How much history do you expect your elemetary student to retain?

[AnnaM]

We are doing a 4 year cycle so we are "glazing" through history right now just stopping to do more in-depth stuff where we want to. I don't expect that they will retain much from it, but all I am trying to accomplish is a introduction. I am just curious how much history you expect your younger student to retain? Do you quiz and drill facts or do what we do? No judgement either way. I am just curious to see what the norm is.

[SorrelZG]

Very early elementary here and I'm just following interest. Our history curriculum is very lightweight this year and story based (although I also read from A Child's History of the World) but DS is enthralled with the time period and doing a lot of his own reading and sharing it with me. That's really all I'm going for. I don't want to risk messing that up by drilling or quizzing anything. :tongue_smilie:

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

I don't test my kids in elementary (my 5th grader will be tested so when I refer to elementary here I mean grammar stage- I count 5th as logic so include that as middle grades even though in schools it is elementary ;)) I just want them to love it- does that make sense? We have fun. Read fun read alouds. Do some projects. Watch some fun cartoon-ish Netflix programs (Yes, I said cartoon-ish :001_smile:) We just make history fun at this age. 5th and 6th I start requiring a little more- more writing, pretests (just to see) post tests but I don't require a lot until around 7th grade (ish- depending on the kid!)

[IsabelC]

My kids seem to remember a few seemingly random things and forget the rest. I figure it's still good to 'do history' because

(a) it's fun

(b) when they come across it again later, even if they don't immediately remember doing it before, the material will at least seem somewhat familiar

© at the very least, they will retain the fact that history exists and is a worthwhile things to know about.

[MeganW]

I'm not doing a lot of drilling (other than CC memory work), but I do commonly say "tell Daddy about xxx" to review. I also rotate in the books we read previously, CDs we listened to previously, etc. a LOT.

[boscopup]

No quizzes or memory work here. My son re-reads SOTW on occasion, so he does have some retention due to that, but I don't expect retention.

[Seshet]

I expect a good deal of retention, but don't do quizzes & drills to get it. We aim for breadth & depth. We use a variety of resources & work to keep them involved & absorbed- hands-on projects, written work, lots of reading, documentaries & shows. Our materials range from grade level to adult. They don't remember everything, but they remember a good amount.

[Hunter]

The less I expected and drilled, the more they learned. Content is funny that way.

[Ritsumei]

We read, and narrate, and sometimes do the hands-on projects. A fair amount of extra books, outside of SOTW. I'm forever forgetting to look at the internet links in the encyclopedia to see what cool museum stuff we can find, but when I remember it's usually cool. Sometimes I've been able to find some nice documentaries on YouTube. Other than occasionally re-reading narrations, we don't do review, unless he asks for it. Mostly the stuff he asks for again is the movies, but there have been a few other things. The "You Wouldn't Want To..." books are a hit.

 

I've been pleasantly surprised by how much sticks.

[blondemonkey]

I am surprised by how much he retains even though my goal isn't retention. Our goal is exploratory and exposure. It helps that he is totally interested in history. Sure, he doesn't remember all the details or certain people, but he gets the big picture. He knows the egyptian history spans a long time. He gets that Mesopotamia was full of conflict and interesting personalities. He sees a progression in time from simple culture to more advanced with technology and that technology can change so much. He's beginning to see that strategy in warfare can make a huge difference. I think for us, its a stepping stone into critical thinking. He is very auditory so he LOVES LOVES LOVES listening to the non-fiction stories and related fiction. He is picks up details even if he does forget names or dates later. He knows big concepts in a timeline. We also go slower than the four year cycle because we follow so many rabbit trails. I'm okay with that because this is the area where we are fostering the love of learning and following his interests. That's my two cents :-)

[kalanamak]

Oh honey, I expect NOTHING, and am pleasantly pleased with what I do get.

 

Honestly, for us audiobooks offer the best retention. We are listening to Benjamin Soames's reading of the the Caesars of Ancient Rome (another NAXOS recording) after Great Inventors and Great Scientists, and kiddo catches things I don't. I'd like to buy stock in Naxos.

[Elfknitter.#]

Oh honey, I expect NOTHING, and am pleasantly pleased with what I do get..

