Delight & SavorBeauty · Meaning · Connection
Taught Live

Prefer It Taught Live?

The same six weeks, read and written the same beautiful way — but with me beside your student: reading every piece of their work, and gathering our small group together over Zoom.

Self-Paced

On Your Own Schedule

$49 · family license

or $147 · co-op license — up to 12 students

The full course, carried by the handouts. You set the pace and respond to the writing — this summer, or any summer after.

  • All six weekly handouts & the complete course in the app
  • Find · Follow · Frame, the Character Thread & the Capstone
  • Yours to teach for as many years as you like
Get the Self-Paced Course
Live Summer Cohort · 2026

Taught & Graded by Kim

$110 · per student

Everything in the self-paced course, plus a real teacher reading your student's work — and a small group to think alongside.

  • Everything in the self-paced course, start to finish
  • Graded by Kim — personal feedback on your student's weekly work
  • Two live Zoom gatherings — a welcome conversation to open, a closing seminar to end
  • A small cohort reading together in our shared Google Classroom
Enroll in the Cohort

Six weeks · June 24 – August 5 · live Zoom days chosen by group poll once enrolled · spots limited

Delight & SavorBeauty · Meaning · Connection
Flat-lay — the guide, a journal, an open notebookFlat-lay — the guide, a journal, an open notebook
In the Margin app — course home
In the App
A weekly lesson in the app
A Lesson
Week One handoutA Weekly Handout
A later week's handoutA Later Week
A Find · Follow · Frame pageFind · Follow · Frame
A commonplace pageA Commonplace Page

← Scroll to peek inside · tap any page to read it up close →

Grades 8–11 · Advanced 7th Welcome

Summer Foundations

A first taste of literary study, through Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men

Some books teach a child to read. The right ones teach a child to feel — and then to say what they felt, clearly and well. In six unhurried weeks, Of Mice and Men becomes a student's first real literary study: noticing, narrating, wondering, and at last writing — the slow, beautiful way.

Designed by a former AP English teacher with an M.A. in Literary Studies.

Length
6 Weeks
Pace
1 / week
Format
Self-paced
Method
Narration-first
$49less than one tutoring session

Family License: one household, all your children, for as many years as you like.

Add to Cart
↓ Download the free Scope & Sequence Prefer it taught live? Join the summer cohort — $110 → Instant download · files delivered the moment you purchase

Included with every purchaseYour whole course lives in the In the Margin app — readings, enrichment, the Writing Table, and printable handouts you keep forever. Your first full year of app access is included in today's price — already paid for. After that, keep access active for just $15/year (your handouts are always yours, renewal or not).

Narration → Real Writing

Students speak their thinking before they ever write it — so the writing arrives easily, and honestly.

Oral Before Written

Confidence first. Every week begins with the student telling the story back — speaking their thinking before they write it.

Find · Follow · Frame

One simple method your student will carry into every book they ever read.

The Method

Find · Follow · Frame

The same three moves, every week — until they become the way a reader thinks.

Find it

Notice

Find the moment that stops you — a line, an image, a choice a character makes. Begin by paying attention.

Follow it

Trace

Follow that thread through the book — where it returns, how it deepens, what it costs the people in the story.

Frame it

Say it well

Put words around what you found — first out loud in narration, then in a clear, written piece of your own.

Course at a Glance

The Six Weeks

One theme each week, read slowly and talked through before anything is written. Alongside it runs the Capstone — one small step a week that builds, by Week Six, into a project entirely the student's own.

Week 1
The World of the Novel
The ranch, the river, the men who pass through. Meeting the place and the people who fill it.
CapstoneChoose Your Thread — pick one character to follow all summer, and choose a Relation Study to carry alongside.
Week 2
Mercy and Old Age
Candy and his dog — what a hard world does with the weak and the aging, and what mercy costs.
CapstoneA Letter from Your Character — step inside their voice and write the letter they would write.
Week 3
Outcasts and Belonging
Crooks, Curley's wife, and the ache to be seen. Who the ranch sets apart, and why.
CapstoneFreedom & the Choices We Make — where does your character have a real choice, and what does it cost them?
Week 4
Endings
Dreams, and how they break; the quiet weight of what everyone can feel coming.
CapstoneRewrite the Scene — re-see one moment from the final chapter through your character's eyes.
Week 5
Second Sight
Re-read the opening and the closing side by side — the book ends where it began, and now means something new. Then re-read your character's chapters.
CapstoneA Haiku for Your Character — distill the summer into seventeen syllables; Camus and Sartre join us.
Week 6
What We Carry
What the story leaves in your hands — friendship, loss, and the cost of mercy.
CapstoneArrival — bring the Relation Study home and gather the summer's work into one capstone.
Download the full Scope & Sequence (free PDF)
Quietly Rigorous

The Standards, Mapped to the Method

Gentle on the surface, genuinely rigorous underneath. Each move of Find · Follow · Frame meets the Texas TEKS for English I–IV and the national Common Core — six of the seven ELA strands in six weeks.

