mama25angels Posted August 10, 2017 Share Posted August 10, 2017 Our co op is going to run for 18 weeks so homework is definitely expected as well as quizzes. Any ideas? A friend loaned me her copy of Abeka's United States history and if anyone has ideas on ways to adapt it to use, I'm all ears. Thanks for any help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JessReplanted Posted August 10, 2017 Share Posted August 10, 2017 Have you looked at Notgrass? I'm using their middle school US history for a co-op class. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harriet Vane Posted August 10, 2017 Share Posted August 10, 2017 Story of the World. I just adore this curriculum, and so do my kids. Worksheets aplenty, quizzes, activity and craft suggestions, and Jim Weiss reading aloud. What's not to like? :thumbup1: 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harriet Vane Posted August 10, 2017 Share Posted August 10, 2017 Story of the World. I just adore this curriculum, and so do my kids. Worksheets aplenty, quizzes, activity and craft suggestions, and Jim Weiss reading aloud. What's not to like? :thumbup1: Shucks--just realized this is the high school board. SOTW is too young for them. Sorry! For high school I used textbooks and wrote my own quizzes and tests and homework. One suggestion that worked fabulously well in a co-op though-- Outside of the "ordinary" history reading and assignments, for every unit I provided a list of related topics that are not normally covered in a history book. Some examples might be: --Evolution of Fashion from [date] to [date] --Kamikaze fighters compared to the RAF (Sooooo fascinating, both as history and as psychology.) --Development of the Olympics --Technology for [Era] --What's a flapper? --Groups other than Jews persecuted in WWII etc. I got the topics simply by sifting through a couple big, pictorial history encyclopedias and newspaper collections. Every topic list took me literally less than half an hour to generate. Then, the teens each chose a topic to present. We did not make this into a Huge Official Project that had to be laboriously practiced and arranged. Doing so would have killed what made this work so well. Rather, they were to spend a reasonable amount of time casually researching and then come tell the group about it. Sometimes they brought pictures, but most of the time they came to class with rough notes (like a list of facts or phrases). They were expected to understand the topic well enough to answer questions. Invariably they got interested and did achieve enough expertise to speak comfortably and knowledgeably on the topic. Even the slackers in the group ended up enjoying this and doing rather well with it. Their presentations were casual--we sat in a circle on couches, away from our official class tables where they took notes. No one took notes on the ancillary topics. We just listened and discussed for 10-15 minutes per topic. Doing the ancillary topics inevitably sharpened their research skills in a gentle, cheerful fashion and provided lots of ad hoc synthesizing of history in general. If you do this, make sure they check more than one source, and talk to them about using reliable sources. We don't want a simple regurgitation of the encyclopedia. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mama25angels Posted August 10, 2017 Author Share Posted August 10, 2017 Have you looked at Notgrass? I'm using their middle school US history for a co-op class. Can you give me an idea of how you do it? Do you have them read and answer the questions throughout the week, discuss the homework in class and then do the tests? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JessReplanted Posted August 10, 2017 Share Posted August 10, 2017 (edited) Can you give me an idea of how you do it? Do you have them read and answer the questions throughout the week, discuss the homework in class and then do the tests? This will be my first year actually teaching history, but I'm excited about it. The kids will do the reading at home. We will have class discussion about what they read. It's a middle school class so I plan to have them work on note taking/ outlining during class time too. We are also incorporating one period fiction book per semester. That is the plan anyway. Edited August 10, 2017 by JessReplanted Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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