 

:iagree: For me, it's all about exposure and not retention with my rising 2 nd and 4 th gradersg.

[angelmama1209]

My kids seem to remember a few seemingly random things and forget the rest. I figure it's still good to 'do history' because

(a) it's fun

(b) when they come across it again later, even if they don't immediately remember doing it before, the material will at least seem somewhat familiar

© at the very least, they will retain the fact that history exists and is a worthwhile things to know about.

 

yep! it's all about exposure here and hopefully when it comes around again, some stuff will be easier due to the nuggets that stuck.

[liamtaylorsmom]

We use Sonlight Core B and SOTW together. Mostly reading with notebooking/lapbooking and some hands-on activities. I don't expect him to retain everything but general ideas hopefully. I do the notebooking for sure so that he has something to look back on if he wants/needs to. I find this to be a more important skill (recording and being able to find information) than just retaining all facts at any given time so we focus more on that.

[8filltheheart]

We are doing a 4 year cycle so we are "glazing" through history right now just stopping to do more in-depth stuff where we want to. I don't expect that they will retain much from it, but all I am trying to accomplish is a introduction. I am just curious how much history you expect your younger student to retain? Do you quiz and drill facts or do what we do? No judgement either way. I am just curious to see what the norm is.

 

I guess it boils down to what you mean by retention. ;) Do you mean retention in terms of being able to discuss or remember details a few weeks or months later or yrs later? When I typically think of retention, I think in terms yrs down the road (3, 4, 5 yrs later......w/o review or cumulative processes.)

 

I don't test or drill my kids my younger. I don't expect retention of details. Things that made a mental impact on them, they might remember. Things that made their eyes glaze over......well, they may remember that to. But.....it is almost equally likely that both of those scenarios might lead to zero retention. :D

[laughing lioness]

My kids retain but they retain an incredible amount of history info. We do read-alouds, use VP hx flashcards, listen to CC sentences, listen to SOTW, have history fact books and encyclopedias lying around, along with Nat'l Geographics, BAR, etc and talk about history and how it relates to current events, watch historical documentaries and films, etc.

 

I expect them to memorize the VP flashcards (timeline in their head). I expect them to be able to narrate the themes, plot, characters of historical fiction books we've read and discuss details- last year we read The History of the Medieval World by SWB as a read-aloud. The kids were already well versed enough through SOTW and other reading that it wasn't a stretch for them. We looked at the maps and time-lines together and wrestled with concepts we weren't clear about or familiar with.

 

I take the onion approach to education- layer the info. And I do believe in the stages of the Trivium. Kids in eled are memory magnets- therefore expect them to memorize- retain- info. CM/ IEW poetry memory system and CC all can teach you how to teach your kids to memorize for long-term retention. In some things (poetry/plays/Bible) I expect word-perfect memory. In other areas I'm content with themes, concepts.

 

One of my beefs with lit programs as a pedagogy is that they do overview, ad neaseum. Overview is good (better for kids who learn global to specific) but I think it falls short because it never demands mastery. I'm not saying the teacher should be demanding, I'm saying that certain pedagogies get to mastery (retention) and others never do.

 

I also think it's o.k. for our kids to work hard at memory work-long term retention. The year of our house fire, my now 9 yo was 6. We'd been learning a difficult piece in Ecclesiastes. One night as she was crying her eyes out in the hotel about all of her beannie babies getting thrown away she started quoting Ecc: "to everything there is a season...." This helped her out enormously as she came to terms with the almost complete loss of her worldy possesssions.

Edited August 2, 2012 by laughing lioness

[EKS]

I expected them to retain whatever stuck. In fact, that was my expectation through high school history. I found that the older one knows a ton of history (he did three rotations of world and two of American) and I feel as though I was successful with my approach.

[mamatohaleybug]

My goal is not retention. My goal with most of what we do is exposure, building knowledge and beginning critical thinking. My DD has many health and developmental challenges (some quite serious) that make her process slower than normal and frustrate her because she is bright and inquisitive. I want to encourage a love of learning and the desire to be a lifelong learner because that is what brings joy. So, I don't drill facts (hard for her to quickly recall) but I do review concepts with a wide variety of different resources. I'm amazed by the connections she makes and what matters to her. :001_smile: