creative/ alternative humanities output ideas for a stem kid?

[quark]

I am contemplating mixing up DS's output requirements for high school literature and social studies so that he isn't only writing essays. I think I've read either here and/ or on the hs2coll group that others have done the same e.g. apart from literary analysis via essays, someone's DC made a map of a fictional world, another wrote fan fiction, etc. I hope I didn't dream that I read this lol.

 

Some of the ideas DS and I discussed were designing a card game based on a series of books by a favorite author, creating a short film, recording an audiobook, writing up alternative endings etc. He will also write essays but it will not be the only thing he does.

 

Have you done something like this? Were you able to do this for history as well as literature?

[regentrude]

As alternatives to essays, my kids have given oral presentations with visuals. I find this a very valuable project.

 

As a previous poster, for things like making card games and designing maps I would not consider the amount of busy work to be worth the subject learning that is created by such projects. Those might be fun ideas for elementary and middle school, but for high school, we would find this a waste of valuable time - unless the objective was to learn the handling of the medium. If the kid wants to learn to edit audio or video, making an audiobook or film is great, but if the objective is to demonstrate history mastery, spending an hour or more to create six minutes of useable footage is disproportionate (I make videos for an online class, so I know how immensely time consuming this is)

[quark]

Thank you for your replies! I would love to know what the annual oral presentation is like in terms of depth and length of presentation. DS already does this for math (and previously science too) but I'd like an idea of what you deem acceptable for the humanities.

 

I edited my title to be more specific. I don't mean to create busy work but isn't it busy work only if it doesn't have value? What if the child is driven to create something out of interest and passion for the subject? Just wondering... :001_smile:

 

I am also curious about how families here fulfill output requirements.

 

Currently, I am focusing a lot on relationship building (maintenance more like, we haven't had serious clashes to damage our relationship yet) and I cannot foresee requiring more of something he dislikes just to say he wrote a certain number of essays without creating a lot of unnecessary tension. I really don't believe this is a maturity issue because this child produces high level output in the STEM areas, has written wiki articles for math research, writes complete lab reports when a course requires it, and is a very hard worker, doesn't whine or complain etc. I think the humanities really are seriously not his area to excel output wise and output requirement seems to be a genuine hindrance unless there is some flexibility in terms of media used.

 

I would like to support him as much as possible as I guide him through high school. How do I do this without killing his currently high interest in the humanities?

[Lori D.]

Getting comfortable with Power Point or other slideshow or media presentation program is very useful (including downloading/uploading and use of a thumb drive) a few times a year, as many college classes require that type of output as part of an oral presentation or project, and it's really nice to get familiar with all of that in homeschool high school, rather than have to struggle to learn it while simultaneously trying to create the project for a college class. :)

 

I do agree with Heigh Ho and Regentrude about the time vs. value of alternative output ideas. On the other hand, if you have an out-of-box student, written reports and essays all through high school is just not going to fly -- you need to enliven with some alternatives -- video, podcast, blog articles, physically recreate a historical item -- one student I know sewed historically authentic period clothing; another blacksmithed a knife and candlesticks. I've also heard of students designing/building a science exhibit for the local Children's Museum, and design a board game based on ancient History.

 

Social Sciences, "hands-on" component as part of the hours for the credit, and as an alternative to some written output:

- History: participation in a History Reenactment group

- History: volunteer docent at your local Historical Society (in order to answer questions and help visitors you really have to know the material inside and out yourself ;) )

- Government: volunteer for a political campaign

- Government: teen worker at a polling location on Election Day

- Government: participation in a mock legislative or judicial program (Youth and Government; Junior State of America; Teen PACT; YMCA Teen Court; Mock Trial; American Model United Nations; United Nations Association of USA)

 

For Literature...

How about volunteer participation behind the scenes for a local Shakespeare Under the Stars production? Or teen community theater for several plays -- "living"/performing a dramatic work of literature is a very different way of getting inside the piece and inside the author's "head" for new insights.

 

I also would not require written output or even a lot of oral analysis on every single work read for Literature -- SWB talks about keeping that in balance to not kill a student's love of literature.

[quark]

Thank you so much Lori. That's a great list for us to brainstorm with.

[regentrude]

 I would love to know what the annual oral presentation is like in terms of depth and length of presentation. DS already does this for math (and previously science too) but I'd like an idea of what you deem acceptable for the humanities.

 

That really can vary greatly. In 12th grade, my DD created a 20 minute oral presentation on a topic of French history and presented at the undergraduate research conference of the university. She won her division, and I used this as the basis of her history grade.

 

 

I don't mean to create busy work but isn't it busy work only if it doesn't have value? What if the child is driven to create something out of interest and passion for the subject?

 

Of course, if the kid wants to do the project because he is passionate about it, it's not busy work. Still, the discrepancy remains between the actual learning and the large time commitment for the format.

 

 

I am also curious about how families here fulfill output requirements.

 

I may be a heretic, but I see way too much emphasis on "output". I find the quality input much more important and am content to assess my student's subject knowledge from discussions and conversations. I don't need a piece of paper.

 

I see essays not as a sole tool to demonstrate mastery, but as a skill in and of itself that has to be mastered. Thus, my kids write essays in humanities in order to learn to write essays - not because I can't discern that he really knows a lot about Napoleon.

[quark]

I may be a heretic, but I see way too much emphasis on "output". I find the quality input much more important and am content to assess my student's subject knowledge from discussions and conversations. I don't need a piece of paper.

 

I see essays not as a sole tool to demonstrate mastery, but as a skill in and of itself that has to be mastered. Thus, my kids write essays in humanities in order to learn to write essays - not because I can't discern that he really knows a lot about Napoleon.

 

:001_wub: Thank the stars for heretics!

