Course Details:

Students must have their own copies of the novels to read outside of class. Each book should be read in time for the live class. If students get behind or forget to read, they should still attend!

Theology Mixed with Classics:

  • Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
  • If God Is Good by Randy Alcorn
  • Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
  • The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel
  • David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
  • Heaven by Randy Alcorn
  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
  • Biblical Doctrine by John MacArthur
  • The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • Found: God’s Will by John MacArthur
  • Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  • The Holiness of God by R. C. Sproul
  • Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
  • Respectable Sins by Jerry Bridges
  • Overcoming Anxiety by David Powlison
  • The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
  • Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

The Notables Book Club: High School Literature from a Biblical Worldview

$19.00 every 2 weeks

High school readers discover the beauty and richness of the classics and other notable works, seeking to answer life’s greatest essential questions from a Christian perspective.

Section Options / Enroll:

This product is currently out of stock and unavailable.

Description

Too get a big picture overview of the book club choices for The Notables, click HERE.

An essential part of high school English is the study of classics and other notable novels. These works of literature may be notable for the longevity of their influence, exceptional quality, contribution to culture, Christian themes, or typical of an era, people, or movement. In this ongoing class, we work our way through notable novels, and learners seek to answer essential questions from a Christian perspective as they read and participate in discussions.

How Does This Work?

We come together for discussion every other week. This is a bi-weekly subscription class. If we have to skip a week (e.g. Thanksgiving), you are not charged. Make sure to check the reading schedule here and in the classroom.

Why Classic or Notable Novels?

The idea is that teens read broadly, deeply, and regularly while developing a Christian perspective about deeper life questions that the Bible and literature bring to bear. The live meetings provide accountability for students to read as well as the opportunity to intelligently discuss literature and how what they read has modern-day applications in understanding themselves or the world in which they live. We don’t expect students to “learn a lesson” from each novel; rather, we want them to think about the issues presented by the author and determine whether or not they agree or disagree with the author’s worldview. They determine what precepts from God’s word help them understand the novel. Students will analyze literary devices, figurative language, story elements, characterization, theme, the author’s craft, etc., and attempt to answer the essential questions according to what the Bible says about the issue.

Homework / Reading Expectations:

Students will do all of the reading outside of class. They will complete comprehension quizzes and other assignments to help keep them accountable for the reading.

Grades:

The teacher will provide students with an English / Literature grade, based on participation in the discussion.

 

 

Lesson Schedule

Theology Mixed with Classics:

  • The week of Sept 13, 2026: Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
  • The week of Sept 20, 2026: NO CLASS
  • The week of Sept 27, 2026: If God Is Good by Randy Alcorn
  • The week of Oct 4, 2026: NO CLASS
  • The week of Oct 11, 2026: Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
  • The week of Oct 18, 2026: NO CLASS
  • The week of Oct 25, 2026: The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel
  • The week of Nov 1, 2026: NO CLASS
  • The week of Nov 8, 2026: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
  • The week of Nov 15, 2026: NO CLASS
  • The week of Nov 22, 2026: THANKSGIVING BREAK
  • The week of Nov 29, 2026: Heaven by Randy Alcorn
  • The week of Dec 6, 2026: NO CLASS
  • The week of Dec 13, 2026: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
  • The week of Dec 20, 2026: CHRISTMAS BREAK
  • The week of Dec 27, 2026: CHRISTMAS BREAK
  • The week of Jan 3, 2027: Biblical Doctrine by John MacArthur
  • The week of Jan 10, 2027: NO CLASS
  • The week of Jan 17, 2027: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • The week of Jan 24, 2027: NO CLASS
  • The week of Jan 31, 2027: Found: God’s Will by John MacArthur
  • The week of Feb 7, 2027: NO CLASS
  • The week of Feb 14, 2027: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  • The week of Feb 21, 2027: NO CLASS
  • The week of Feb 28, 2027: The Holiness of God by R. C. Sproul
  • The week of Mar 7, 2027: NO CLASS
  • The week of Mar 14, 2027: SPRING BREAK
  • The week of Mar 21, 2027: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
  • The week of Mar 28, 2027: NO CLASS
  • The week of Apr 4, 2027: Respectable Sins by Jerry Bridges
  • The week of Apr 11, 2027: NO CLASS
  • The week of Apr 18, 2027: Overcoming Anxiety by David Powlison
  • The week of Apr 25, 2027: NO CLASS
  • The week of May 2, 2027: The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
  • The week of May 9, 2027: NO CLASS
  • The week of May 16, 2027: Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

Class Introduction Video

Coming soon…

Taught From a Christian Perspective

Our mission is to equip learners’ minds and shepherd their hearts. We want them to have saving faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and then develop a biblical worldview. This means they view their world, themselves, and God in a way that aligns with what the Bible teaches. This brings great peace and understanding to the believer because we serve a good, sovereign God. This course is taught with these goals in mind. In class, we may pray, read scripture, and discuss how to view the content from a Christian perspective.

