TRISMS--Questions

[EKS]

I am considering TRISMS for high school history. I would probably add a spine or two and some whole books.

 

For those of you who have used this, what do you like or not like about it?

 

Here's a weird question: Are the worksheets all separate so that you can do some and omit others without having there be lots of unfilled in sheets? (I'm compulsive and the sight of unfilled in worksheets makes me crazy.)

 

Thanks!

[ereks mom]

Here is the review I post on the boards from time to time. I think it answers your questions. If not, PM me, as I don't visit the high school board as much as the general board these days.

 

 

The History Makers, TRISMS' overview of World History, was designed for middle school, but I've heard of people using it for high school students also. We have not used this, but we have used 3 of the high school TRISMS volumes, Discovering the Ancient World (DAW), Expansion of Civilization (EOC), and Rise of Nations (RON). For all levels of TRISMS, the teacher's guide has lesson plans (laid out for you in 2-week "grids"). The subjects covered vary slightly depending on which TRISMS volume you are using (more explanation below).

 

For literature assignments, some literature selections (poems, short stories, etc.) are included in the teacher's materials; there are also lists of suggested literature pertaining to each time period, and you would pick the ones that appeal to you. Writing assignments are keyed to IEW, meaning that the TM lists the page numbers, etc. from the IEW Structure & Style videos & book. But, even if you don't use IEW (we didn't), your child will still have plenty of writing assignments with TRISMS.

 

The first high school-level volume, DAW, covers Creation to the Middle Ages, and has 36 weeks of lessons (34 weekly units plus two research & report projects requiring one week each of class time). There are lesson plans and quizzes/tests for History, Geography, Literature, Writing, Vocabulary, Science, and (history of) Art, Music & Architecture -- everything except math & grammar. Units are arranged chronologically by civilization. For example, you begin with Creation for the first 2 weeks, then study the Sumerians & the Indus Valley civilizations the next 2 weeks, and so on.

 

IMO, there is NO WAY that you could complete all of a week's worth of TRISMS assignments in just a week! With DAW, we started out trying to do most of them (we used Apologia instead of the science portion of TRISMS), and ds got so bogged down that we had to start cutting some things. After we tweaked our approach considerably, here is where we wound up: ds did the map studies for each unit (labeling & coloring), and he read the literature & did *some* writing assignments related to the literature (but mostly we just discussed it). He did some outside reading using one or more spine books (Streams of Civilization and also BJU World History & ABeka World History) as well as historical fiction, and we read & discussed the Civilization, Art, Music, and Architecture Questionnaires. (Yes, these are all separate worksheets. You could pick & choose which ones to do, and how in-depth.) Ds researched in books and online to find information and pictures of the art, architecture, and musical instruments of each civilization, and he printed these out and put them in his coursebook. (TRISMS is all about notebooking, which the author calls making a coursebook.) There are also two projects each year; the student can choose a topic from a list in the TM and also can decide on a format (report, display, diorama, map, etc.). For evaluation (grades), ds did the end-of-unit worksheets (short answer), the Unit quizzes (fill-in-the-blank-from-a-wordbank worksheets) & the vocabulary quizzes (matching), as well as the semester tests, which include mostly short answer, some matching, mapwork & an essay based on the literature read throughout the semester. If there was something on the worksheet, quizzes, or tests that we didn't cover (science questions, for example), we simply omitted those test questions.

 

The next TRISMS course, EOC, covers Classical Greece & Rome and the Middle Ages. In addition to the history, geography, literature, writing, vocabulary, science, and history of art, music & architecture lessons, EOC also has rhetoric.

 

The third volume, RON, covers the Renaissance, Reformation, Age of Enlightenment, and Exploration & Colonization of the New World. In RON, there are no rhetoric or science lesson plans. Topics of study include Art, Music, Architecture, Geography, Literature, Writing, and Vocabulary.

