Divine Comedy Quizzes and Tests

Memoria Press does it again; helping you teach a very difficult text in manageable bits. Why read Dante? This book came out of the late middle Ages and impacted literature from the Renaissance to the 20th century. Its lessons on depravity and consequences are an extremely valuable lesson about the human condition for teenagers to learn. One man and his struggle for hope in a world of political, social and spiritual upheaval (sound timely?) is the center of Dante Alighieri's novel as translated by John Ciardi.

The Teacher Guide has lessons for you to present each "canto" or section. You will have all of the answers to the student guide, plus step by step assignments that are not in the kids' book, like memorization, vocabulary, discussion starters and some background overview material to make you look good! The material itself is complicated, but the Teacher Guide is easy to follow. There is a section of Drill Questions and then the Test Answer Key. There are no blank student pages in this book.

The Student Guide is meant to be written in by the student as you read the Comedy. It is logically divided by the cantos (chapters) and there are vocabulary words that refer to a specific line in the canto. There are comprehension questions with plenty of space for answers. In the back is a place to write answers to the Drill Questions (50 short answer questions) from the Teacher Guide.

The Quizzes & Tests are numbered and each covers one or two cantos. Questions are matching, multiple choice, short answer and some which require about a paragraph answer. There are quizzes, a mid-term (matching, short answer, and a mini-essay which has two pages of lines), and a final exam in the same format as the mid-term for each of the three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. There are no answers in this book.

The package includes student and teacher guide, and Divine Comedy, #53265.

I think it would be hard to teach such a classic and heavy text with only one of these books. You really need all three to effectively make it work. Everything is laid out for you to follow. ~ Sara