We have adopted The Master’s Seminary Doctrinal Statement.

ENGLISH:

The most essential reason people must become competent readers is to read the word of God. This is how God communicates with His people, and literacy is critical for developing a biblical worldview. Competent readers can engage in the Word of God and other texts with much thinking and reflection. Readers should be able to decode, understand, remember, analyze, synthesize, evaluate, make inferences, make connections, and apply learning from reading to other subject areas and the rest of life. Readers grow in knowledge and wisdom and can let the Word of God renew their minds and transform their hearts, becoming thinkers who can engage the world for Christ.

When writing, we are turning ideas into words that communicate. Written communication should be functional, truthful, orderly, coherent, creative, and beautiful, all traits present in God’s written words in the Bible, which we want to emulate.

Communication skills are essential for believers. The communication skills taught in English will help learners communicate with others and to be confident public speakers. These skills are essential when sharing the gospel message. Our voices are tools that help us show Jesus to others as we witness to the world through what we say–and what we don’t say (see Colossians 4:6, James 1:19-20, Ephesians 4:29, and Proverbs 10:19). We serve a creative God who has given us all kinds of tools to help communicate His message.

LITERATURE:

Stories often serve as powerful vehicles for truth. For example, the prophet Nathan used a parable to reveal King David’s sin in 1 Samuel 12:1-4. Similarly, Jesus frequently used parables to teach profound spiritual lessons. Literature clearly offers timeless insights that reflect the complexities of life, guiding us toward His wisdom and understanding.

All truth is God’s truth. Even unbelievers use universal themes in their writing that clearly point to deeper truths about life and the human condition. For example, authors often use theme concepts related to justice, love, or integrity. These concepts reveal a glimpse of God’s truth– whether the author acknowledges it or not–because all truth originates from God (John 17:17).

Throughout English and literature courses, learners will read about individuals who made flawed decisions. As Romans 3:23 reminds us, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Literature provides a window into humanity’s fallen nature, allowing students to learn from the mistakes and successes of characters. By engaging with literature, students will gain timeless insights into the complexities of life, as reflected in Proverbs 2:6: “For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.”

✨ 🍋 ✨ Why Lemons-Aid? ✨ 🍋 ✨


A BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW: The Bible, infallible and inerrant, is the very written word of God, who has revealed Himself to man. The Bible is like the light we cast on all content areas in order to understand it, whether that be literature, physical science, history, or geometry. Students learn all content through a Biblical lens. Theology is important for understanding all subject areas. We carefully curate courses that capture learners’ imagination while pointing them to God through sound doctrine. THIS is most important!


RICH CONTENT / CORE KNOWLEDGE: While other schools and systems try to align their content to broad standards that are vague and open to wild interpretations, we focus our content on what students should know and be able to do so they see the world biblically and head into their adult lives filled with knowledge, wisdom, and mastery of skill such as computing and writing. For over a century, progressive education reform has been “anti-content,” which means they de-emphasize rich content and focus instructional time on things such as self-esteem and “skills” they hope will benefit a learner in the future. This is why American kids do so poorly in testing compared to nations with content-rich curricula. We want our learners to increase in knowledge and grow in wisdom, which our content-area experts foster while teaching.


EXPLICIT TEACHING: We understand the skills and concepts students need to learn and know how to teach them. Lemons-Aid’s materials are top-notch, organized, and clear for students and parents to understand. We are especially skilled at breaking down a complicated process into understandable parts. Further, explicit instruction is “a structured, systematic, and effective methodology for teaching academic skills. It is called explicit because it is an unambiguous and direct approach to teaching that includes both instructional design and delivery procedures. Explicit instruction is characterized by a series of supports or scaffolds, whereby students are guided through the learning process with clear statements about the purpose and rationale for learning the new skill, clear explanations and demonstrations of the instructional target, and supported practice with feedback until independent mastery has been achieved.”

  • Explicit Instruction: Effective and Efficient Teaching by Anita L. Archer and Charles A. Hughes.

