Customer Reviews

Literature Guide: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Grades 4-8)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I am a homeschooling mother who bought this, to use with the books while reading with my girls. I develop my own cirriculum for school, and I was so excited that someone had made these study guides, so I wouldnt have to. However,this book was extremely disappointing to say the least. It is only 13 pages long with only two pages dedicated to any 5-6 chapters. The 15 questions, which were deidcated to the 5-6 chapters were silly, and had no depth to them. There were no other usable parts to the book. There are only 3 reproducibles, but they are not worth the cost of the paper to print them. Being an avid Harry Potter lover, as are my girls, this was extremely disappointing. Don't waste your money on it. You would do better to make up your own questions about each chapter and find some free stuff online.

Love the short questions about each chapter. Thought the book was a little short and I thought it would have more things to do, but I'll be using everything in it when I teach the book this year. I'm teaching 10-11 year olds.

I am not happy with this literature guide at all. My daughter who I read all 7 books to wanted to read them again herself. I decided to buy this guide and incorporate it into my curriculum for 4th grade. As a home school parent after receiving this guide I decided it was crap and turned to other literature guides (teacher created resources)and let Harry Potter be her free time reading books rather that use them in teaching. The guides (I bought all of them...big mistake) are not worth the money and consist of all of 13 pages, 2 of which I could copy off...but not worth it and the other pages ask very simple questions with no depth. My daughter was disappointed as well as she was so excited to get the guides. Never again will I get a guide from Scholastic ...which is disappointing in and of itself.

I'm a 20 year old college student in the United States and I read HP on a long car ride over Thankgiving. Here's my observations, for what they're worth:

Harry Potter is not popular solely because of the hype machine associated with it. Contrary to what certain elitists will tell you, the average person is not some mindless puppet to be jerked around by big corporations and advertisers. If Harry Potter was a bad book with a good publicity campaign, it would do what bad movies with good publicity campaigns do: make a ton of money initially until bad word of mouth killed it. Harry Potter is a good book--not a great book--but better than some of the "serious" literature currently popular in academic circles, destined to gether dust in the Ivory Tower's attic in ten years.

HP worked for me not so much as an adventure story but as a coming-of-age tale in what is to me (a decidedly non-American educated in public [state run] schools) a strange environment. I thought the book was at its best when it described the everyday experiences of Harry & Co., and bogged down a bit when it came time for the "adventure". I recognize that this is a children's novel, and so the adventure part of the plot must necessarily be kept simple, but an adult who reads regularly will probably find themselves wishing Rowling would have spent a little more time developing the world she's constructed before sending our hero do battle with Voldemort.

Harry Potter is not Hamlet, it's not A Tale of Two Cities, and it's not Ulysses (thank God!). It's not even Alice in Wonderland. That's fine. It's not trying to be, and nobody ever claimed it is. What it is is a neat little coming-of-age tale with a heaping dose of adventure, that just happens to be prying kids away from the TV, the Playstation, and the Internet long enough to read a book, a task our teachers, parents, librarians, academics, and most especially our politicians have thus far failed at miserably.

This teaching guide is very poor. It has very little reproducible material, is not suitable for higher middle level (grades 7 and 8) and gives a cursory sweep through the story adding little that I hadn't thought of myself. I hope others come out with better guides, since this one is doing me absolutely no good. Even the project ideas were dull and unimaginative. Librarians and teachers: Don't waste your money on this one!

I use Amazon for its fast and efficient service so I was extremely diappointed to read that my ordered book was going to be delivered. You can imagine my anger then that aftere the stated time I still HAVE NOt recieved my book. I need it urgently for class work and out of the three books I ordered this was thew one I needed most!

This book, though many people think so, was not written for children only. I was actually written for everybody, because there are something to find in yourself, even if you are an adult. You may have read the book and think that it is just a book for children. But you are wrong. The book is loaded with interesting views on real life. For example, in the best school for normal people, to prepare the kids for future life, kids are required to carry a stick to hit each other when the teachers are not looking. So when you read it again, considering this approach, I believe you will like it more.

This book rules. It's a cool fantasy adventure. Harry flys a broom. He uses magic. The is really cool.