Junior High School Lightning Literature
Students continue to enjoy fanciful tales such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
and The Hobbit but are also exposed to different and enlightening views of the world
through such books as the autobiographies of Helen Keller and Isaac Bashevis Singer. In both
years, the Student’s Guide provides comprehension questions, literature and composition lessons,
vocabulary, author biographies, and writing assignments. Student workbooks are consumable and
reinforce the literary and composition lessons. Teacher’s Guides provide weekly schedules,
answers to the comprehension questions, teaching suggestions, discussion questions, and answers
to the student workbook pages.
Students begin with an old favorite, Kipling’s “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,” and learn about plot line
from this charming tale of a mongoose. They continue to study plot line and subplots with Mark
Twain’s hilarious The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. They will travel with Alice into
Wonderland and learn how to increase their own creativity. A short story by master American
story-teller Stephen Crane provides insight into dialogue. Helen Keller’s life teaches about
autobiography, while James Herriot’s quirky and touching adventures as a vet in All
Creatures Great and Small instructs students in how to write about other people. Poems by
Edward Lear, William Blake, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Shakespeare,
and others introduce students to rhyme and other sound techniques.
Grade 7 Pack with Stories and Poems
Grade 7 Student Guide
Grade 7 Student Workbook
Grade 7 Teacher Guide
This year starts strong with students reading “A Crazy Tale” by G. K. Chesterton to
learn about author’s purpose. Then it’s off to Treasure Island and a lesson on setting.
Isaac Bashevis Singer recounts his childhood in Poland in A Day of Pleasure, and this
sharing of culture teaches students how to share theirs through their writing. “Wakefield” by
Nathaniel Hawthorne helps teach about details in writing, and that holiday favorite, A
Christmas Carol, shows students how to do what Charles Dickens did best - character
development. Students will take the treacherous journey in The Hobbit and learn about
conflict. “Reflections” teaches about symbolism, while the uproarious story of Gerald Durrell’s
childhood in My Family and Other Animals provides welcome lessons in humor. The year
ends with To Kill a Mockingbird and how to write a literary analysis. Students also
read such poets as Walt Whitman, Christina Rossetti, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Keats, and
Alfred, Lord Tennyson to learn about imagery, figurative language, and meter in poetry.
Grade 8 Pack with Stories and Poems
Grade 8 Pack without Stories and Poems
Grade 8 Student Guide
Grade 8 Student Workbook
Grade 8 Teacher Guide
What our customers are saying
Your [7th Grade] Lightning Lit and Comp. book is excellent and is [my daughter's] favorite
subject. If I ever go back to teaching in the public schools, it would be a must-have. Just
wish I would have known about it as I was teaching our older two children at home!
In August, I purchased the 8th grade version of Lightning Literature for my twin daughters,
one of them dyslexic. I also purchased the American Lit, both semesters, for my 10th grader.
For all three of these children, your materials have been very successful. And the minimal
work required of the parent has made them very attractive to me, as their teacher.
We have really enjoyed the Lightning Literature Guides. . . the 7th grade guide is just what
we had been hoping for. My husband is a college administrator, and I've shown [the high-school
guides] to the English faculty who were duly impressed by what [my high-school son] has been
doing for literature.