Anita Archer trained Mrs. Lemons in workshops, and it changed her teaching. Read a little more about the research behind explicit teaching here and here.


STUDENT ACCOUNTABILITY = ACHIEVEMENT: Students master skills with us and make gains. We have a high degree of accountability. Since we make promises here and parents are paying good money, we understand you trust us to work! Students have to work too, and let’s be honest: they’re kids and don’t always want to. We push it. We teach them how to stay engaged, we cold-call on kids, we tell them to use the chatbox, and we want them to use emojis! If they are resistant, we contact the student through the teacher tab first. If that doesn’t work, we call in the big guns–Mom and Dad. We want kids to learn. We don’t want them to pass through our classes without gaining skills and doing great learning.


DO HARD THINGS. Boost your confidence, master new skills, learn new concepts. This takes a commitment to do hard things. Like the standards we have for our teachers, we also expect our learners to do hard things, whether that means they stand firm in their convictions, learn geometry, write an essay, or give an oral presentation. You can do hard things!


HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS: To balance our high expectations for their learning and behavior, we build relationships with them. We want them to know we care about and know them. We’ll ask about their play last weekend or the new trick they’re trying to master on the skateboard. We also want students to get to know each other and encourage community engagement.


DEPENDABLE: Multiple teachers are teaching this class, and we have an entire year of lessons planned and scheduled. Since we are a mission-driven organization, we protect our brand and the relationships with our families. We are accountable to our learners. When things come up for teachers, we work to get substitutes and do everything we can before canceling a class. We do not like canceling or changing, and we often teach classes at a loss to give others a chance to join. We have limits, of course, but we are not flippant or irresponsible about canceling! When things come up for students, since we have multiple sections, they can transfer from section to section. All our teachers teach the same content the same week, giving families even more flexibility!


TEACHER FEEDBACK: The back-and-forth work between a student and teacher significantly benefits a student if done well. We follow best practices in designing class time, assignments, and routines. According to Pennington Publishing, effective writing feedback (or grading) is:

  • Specific, not general
  • Immediate, not postponed
  • Routine with a revision / feedback cycle
  • Explanatory
  • The right amount
  • Targeted to the most critical issues
  • Varied (written, audio, and video comments)
  • Holding students accountable

 

STUDENT MASTERY: Each class includes explicit, direct instruction with teacher modeling. Students are guided toward mastery of skills and understandings to grasp the concepts and become independent. Students are held to a high standard of academic work, including often ignored skills like the use of grammar and neatness in math.


STUDY THE BEAUTIFUL

We are surrounded by the mediocre, which is not good! We see this in expectations at some schools, the poor customer service at a store, and even architecture like in a gray, uninspiring complex of high-occupancy housing.

In contrast, we are surrounded by the beautiful, which is good! We see the beautiful in classic literature, music, and beautiful architecture like pictured here.

The mediocre demoralizes learners while the beautiful inspires.

At Lemons-Aid Learning, we study the beautiful: classic literature, artful sentence construction, art, poetry, maths, God’s hand in all of history, and God’s very creation. His creation glorifies Him, and in our study of all content areas, we learn about who God is.

We do not compromise. This means we don’t choose a graphic novel of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We read the original play. We know how to make the complexity and beauty of classic study approachable and understandable to a modern audience. It’s more difficult, but worth the effort!


CUSTOMER SERVICE

We serve the Lord and we work hard for families. We work to give quick responses to questions, authentic and careful feedback, and to solve any conflict. As home educators ourselves, familiar with the joys and struggles of teaching our own children, we can relate! We are supporting families, equipping learners, and serving Christ. We are 100% devoted to Him and to you!

To read more about our teaching and learning methods, read our blogs, written by our teachers and staff.

The Lemons-Aid Team

Lemons-Aid teachers have a few things in common.
❤️ They love their students and value each of their unique strengths and personalities that make our classes special. Our classes can be described as fun, personal, academic, challenging, and supportive.
🤩 We work to keep learners engaged, so there is always a degree of student accountability for their attention and focus, whether that be through asking them direct questions or by using the chatbox.
💭 We know all kids can learn, but sometimes things are hard! To support students, we teach them how to develop effective thinking and learning habits that will bring them success in class and in life.
🌟 Building relationships with students so they know we care about them helps us balance the high expectations we have for them regarding their effort, work quality, and behavior. Our students are encouraged, cared for, and they achieve!

