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For those who keep grades/attendance...?


eksargent
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Attendance...what is your approach? Do you plan your school days at the beginning of the year to make certain you meet the requirement? Are you flexible...if something fun comes up on a random Tuesday, do you stick to the schedule or hit the door running? What "counts" as a school day? (I know laws are different for everyone.) If you just get in 1 subject...is that a day?

 

Grades...if you are required to submit grades, how do you handle subjects that are not tested. An example, Galloping the Globe or English From The Roots Up. I want their "report card" to reflect that these are part of their studies, but I'm not sure how to do that. "A" for effort?

 

I'm trying to not make this more difficult that it should be, I just need a plan.

 

I would love to hear what works for you!

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Guest indianagirl

:) I'm not required to keep grades, but here's how I do attendance. I print out an attendance sheet from DonnaYoung.org and put an x next to each date as we do it. When we get to 180 we can quit or finish what we're doing depending on me. We are pretty flexible with days off due to health issues mainly, but try to get at least 3 or 4 weeks off in a row in the summer. I count a day of school if we get somewhere around half of the things planned done. We typically make the other half up the next day in those subjects we missed. Or, if I only get say 2 things done one day, I'll try to do 3 or 4 things on the weekend and count it as one school day.

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Attendance...what is your approach? Do you plan your school days at the beginning of the year to make certain you meet the requirement? Are you flexible...if something fun comes up on a random Tuesday, do you stick to the schedule or hit the door running? What "counts" as a school day? (I know laws are different for everyone.) If you just get in 1 subject...is that a day?

 

Grades...if you are required to submit grades, how do you handle subjects that are not tested. An example, Galloping the Globe or English From The Roots Up. I want their "report card" to reflect that these are part of their studies, but I'm not sure how to do that. "A" for effort?

 

I'm trying to not make this more difficult that it should be, I just need a plan.

 

I would love to hear what works for you!

Report cards don't usually show instructional materials used. An elementary report card could have "Geography;" English From the Roots up would be "Vocabulary."

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I am way too rigid to not finish any of our assignments. So....

 

Since I schedule 180 days worth of school, the 180 has to be completed by the end of the school "year". We make up sick days, Dr./Dentist days, weird stuff coming up days. We'll take the time off if we need to, but we make up the days. Things are a little looser for K/1st grade since the workload is fairly light and can be easily caught up on without making up days. I take attendance with Homeschool Tracker Plus. I keep grades with the same program, but only for subjects which are easy to grade. Basically if there is no test booklet, I don't keep grades. I keep grades for Grammar, Spelling, Science, Latin and Math. I'm not required to do any of this. I just like to. I'm the type of person who has to keep myself accountable or it won't get done. I keep attendance so I am not tempted to cancel school too often on account of a messy house, a busy day, or a tired mama. I keep grades so I can point to something concrete and say, "She's making progress." or "Maybe we ought to review a bit before we move on to the next unit..."

Edited by Shelly in the Country
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One suggestion would be something like our school district does. They use not proficient-1, developing-2, proficient-3, and advanced-4 on report cards through elementary grade 5. They do not give letter grades until middle school. They also use N-needs improvement, S-satisfactory, and O-outstanding for participation and things like organization, cooperation, leadership and the like. That way the subjects/studies are listed but you don't have to give a letter "grade".

 

I also use the donnayoung.org attendance, we just X the days we complete school work.

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We don't keep grades but are required to have 180 days. I'm pretty liberal on what I count as a day. This summer we've been doing mostly reading only and I don't count that, but if we add another subject I do count it.

 

Also I counted our vacation days. Two days at the beach were spent learning how to boogie board, one day he played golf with Dad, and one day we visited an museum. That would be PE and history. :D

 

With one child we have some flexibility in our schedule and will take off for "wellness days" - well we don't feel like doing school today. However as ds gets older I do find that sticking to a set schedule is better for our academics, so we don't take off quite so much.

 

We always end up with more than 180 days of school.

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I do plan out what days we will "do school" versus take a break.

 

The only things for which I have a full 180 days/36 weeks planned out are literature, history, and writing, and those are all done as weekly things versus daily, especially history. So for us, a minimum day would have 30 minutes of writing before we went anywhere (which could be done by 7:30 or 8 am), and then reading while we're in the car. That's it! I'd probably try to play something semi-educational (podcast or something) while in the car, too.

 

So that's our *minimum* day - we have enough leeway to have 10-15 of those over the course of the year.

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I keep attendance by marking on a calender each day we do. I number them as I go (Day 1, Day 2, etc). I start early (we just started this week) so there is lots of flex time for days off. I count it a school day if we do all the required subjects of a normal day. Every once in a long while if we have 2 days where there's a little bit going on, but still a little time for school work, I will do 2 half-days (half the days work one day, half the next). I count the 2 days as one school day. HTH!

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I keep attendance by marking on a calender each day we do. I number them as I go (Day 1, Day 2, etc)...

 

By the time we get to Day 180, I know I have met my state's requirement.

 

I don't distinguish btw. 1/2 days and full days. Anytime we do school or have a field trip I count that as a day. Yes, that means there are some curricula we don't finish by Day 180, but I'm okay with that. We work a couple of days per week during the summer to finish them up (and even with that, I'm flexible).

 

For report cards: I use a pre-printed homemade report card (link is probably on hubby's computer, if you'd like it, pls PM me). I only fill in the core subjects, give a grade, and mark the section for "attendance" for 180 days. I submit this with my letter of intent to homeschool for the coming school year (again, in accordance w/state's requirements).

 

I also try to keep some kind of reading log for each child, but this has become harder as they have gotten older and are reading more books. I gave "assigned" reading (one book a month of my choosing) and saved those lists for my own reference.

 

HTH!

Edited by Vanna
Wanted to add "report cards" comment
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Attendance...what is your approach? Do you plan your school days at the beginning of the year to make certain you meet the requirement? Are you flexible...if something fun comes up on a random Tuesday, do you stick to the schedule or hit the door running? What "counts" as a school day? (I know laws are different for everyone.) If you just get in 1 subject...is that a day?

 

I do set up a tentative plan, based on my dh's days off (supposedly every other Monday...it's pointless to do school on his days off - he's worse than the kids!:tongue_smilie: ), holidays, etc. At least that's what I'm doing next year, because THIS year, here we are at the end of July, and we are going to have to go full-speed ahead until Aug. 14, and even THEN we'll be a couple days short.:001_huh:

 

BUT, yes, if something does come up, I forego school. I just make sure I have enough time on the summer side of school that I CAN make up that day.;)

 

Here if most of our stuff gets done, I count it as a day. Otherwise I count it as a half day.

 

(Our laws here are 172 days of an average of 4 hours per day.)

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