Trisms: Expansion of Civilization

[Pam B]

Has anyone used this curriculum? Do you have any thoughts on it?

 

DD14 just finished Classical Conversations A for her 8th grade year. She loves history and reading.

 

Any comments would be great!

[Guest Cheryl in SoCal]

I haven't used EOC yet (we're doing it next year) but am just finishing DAW if you have any general questions about TRISMS.

[DebbS]

We used DAW for my 7th grade daughter this year. Although there are some adjustments for middle-school we did not actually adjust the work load. TRISMS can be done very independently. After the first few units, my daughter knew what was expected of her and was able to do the work with very little interference from me. My job was to buy the initial reference materials, pick up additional library books for her (btw, she generally used the internet instead), and then at the end of the unit, we would use the worksheets, questionnaires and essays/literature lessons as a basis for her to teach me what she'd learned. IEW was not new to her, so what we did with that was generally review work. She and I both watched the CD lesson, rather than me watching it and teaching it to her.

We will be doing EOC next year. I expect it to be much the same process.

[ereks mom]

EoC covers Classical Greece & Rome and the Middle Ages. In addition to history, geography, literature, writing, vocabulary, science, and history of art, music & architecture, EOC also has rhetoric.

 

We have also used other TRISMS volumes as well. TRISMS is jampacked with assignments. IMO, there is NO WAY that you could complete all of a week's worth of TRISMS assignments in just a week! When we first started with the first volume, Discovering the Ancient World, we started out trying to do most of them (we used Apologia instead of the science portion of TRISMS), but ds got so bogged down that we had to start cutting some things. After we tweaked our approach considerably, here is where we wound up: ds did the map studies for each unit (labeling & coloring), and he read the literature & did *some* writing assignments related to the literature (but mostly we just discussed it). He did some outside reading using one or more spine books (Streams of Civilization and also BJU World History & ABeka World History) as well as historical fiction. He did the Civilization, Art, Music, and Architecture Questionnaires, researching in books and online to find information and pictures of the art, architecture, and musical instruments of each civilization, and he printed them out and put them in his coursebook. (TRISMS is all about notebooking, which the author calls making a coursebook.) There are also two projects each year; the student can choose a topic from a list in the TM and also can decide on a format (report, display, diorama, map, etc.). For evaluation (grades), ds did the end-of-unit worksheets (short answer), the Unit quizzes (fill-in-the-blank-from-a-wordbank worksheets) & the vocabulary quizzes (matching), as well as the semester tests, which include mostly short answer, some matching, mapwork & an essay based on the literature read throughout the semester. If there was something on the worksheet, quizzes, or tests that we didn't cover (science questions, for example), we simply omitted those test questions. For literature assignments, some literature selections (poems, short stories, etc.) are included in the teacher's materials; there are also lists of suggested literature pertaining to each time period, and you pick the ones that appeal to you. Writing assignments are keyed to IEW, meaning that the TM lists the page numbers, etc. from the IEW Structure & Style videos & book. But, even if you don't use IEW, your child will still have plenty of writing assignments with TRISMS.

[Guest Cheryl in SoCal]

EoC covers Classical Greece & Rome and the Middle Ages. In addition to history, geography, literature, writing, vocabulary, science, and history of art, music & architecture, EOC also has rhetoric.

 

We have also used other TRISMS volumes as well. TRISMS is jampacked with assignments. IMO, there is NO WAY that you could complete all of a week's worth of TRISMS assignments in just a week! When we first started with the first volume, Discovering the Ancient World, we started out trying to do most of them (we used Apologia instead of the science portion of TRISMS), but ds got so bogged down that we had to start cutting some things. After we tweaked our approach considerably, here is where we wound up: ds did the map studies for each unit (labeling & coloring), and he read the literature & did *some* writing assignments related to the literature (but mostly we just discussed it). He did some outside reading using one or more spine books (Streams of Civilization and also BJU World History & ABeka World History) as well as historical fiction. He did the Civilization, Art, Music, and Architecture Questionnaires, researching in books and online to find information and pictures of the art, architecture, and musical instruments of each civilization, and he printed them out and put them in his coursebook. (TRISMS is all about notebooking, which the author calls making a coursebook.) There are also two projects each year; the student can choose a topic from a list in the TM and also can decide on a format (report, display, diorama, map, etc.). For evaluation (grades), ds did the end-of-unit worksheets (short answer), the Unit quizzes (fill-in-the-blank-from-a-wordbank worksheets) & the vocabulary quizzes (matching), as well as the semester tests, which include mostly short answer, some matching, mapwork & an essay based on the literature read throughout the semester. If there was something on the worksheet, quizzes, or tests that we didn't cover (science questions, for example), we simply omitted those test questions. For literature assignments, some literature selections (poems, short stories, etc.) are included in the teacher's materials; there are also lists of suggested literature pertaining to each time period, and you pick the ones that appeal to you. Writing assignments are keyed to IEW, meaning that the TM lists the page numbers, etc. from the IEW Structure & Style videos & book. But, even if you don't use IEW, your child will still have plenty of writing assignments with TRISMS.

 

Does EOC have a weekly schedule instead of a 2 week schedule like DAW? I'll have to get my book out and check, LOL.

[Pam B]

This really does sound great to me. Thank you for your input!!