For which non-core courses would you just give a "pass"?

[Joan in GE]

I was just looking at my ds1's international school diploma and found a "pass" for PE and for Theory of Knowledge (which was worth 0.5 credits).

 

I was thinking about doing this for Fine Arts, as it is quite hard for me to grade my dc's art work, and most art and music appreciation were "exploratory" so to speak.

 

Have you given Fine Arts grades? if so, did you just use testing or participation or what?

 

and are there any other noncore courses for which you use P/F?

 

Thanks,

Joan

[Jane in NC]

Yes, I have a grade of P (Pass) for PE, French and my son's senior project, all of which I felt that I could not grade. Note that my son also took Latin in which I did give grades since I felt that I had some knowledge of the subject. I was learning French along side my son and probably had more questions on the language than he did. I felt completely uncomfortable assigning a grade other than P.

[Joan in GE]

That's interesting Jane!

 

Did anyone ask you why it was so for the French grade?

 

It clearly didn't stop acceptances though.

 

Thanks,

Joan

[Jane in NC]

That's interesting Jane!

 

Did anyone ask you why it was so for the French grade?

 

 

 

No. Perhaps because his transcript also showed four years of Latin (one year with an outside teacher) no questions were raised. In retrospect, the fact that no questions were ever raised on anything on the transcript is indeed interesting--especially after all of the nail biting that went into the thing.

[TravelingChris]

I grade everything. Her one semester of PE with a school based program she did get an A and she did more than enough PE in good enough fashion to continue getting A's from me. I know many colleges remove non academic grades from their GPA calculations but each college does it differently and some don't do it at all. I don't pump up grades for dd so she does have a few B;s. I am realistic in grading. But I remember that PE in high school was A if you showed up, did the required events, and had a decent attitude. She did more than that so I felt comfortable with grading. I also gave her grades for singing and that was based on experts opinions, not just my own.

[Guest TheBugsMom]

Most electives I do not grade. I make a list of requirements to receive a pass. Some things just are too hard to assign a grade....examples: my son explored robotics in his Jr year, if he went through the Intro to Robotics book, built the robot it gave instructions for, and it worked correctly then he passed and received half credit. Another was piano, which my son did not play at the time. He had to go through the two Adult Piano books and theory book, practice 5hrs a week, play certain songs from each for the family, and then create an original song with musical notes written down he would earn one credit.

 

My son had no problems with his transcript when entering the Navy even with all the P grades.

[Jean in Wisc]

Physical Education and Health

Driver's Education

Art and Music

Keyboarding

 

I do not include these credits when figuring the grade point average.

[Kareni]

On my daughter's transcript, I had the note: "P indicates participation in a class in which a letter grade was not provided."

 

The notation of P was given for the following courses: a musical theatre class, Fencing, Swing Dance, and a four week long Continuing Education class in Japanese.

 

Regards,

Kareni

[Joan in GE]

Thank you everyone! You have given me other ideas for this.

 

The P for participation is a new twist for me.

 

The piano one is tempting as ds has very long fingers. BugsMom did your son have other musical experience before that?

 

And Jane, I see how much work went into your son's senior project from the other thread. I guess you didn't need to describe it since it was the focus of applications and interviews. So that let them discover in a way, what his transcript really meant. Did you give him any credit for it?

 

Joan

Edited September 28, 2010 by Joan in Geneva

[Jane in NC]

 

And Jane, I see how much work went into your son's senior project from the other thread. I guess you didn't need to describe it since it was the focus of applications and interviews. So that let them discover in a way, what his transcript really meant. Did you give him any credit for it?

 

Joan

 

One half credit. On his transcript, I called it "Senior Project". But I also submitted an eight page course description in which I provided details for it and his other course work.

[creekland]

Physical Education and Health

Driver's Education

Art and Music

Keyboarding

 

I do not include these credits when figuring the grade point average.

 

This is what we did too. At some of the college visitations ad coms told us they refigure GPA based on "core" courses (unweighted) for academic majors, so I figured I'd save them the trouble. But, I want them to know the other courses were taken (esp music and art history, etc), so they are still on the transcript.

 

Ad coms also told me that they consider ACT/SAT/AP and SAT II tests FAR more heavily than transcripts for academic majors coming from homeschooling. If the testing grades don't match the transcript, they'll go with test scores. It might not be "right" in all cases (or true at all colleges), but at least they were honest and I know where we stand for those schools. Note, they also specifically said it was different for art, music, and sports (probably some others too, but they gave those as examples).