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We did. We did semester block scheduling. We didn't include math, English, or foreign languages, but did all other classes in semester blocks. I wouldn't do anything differently. It worked great for us. My kids far preferred having 4-5 classes/day instead of 7-8. It let them delve deeper on a daily basis instead of feeling like there was such a long waiting list of subjects. 

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We will be trying it out this year. Our schedule is going to look something like this.

 

Full Year:

Math

Sign language*

Media Arts*

Bible*

 

*These are outside courses that run a full year, so we didn't really have a choice in how to schedule them.

 

Summer Semester:

Irish History self-study

Civics

 

Fall Semester:

Science

1/4 Writing/grammar

1/4 Research paper

 

Spring Semester:

History

1/4 Literature/vocabulary

1/4 Research paper

Drama

 

We both really like the idea of breaking up English into specific quarters. It's easy to get bogged down and just keep going with taking and writing across all subjects with no end in sight. And for us, second semester is very busy with drama, so we wanted to do the easier subjects when things are starting to ramp up. Also, even though literature is officially only scheduled for part of the second semester, he will actually be reading all year. The dedicated semester is where we'll do specific and focused literate work like literary analysis and such.

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thanks for sharing, Contessa and Debbie!!! Contessa, is the sign language course online? My dd is quite interested in taking a sign language course.

The class ds16 will be taking is a local homeschool co-op. If you have a deaf school near you though they will often hold classes for the families of deaf students and anyone from the community is allowed to join. Typically, family members of deaf or hard of hearing students are free, while everyone else pays around $100 plus the textbook fee.

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We did a sort of "modified" block schedule for a few subjects that worked well for us in high school. It allowed more focused time to get through a larger chunk of material in a shorter period of time, and helped with making connections through a longer period of exposure.

 

We did blocks of History and Science, each 2 days a week for 2-2.5 hours per session. (We tried it both ways, of alternating days (i.e., Mon/Wed or Tues/Thurs) and adjoining days (i.e., Mon/Tues or Wed/Thurs), and either worked fine. Fridays were used for labs, finishing up papers, quizzes and any other "catch-up/finish off" work for History and Science. Math, Literature, and Writing all needed to be 4-5x/week here, all year-long, due to the learning styles of DSs.

 

Doing dual enrollment (Foreign Language -- one DS did Spanish, the other DS did American Sign Language) at the community college was also a bit of a block schedule: 2 hour-class 2x/week, and then several hours of work at home each week, with each semester of college Foreign Language resulting in a full 1.0 high school credit.

 

We did a sort-of opposite of block scheduling with two 0.5 credit courses (Economics, Government), spreading them out over a full year (different years), and doing either one 90-minute session/week or two 60 min. sessions a week all year long. We also spread out a 1.0 credit Logic course that way, doing one 75-90 min session 1x/week over 2 years. That actually helped us squeeze in those credits more easily not having them every day, and being able to schedule them on a day that was not as heavy.

 

We also spread out Science credits a bit. Neither DS is headed into a STEM field, and any of the schools they were interested in did not need more than 3 lab Science credits, so we actually did about 3/4 of a Science credit per year:

9th = 0.75 credit of Biology

10th = 0.25 credit finish Biology, 0.5 credit Anatomy

11th = 0.75 credit start Chemistry

12th = 0.25 credit finish Chemistry, 0.5 credit Physics

Total Science credits = 3.50

 

We also spread out a Worldview credit by accumulating hours/work done over several summers.

 

Hmmm… the more I ramble on, the more I realize these ideas are NOT really block scheduling. But hopefully it might help you think outside the box a bit as you ponder what block scheduling will look like for your family. ;) I think the ability to do true block scheduling will really depend on whether that fits the student's learning style well… or not… And whether it fits the family's schedule and circumstances… or not…

 

Just our experience: True block scheduling would not have worked well here for either DS with core subjects or any subject that: builds upon itself in incremental steps (Math, Foreign Language), is rigorous (Math, Science, Writing), or requires heavy amounts of reading/writing (neither DS was speedy with reading or writing). Social Science courses and Electives would have worked fine.

 

BEST of luck in finding what works best for scheduling high school credits for your family! Warmest regards, Lori D.

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We did a modified block schedule too, not for foreign language or math. It worked well for some subjects. We ran into an issue this year as I had an ill family member and for most of the year we ended up with 4 days of school a week instead of 5. That would affect any type of schedule, but it was harder with a block schedule. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

We did. We did semester block scheduling. We didn't include math, English, or foreign languages, but did all other classes in semester blocks. I wouldn't do anything differently. It worked great for us. My kids far preferred having 4-5 classes/day instead of 7-8. It let them delve deeper on a daily basis instead of feeling like there was such a long waiting list of subjects. 

 

Can you share with us how you did this? Tia.  :)

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We ended up with a partial semester block schedule due to participation in some outside classes which were scheduled that way. For us, math, PE, and art were year-long; Latin, government, biology, English, and career/college prep were semester blocks. In our experience, it was challenging to combine the block and year-long schedules due to the large amount of time the blocks took. My daughter did do a spring block for Latin 1 but we are planning to do the year-long Latin 2 this coming year.

 

At the most basic, you could take any year-long schedule and just double it up to finish in one semester rather than two. I'd be very hesitant to do it with math or foreign language for us, since those are skill-based more than content-based, primarily because there's the potential for 9-12 months of break between levels (if you did a fall block then didn't return until the next year or even spring of the following year).

 

Cathrynlynn, check out Lifeprint for ASL http://www.lifeprint.com/.

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We did 12th grade as a block schedule, mostly because my son wasn't cooperating with me.

 

First semester, he did college courses.  So, he had only 3 classes that semester and he liked that a lot better than jumping from subject to subject all day.  So, second semester, he wanted to finish all my requirements but do them one-by-one.  He would do history all day every day until that was done, then he did English, government, etc.

 

I had my doubts about long-term retention, but you know I think he was right.  At least for him, a kid who wasn't interested in most of those subjects, he got more into them when he was able to really concentrate, get feedback, and go back to it again, rather than off to another subject every hour and by the time he got back to it he couldn't remember what we discussed or why he went wrong.  I'm not sure how much maturity figured in there, but he remembers the block classes better than ones that were more spread out.

 

Math was okay in the semester block, but that one I don't think he could've done in a 30-school-day block.  And, as someone else mentioned, I wouldn't have given him credit for a phy ed block :) And the Y was a daily treat for him.

Julie

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