Find it · Notice & gather evidence
  • TEKS · Comprehension — make inferences and draw conclusions from text evidence
  • TEKS · Response — support an interpretation with specific evidence
  • CCSS RL.9–10.1 — cite strong, thorough textual evidence
Follow it · Trace theme, character & craft
  • TEKS · Multiple Genres — analyze theme & how characters develop across a text
  • TEKS · Author's Purpose & Craft — analyze how the author's choices shape meaning
  • CCSS RL.9–10.2 · 3 — theme development; how character advances the plot
Frame it · Discuss & write the argument
  • TEKS · Oral Language — narration and student-led discussion
  • TEKS · Composition — the writing process, ending in a clear argument
  • CCSS SL.9–10.1 · W.9–10.1 · W.9–10.9 — discuss; argue from textual evidence

Students also meet the Foundational Language Skills strand throughout — sustaining a whole novel and building vocabulary in context (CCSS RL.9–10.4 · L.9–10.4). The one strand a six-week single-novel study doesn't formally cover is Inquiry & Research — by design. Codes shown for Texas English I–IV and the Common Core grades 9–10 band.

The Detail

Everything Inside the Course

Learning outcomes +

By the end of Summer Foundations, students will be able to:

  • Narrate a chapter with confidence and real detail.
  • Trace a single theme across an entire novel.
  • Keep a commonplace of the lines worth remembering.
  • Write a clear, supported paragraph of literary argument — most for the very first time.
Skills developed +
  • Narration that grows into written argument
  • Close reading — finding what matters on the page
  • Tracing a theme from first page to last
  • Framing an idea in clear, honest prose
  • The commonplace habit — keeping what's worth keeping
  • Socratic discussion and listening
  • Reading a whole novel with attention, start to finish
What's covered +

Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, read slowly across six weeks, using the Find · Follow · Frame method.

Students sit with the novel's great questions — dreams and disappointment, friendship and loyalty, loneliness, power, and mercy — and learn to move from feeling a story to saying something true about it.

Course overview +

Six weeks, one lesson per week (about 60–90 minutes of together-time), self-paced for families or taught live in a summer cohort. Narration-first and discussion-rich, with no busywork — every page on the student's desk is doing real work.

Who it's for +

Families who want a gentle but serious bridge into high-school-level literature; students ready for their first real novel study; anyone who wants the narration-to-writing habit in place before fall.

No literature background needed to teach it — the guide carries you, week by week. If your student can talk about a story, they can do this.

Recommended companions +
  • Commonplace & Nature Journal (Consider the Lilies) — for keeping the lines worth remembering.
  • Companion printables to extend any week your student loves.
In Your Hands

What's Included

One tidy digital download — everything you need to teach the whole six weeks.

Six Weekly Student HandoutsFind · Follow · Frame — one beautifully designed handout per week.
The Character ThreadFollow one person through the whole novel, week by week.
A Relation StudySustained, real-world attention work carried all summer.
Narration & Close-ReadingSpeak it before you write it — every week.
The Existentialist LensA Camus & Sartre reading that meets the novel's questions.
Guided Writing → the CapstoneSeven steps building to the student's own gathered work.

The novel itself isn't included — read any edition of Of Mice and Men you like.

Summer Foundations — cohort section preview
Delight & SavorBeauty · Meaning · Connection
Taught Live

Prefer It Taught Live?

The same six weeks, read and written the same beautiful way — but with me beside your student: reading every piece of their work, and gathering our small group together over Zoom.

Self-Paced

On Your Own Schedule

$49 · family license

or $147 · co-op license — up to 12 students

The full course, carried by the handouts. You set the pace and respond to the writing — this summer, or any summer after.

  • All six weekly handouts & the complete course in the app
  • Find · Follow · Frame, the Character Thread & the Capstone
  • Yours to teach for as many years as you like
Get the Self-Paced Course
Live Summer Cohort · 2026

Taught & Graded by Kim

$110 · per student

Everything in the self-paced course, plus a real teacher reading your student's work — and a small group to think alongside.

  • Everything in the self-paced course, start to finish
  • Graded by Kim — personal feedback on your student's weekly work
  • Two live Zoom gatherings — a welcome conversation to open, a closing seminar to end
  • A small cohort reading together in our shared Google Classroom
Enroll in the Cohort

Six weeks · June 24 – August 5 · live Zoom days chosen by group poll once enrolled · spots limited

Kim PrietoPhoto of you
Who Makes This

Built by a teacher, on a ranch.

Every lesson is written by Kim Prieto — a homeschooling mother, former AP English teacher, and M.A. in Literary Studies — from a working ranch in the Texas Hill Country.

No committee, no template. Just a real teacher who believes a child meets a great book best the slow, beautiful way.

Beauty. Meaning. Connection.
“
You make learning and reading so much fun. I really can't express how much I love your class.
— High School Co-op Student
You've taught me so much this year — from writing well to having good character. You're so much more than a simple English teacher; you're a mentor and friend, and I've loved your class so much.
— High School Co-op Student
Keep Going

More from Delight & Savor

Grades 9–12

Living Literature & Language

The full upper-school literature course — a new great work each year.
Middle School

Living Stories & Sentences

Self-paced literature and writing for the middle-school years.
Companion

Commonplace & Nature Journal

Consider the Lilies — for the lines worth keeping.
Try Before You Buy

A free sample week

See exactly how a lesson feels — one full week of Summer Foundations, sent to your inbox.