon (starring Gary Cooper and Jack Elam)
6. Casablanca (starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman)
7. Moby Dick (starring Gregory Peck)
8. The Importance of Being Earnest (starring Colin Firth and Rupert Everett)
9. The Miracle Worker (starring Ann Bancroft and Patty Duke)
10.  The Wizard of Oz (starring Judy Garland)
11.  What’s Up Doc (starring Barbara Streisand and Ryan O’Neal)
12.  Places in the Heart (starring Sally Field and Danny Glover)
13.  Rudy (starring Sean Astin and Jon Favreau)
14.  The Three Musketeers (starring Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, & Tim Curry)
15.  The Truman Show (starring Jim Carrey)

Which books will my student read and analyze with THIS one-year curriculum bundle?

(You will need to buy copies of these books for your teen to read, or borrow a copy from the library. You might want to purchase from Amazon; if so, we are Amazon associates, and will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you if you visit Amazon using our link in our sidebar to the right.)

1. Right Ho, Jeeves by P. J. Wodehouse
2. Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
3. Literary Analysis of Speeches (speeches are included in the guide - no additional purchase necessary)
4. Literary Analysis of Essays (links to read the essays online for free are included in the guide - no additional purchase necessary)

Which writing guides are included?

1. An Introductory Guide to High School Essay Writing
2. Introductory Guide to High School Short Story Writing - Family Narrative
3. An Introductory Guide to High School Poetry Writing
4. Research Writing Readiness
5. APA Style Research Paper: An Introductory Guide
6. Writing Your Personal Mission Statement

You can download a free suggested syllabus for 1 - A Full Year of High School English/Language Arts: Cinema Studies for Literature Learning and Composition (a good fit for 9th or 10th grade).

What else will I find in this bundle?

1. Grammar Granules - Essential Elements of English
2. Recommended Resources for Supplemental Grammar and Vocabulary Learning
3. Kid Lit Public Speaking Experience
4. Spoken Word Poetry Public Speaking Experience
5. Parents Manual - Intro and How to Use This Bundle (including direction for grading and determining a final ELA grade for the transcript)
6. Chart for Determining the Level of Rigor for our year of High School ELA
7. Recommendations for HOW MANY BOOKS TOTAL your student should read this year

What people are saying:

This is our first year using your curriculum, 9th grade LA, and we are loving it! Such a gentle approach, yet to the point and thorough. - M.

We have used it for our 9th grader this year. She has liked it and I love it! I like that it is mostly student-led. My daughter has gotten a well-rounded writing and literature class with very good progress in her skills. We have already bought the 10th grade curriculum. - S.

We started the 9th grade bundle this year and my daughter has asked to use the curriculum for next year too. It is very gentle in the instruction, not overwhelming. We like the mix of books & movies for the literature piece. I like week by week syllabus of what to do/complete. We use daily grams from easy grammar for the addlt grammar they recommend. The only minor dislike is the pace of going through some of the books, my daughter is dyslexic so it takes her longer to read assigned books than an average student, but we adjust the schedule as needed to accommodate that. - M.

Why are we assigning MOVIES for literary analysis??

Because good storytelling is good storytelling, and because literary analysis is more about practicing THINKING SKILLS than it is about practicing the physical reading of printed words on a page, literary analysis can be practiced using the medium of movies as well as books. 

Your teen will begin by reading the introductory material at the beginning of the guide and then watch the movie once with its accompanying guide close at hand. 

As with the books they read and analyze this year, some questions should be answered as they watch the movie (just press pause and jot down a few notes); others can wait until the final credits roll. Each guide makes the process clear. Then, a few days, or a week or two later, the student watches the movie a second time, likely now noticing far more about the elements making up the story and the excellence with which they fit together (we’ve chosen movies that do a really nice job of demonstrating particular literary devices). Finally, after a second viewing, they’re ready to write in response to the movie, using prompts at the end of the guide to get them started.

Most teens love a good movie

...and struggling readers, in particular, really thrive when given the chance to separate the thinking process of literary analysis from the visual processing challenge of reading printed words. Consequently, a nice blend of books to read and movies to watch draws high school students in to really engage in the learning available to them as they move beyond comprehension and into analysis.

Teens will do some analysis with books, too!

For the book literature study guides, your teen will begin by reading the introductory material at the beginning of the guide and then read the book with its accompanying guide close at hand. Some questions should be answered while reading the book; others will call for a bit of reflection after finishing the book. Each guide makes the process clear. 

“Sum It Up” and “Write in Response” sections in most of the guides help students pull together what they have learned and articulate it using their own words, cementing the new knowledge or understanding in their brains as they do.

On the whole, these guides are designed to help students mature as readers and thinkers, to do more than simply comprehend the meaning on a surface level and begin to think about what they read more deeply.

Immature readers ask: 

What happened? Who did it? When did it happen? Where?

Mature readers ask: 

What is likely to happen as a result of that event? Why did that person do that? How did the passage of time affect the outcome? Might it have been different if it had happened someplace else?

This is the goal of literary analysis, to help teens practice thinking in deeper ways about the words they read on a page.

There are six bundles total in this series of theme-based High School ELA titles from 7Sisters

1. 1 - A Full Year of High School ELA:  Great Christian Writers (recommended for 9th or 10th grade)
2. 1 - A Full Year of High School ELA:  Cinema Studies for Literature Learning and Composition (recommended for 9th or 10th grade)
3. 2 - A Full Year of High School ELA:  American Literature (recommended for 10th or 11th grade)
4. 3 - A Full Year of High School ELA:  British Literature (recommended for 11th or 12th grade)
5. 3 - A Full Year of High School ELA:  C.S. Lewis (recommended for 11th or 12th grade) (Coming late 2024)
6. 4 - A Full Year of High School ELA:  World & Ancient Literature (recommended for 11th or 12th grade)

10-Day no-questions-asked money-back guarantee on all 7Sisters curriculum!