rolling over hours??

[Mouse]

I have some conflicting information that I was hoping could be cleared up. Say you spend 210 hours on a course, say American History, can you take the hours over the credit required and apply it to the next year? Any information would be appreciated. Thanks

[FloridaLisa]

A couple of thoughts. First, in Florida, there are no rules for homeschool graduation -- no set hours, no required courses, no numbers of credits. As the homeschooling parent issuing the diploma, then, I set the requirements for my dc and determine what constitutes a course. Don't know if that's the case where you live.

 

Second, is there some reason that you'll need those hours next year? My dc have never needed additional credits to graduate or be competetive for college admissions.

 

Finally, if you roll the hours, you would probably have to organize your transcript by subject, rather than year.

 

HTH,

Lisa

[KAR120C]

If I'm considering 180 hours a good amount for a course, then anything around that is fine with me... My estimates for next year are that science will be over 200 hours and that flute will be about 100. So science is a course, and flute is just an extracurricular activity. (Unless he were to sign up for the youth orchestra, in which case the hours would about double and I might consider it.) Where it gets useful is that math next year might end up being something more like 360-400 hours. We're going just a little overboard with math next year. I really could split that into two courses... there's certainly enough material there, and there could be a natural division of topics at about the halfway point. Or I know I could get to January and significantly lighten the load without risking it being too thin for a real course, since we'll already have done about 180 hours.

 

The only way I'd really consider "rolling over" hours is if we were continuing the course next year. So if you were doing a chronological history, I could see doing, for instance, a course called "Early Modern History" that you finished in April and then starting the next "Late Modern History" (or whatever) in May, to be continued the next year. But if it's really all one course, I wouldn't count hours quite that closely.

[Mouse]

thanks for the replies. It was for a comprehensive United States History course that will be going over a course of two years. We have been counting our credit for the class as either time or when we finished the book which is the guideline we were giving by a college my dd was considering. In the case of our history we went over the "time" but it will continue next year. Someone recommended starting the next year with 30 hours invested in the course since it will not take the whole year to finish it, but another stated that it only counted for the one year of the schooling so I was a bit confused.

[Jann in TX]

It is hard to use 'hours spent' to judge the credits earned in high school.

 

Some students will only spend 3/4 of the school year completing Algebra 1... they still earn 1 full credit.

 

Some students (like my oldest dd) may take 2 full school years (over 200 hours each) to complete Algebra 2... she still earned 1 full credit.

 

A comprehensive history course that covers the explorers to present day WOULD count as 2 full credits if it takes 350-400 or so hours to complete... because the STANDARD for high school American History classes have it divided into 2 one-credit courses (usually split at or after the Civil War).

 

Credits should be based on content--NOT in how long it takes the student to complete the course... the hour guidelines are more helpful when creating a new course (not traditionally put on a transcript) --as long as they are related to the work an 'average' student would put in...

[Mouse]

We do take the material into consideration and so far they have been on par with each other. Being a homeschool Mom I have learned how to bend and sway. The confusion came in with the class that I knew would be two units, but we spent so much time this year on it that I was curious what we would be doing. That is when we went to a seminar with the college my DD was interested in and they said to rollover the time. I just wasn't sure how others do that or if when they finished the class it was just 2 credits overall.

[KAR120C]

Credits should be based on content--NOT in how long it takes the student to complete the course... the hour guidelines are more helpful when creating a new course (not traditionally put on a transcript) --as long as they are related to the work an 'average' student would put in...

Since I brought up math -- I agree about Algebra 1, Algebra 2, etc. being set courses no matter how long it takes you... The math we're proposing is Discrete Math and Cryptography (or Discrete Math and Computer Programming - the spring semester is flexible...) -- there isn't really a standard for high school discrete math, so I'm making this up. He's doing two AoPS classes at about 60 hours each (Counting & Probability and Number Theory) and we're adding in some extra topics from another textbook, and then going into more applications in the spring (cryptography or programming or whatever). If it looked like it would take a total of about 180-200 hours or so, I'd call it all one course titled "Discrete Math and Applications" or something, but since it's looking like possibly double that, I might call it Discrete Math in the fall and something else in the spring and treat it like two separate courses, as though we were on a block schedule. I agree that one couldn't do that for standard courses... but we're kind of off the beaten track a bit here.