𝙆𝘼𝙍𝙀𝙉 𝙇𝙀𝙈𝙊𝙉𝙎: English Language Arts
#High-Energy #Skilled #Experienced #Relational #Fun #Faithful
Karen is the Founder of Lemons-Aid. She has a bachelor’s degree in English, a minor in Education, and a master’s degree in Education Administration from Liberty University. With a teaching certificate and a principal’s license in both Washington and Colorado, she has many years of experience teaching English Language Arts and History / Social Studies at the middle school and high school levels. Additionally, she is TESOL and TEFL certified and enjoys teaching English Language Learners from all over the world. She has worked in private and public schools at every level and is currently an affiliate faculty member at Colorado Christian University, supervising teacher candidates in their undergraduate and graduate teacher education programs. She is a teacher of teachers. A homeschool mom herself, she admits that teaching other people’s kids is easier than teaching her own teenage boys! She lives in the Denver, Colorado area where she cheers on the Broncos, Avs, and the Rockies, but her favorite athletes are her own kids who play hockey and baseball!

𝑱𝑬𝑵𝑵 𝑹𝑰𝑨𝑳𝑬: English Language Arts
#Experienced #Knowledgeable #Empowering #Patient #Rises Above the Ordinary.
As a certified English teacher, Jenn has taught in some capacity over the course of the past twenty-five years. She has taught middle school and high school English classes in both private and public school settings, tutored international ESL students online, developed and taught literature and public speaking classes for a local homeschool co-op, and homeschooled her own two children. Jenn has a bachelor’s degree in English Education. A strong believer in lifelong learning, Jenn has also taken several graduate-level courses related to teaching. Jenn enjoys spending time with her husband, Mark, and their two teenagers. She enjoys taking day trips close to where they live in upstate New York. In her spare time, Jenn enjoys singing and performing in plays. Additionally, she enjoys curling up on the sofa to read a good book. More than likely, one of her four cats will be curled up at her feet.

 

Christian Teachers on Outschool

We want to serve you on Lemons-Aid! For first-time learners on Lemons-Aid, you can use the coupon code Newbie20 to get $20 off your first class.

However, if the schedule doesn’t work for you, we will happily teach you on Outschool, but we can’t talk about Jesus.

Use this referral code and get $20 off your first class on Outschool: LEMONSA2020

Christian Outschool Classes

Request a New Section

Want to see this class offered at another time? Send a request, and we’ll see what we can do!

ENGLISH:

The most essential reason people must become competent readers is to read the word of God. This is how God communicates with His people, and literacy is critical for developing a biblical worldview. Competent readers can engage in the Word of God and other texts with much thinking and reflection. Readers should be able to decode, understand, remember, analyze, synthesize, evaluate, make inferences, make connections, and apply learning from reading to other subject areas and the rest of life. Readers grow in knowledge and wisdom and can let the Word of God renew their minds and transform their hearts, becoming thinkers who can engage the world for Christ.

When writing, we are turning ideas into words that communicate. Written communication should be functional, truthful, orderly, coherent, creative, and beautiful, all traits present in God’s written words in the Bible, which we want to emulate.

Communication skills are essential for believers. The communication skills taught in English will help learners communicate with others and to be confident public speakers. These skills are essential when sharing the gospel message. Our voices are tools that help us show Jesus to others as we witness to the world through what we say–and what we don’t say (see Colossians 4:6, James 1:19-20, Ephesians 4:29, and Proverbs 10:19). We serve a creative God who has given us all kinds of tools to help communicate His message.

LITERATURE:

Stories often serve as powerful vehicles for truth. For example, the prophet Nathan used a parable to reveal King David’s sin in 1 Samuel 12:1-4. Similarly, Jesus frequently used parables to teach profound spiritual lessons. Literature clearly offers timeless insights that reflect the complexities of life, guiding us toward His wisdom and understanding.

All truth is God’s truth. Even unbelievers use universal themes in their writing that clearly point to deeper truths about life and the human condition. For example, authors often use theme concepts related to justice, love, or integrity. These concepts reveal a glimpse of God’s truth– whether the author acknowledges it or not–because all truth originates from God (John 17:17).

Throughout English and literature courses, learners will read about individuals who made flawed decisions. As Romans 3:23 reminds us, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Literature provides a window into humanity’s fallen nature, allowing students to learn from the mistakes and successes of characters. By engaging with literature, students will gain timeless insights into the complexities of life, as reflected in Proverbs 2:6: “For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.”