Progeny Press has a mission, which has become their tagline ~ Study Guides for Literature: From A Christian Perspective. This perspective matters for us, if it matters to you, you’ll find guides available for a wide variety of Classic and more modern Literature Titles.
The E-Guide we received is an electronic download that allows your student to interact with the pages, through fillable boxes and drop down choices, or you can choose to print it out and put it in a folder. We decided to try a little of both. I read To Kill A mockingbird back in High School, and I wanted Emily to read it as well. I wanted us to read it and discuss it together. The E-Guide (study guide) begins with sections about the author, a brief synopsis of the book, and some explanation about the differing views of the south about equality (or lack thereof) in the decades following the Civil War, euphemistically called 'Reconstruction.'
Once your student begins reading, there are comprehension questions and vocabulary exercises for each section of 3 or 4 chapters. I like this division, because at the High School level, you don’t want the student stopping every single chapter to answer questions - it interrupts the flow of the story. This study guide is truly an interactive one. It allows your student to type their answers in the boxes, or choose from the drop down options. Some of the chapters have multiple choice questions, and those have bubbles to click. Overall, it combines the deeper learning about the novel parents want with the ‘techy’ side most teens favor.
If you, or your teen, prefer a printed copy, this guide prints easily, and well. When printed, the pages have wide margins, allowing plenty of room for note-taking and hole punching.
For the parent/ teacher who does not want to read To Kill A Mockingbird, or who simply doesn’t have the time to read about Scout, Jem, Atticus and their lives, Progeny Press provides an answer key for your use when grading your student’s answers in the study guide. The study guide is 59 pages, the answer key is another nine pages.
From Emily:
The Progeny Press study guide was really good at helping me understand the characters, themes, and even difficult words of the story. The questions are different from chapter to chapter, making you think more on specific themes in each section, which helps in understanding how the story progresses as well as seeing how all the characters change throughout. They also require thought and actual reading of the story to come up with thorough, well thought out answers. For younger teens I recommend an adult or older sibling to read along with them, but even if your student is old enough to read it on their own the study guide will cause them to ask question that can lead to great discussion starters.
A book as intriguing and thought provoking as To Kill A Mockingbird deserves to be read, discussed, and understood. If you don’t already have a copy of the novel, Progeny Press also sells paperback copies of the book.
We found the downloadable E-Guide a good fit for us. It is available immediately after purchase. The study guide for To Kill A Mockingbird is also available on a CD, or as a printed workbook. Progeny Press allows for making multiple copies of the study guide for all of your students in the same home or classroom, a great benefit for Moms of many.
Progeny Press provides study guides for students of all ages. On their website the study guides are divided into four age categories: Lower Elementary, Upper Elementary, Middle School, and High School. Most of the guides have sample pages available to view. The Crew has been reviewing a wide sampling of the available study guides. Click on the link below to see all the reviews.
Happy Reading!
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