 

I think I am officially panicking now about high school. I was calm up till a few days ago, even while reading through Sparkly's thread on the general logic stage board...but now I think I'm starting to feel much more :willy_nilly:. I wish there was a procedure here in the US where students could be assessed mainly through vivas (just the verbal assessment!). 

 

[regentrude]

. I wish there was a procedure here in the US where students could be assessed mainly through vivas (just the verbal defense, lol). 

 

 

Your homeschool, your rules. You can totally do oral assessments as a basis for grades.

Just add a few standardized tests for outside validation, and nobody will question you how you determined your student's grades.

 

There are no transcript police. No college asked me to justify my DD's grades, and she did get accepted into some very selective schools.

 

ETA: In 11th grade, DD unschooled English. She chose what literature to read, which poets to study in detail, read copious amounts of great books and biographies of her favorite authors. She discussed and analyzed literature with online friends for hours and hours, wrote long posts, blogged, really immersed herself in the topics. All completely non-traditional output. That year she took the subject SAT in literature, got a perfect, and that was what I formally based her grade on. I knew she deserved an A for her in depth literature analysis. College courses in subsequent years verified that I was not delusional in my assessment.

[JennW in SoCal]

 

I may be a heretic, but I see way too much emphasis on "output". I find the quality input much more important and am content to assess my student's subject knowledge from discussions and conversations. I don't need a piece of paper.

 

I see essays not as a sole tool to demonstrate mastery, but as a skill in and of itself that has to be mastered. Thus, my kids write essays in humanities in order to learn to write essays - not because I can't discern that he really knows a lot about Napoleon.

 

Totally agree with this, though it had never occurred to me to articulate it like this. And I'm guilty of often talking about how the difference between high school and earlier grades is the ratio of output, but in truth the difference is that I didn't worry about expository writing until high school.  (That's my heresy -- I didn't use writing programs or emphasize lots of writing til the later grades.)  So yes my kids wrote "across the curriculum" through high school, but it was using those subjects as a spring board for working on different kinds of writing.

 

As for alternative kinds of output, we did it all.  And it wasn't busy work -- I had creative, outside the box kids, one of whom was especially motivated to produce anything other than a paper.  They mostly came up with their ideas though I suggested a few. Each project required research and analysis and a great deal of thought about how to best present their ideas.  Off the top of my head some projects included:

 

a WWII radio show, complete with news and music from a particular week.

 

a mythbusters-style science video on the physics behind theatrical special effects 

 

a video in the style of pharmaceutical commercials on the health benefits of coffee (I'm not kidding -- it was quite funny and was well researched.)

 

a poster presentation, complete with an oral presentation, on one of the propositions on the CA ballot

 

turning a scene from a novel into a play

 

Again, these projects were a way of harnessing interests and activities an to make academic work a little more, well, palatable. Quark, your ds might, for instance, use music as a project. Write a soundtrack for a book or a scene, or choose existing music that goes work as a sound track or a theme song. Or study the music of a period and discuss how culture of the time influenced the music. 

[quark]

Wow, Jenn, wow, wow, wow. Thank you! Yes, this is what I am looking for. :hurray: :hurray: :hurray: (this will have to do in place of a happy dance smiley, hee hee).

[Lori D.]

Totally agreeing with Jenn and Regentrude; yes we had some output, but that was not the focus. We did enough to learn how to write a solid essay and research paper, but much more of our focus was in reading/discussing together. It was clear to me where DSs were in their understanding through our daily/weekly discussions and analysis, and in all the informal conversations in the car that showed synthesis and accumulated knowledge. They also did a lot of "demonstrating learning" by applying it in their various extracurriculars and in real-life situations. :)

 

 

I think I am officially panicking now about high school. I was calm up till a few days ago, even while reading through Sparkly's thread on the general logic stage board...but now I think I'm starting to feel much more :willy_nilly:.

 

I know this really won't help, but really, if you can try and just plan the bare bones for 9th grade -- the specific credits and curricula/materials to start off with for each credit -- and then relax for now, it will be okay. And then once you start *doing* 9th grade, together you find your rhythm for how homeschooling high school looks for YOU guys, and you see how the academics and extracurriculars are going, and where, if any, tweaks or changes need to happen.

 

For me, part of the panic came from not having *done* it before, and trying to advance plan for all emergencies and possibilities -- and not only for 9th, but for all of high school.  :tongue_smilie: Learn from my experience -- that's a boat-load of wasted time, energy, and worry!  :tongue_smilie:

 

 

I wish there was a procedure here in the US where students could be assessed mainly through vivas (just the verbal assessment!). 

 

Um… isn't that what you're already doing daily/weekly as a homeschooler and discussing your subjects, and having real-life conversations?? ;) Really, you are the best one to "assess", and mostly any assessment would be are you meeting your goals to prepare your DS to be able to move into whatever the next thing will be for his life? :)

 

If you are really concerned that somehow you are now meeting "standards" (which, with your advanced DS and your hyper-responsibility, I can't see how that is at all possible! ;) ), maybe have him take a standardized test (Standford, Iowa Basic, etc.) this year to see if there are any "gaps". Or, sign up for an early PSAT this October and go into it with the attitude of "we're doing this just for grins".

 

Final thought: Even if some completely not-going-to-happen, one-ina-bazillion thing actually happens and your 9th grade year blows up… you would have LOADS of time to recover. Seriously. You are going to do fine. Your DS is going to do fine. You are both going to have a great time this next year! And all through high school! You're going to have increasingly interesting conversations. You're going to cover some fabulous books. You're going to meet some interesting new people. You're both going to be very pleasantly surprised somewhere along the line with an unexpected and really great academic or extracurricular opportunity. It's going to be great! :) Hugs, Lori D.