 

PLEASE NOTE: My biggest complaint with TRISMS is that the American history from about 1750-1850 is not covered AT ALL. This, of course, includes the American Revolutionary period, 1750-1800! So, I wrote my own unit for this period, and I have posted my lesson plans in the Files area of the TRISMS Yahoo! group for any and all to use.

 

The fourth volume, Age of Revolutions (AOR), covers U.S. & World History from 1850 to the present. Again, American history is covered in the context of world history. Unfortunately, AOR is considerably more expensive than the previous volumes. I wanted to buy it for ds to use in his senior year, but couldn't manage the cost.

 

Instead, I came up with a "TRISMS-style" study on my own. To get started, I listed the topics I wanted to cover. Then I started choosing various works of literature, art/artists, architecture, and music/composers for the various time periods to be studied. We use various history texts and videos as a spine, and then ds reads the literature and I assign questions, study guides, and/or essays for each piece he reads (books, poetry, short stories, etc.). He researches art/artists, architecture, and music/composers and completes study guides and TRISMS-style questionnaires that I design. He also does map work (I've bought a couple of history map workbooks and CDs (Walch and others). He keeps all these materials in notebooks -- one for literature and one for history & arts-related study guides, maps & questionnaires.

 

I understand that there is to be one more TRISMS volume, for a total of 5 at the high school level. In order to complete all the high school volumes, then, (and I definitely recommend doing them *in chronological order*) you would need to start with DAW in 8th grade. I think this is very doable. In fact, my ds started with it in 7th grade and had no problem. We moved slowly with it, and only did a few units that year, and then ds did some other things with our co-op in 8th grade. We picked it back up in 9th and continued with it through 11th.

 

One final comment: I find TRISMS to be quite user-friendly. It *is* essential for the teacher-parent to read the Orientation material in the front of the TM, and after that, it's pretty smooth sailing. The few times that I have had a question regarding the program, I have e-mailed the author, Linda Thornhill, and she has responded quickly with exactly the information I needed.

Edited October 1, 2009 by ereks mom

[Kareni]

I tagged this thread Trisms. If you click on it below, you'll find some other threads.

 

Regards,

Kareni

[AlmiraGulch]

nd Vocabulary.

 

PLEASE NOTE: My biggest complaint with TRISMS is that the American history from about 1750-1850 is not covered AT ALL. This, of course, includes the American Revolutionary period, 1750-1800! So, I wrote my own unit for this period, and I have posted my lesson plans in the Files area of the TRISMS Yahoo! group for any and all to use.

 

 

 

My 8th graders is using HM now and it's going well. We'll likely continue with TRISMS through high school, starting with EOC in 9th, skipping DAW so we can spend two years on AOR.

 

That said, I share the concern about the lack of early American history and have planned to use yours (thank you!!). However, I'm not sure where to work it in. Will you please share with me how exactly, as it relates to the TRISMS progression, you included your self-made curriculum? Meaning, did you do it in addition to the other TRISMS curriculum at the corresponding time, or did you do it after you completed a volume, or what?

[EKS]

Having never actually seen TRISMS (though I recently ordered DAW, thank you all for your feedback) I'm planning to only do half of DAW (selected units) so that I can do the first half of EOC in 9th grade. Then in 10th we'll do 2nd half of EOC and 1st half of RON. In 11th, we'd do the 2nd half of RON leaving a semester of time to do early American history. Then in 12th we would do all of AOR.

 

Of course, I haven't actually *seen* the curriculum yet, so I don't really know what I'm talking about. I do know that it is extremely important to me that we cover early American history and less important that we cover the ancient civilizations.

[ereks mom]

Will you please share with me how exactly, as it relates to the TRISMS progression, you included your self-made curriculum? Meaning, did you do it in addition to the other TRISMS curriculum at the corresponding time, or did you do it after you completed a volume, or what?

 

If I remember correctly, I worked it into Rise of Nations by covering some of the units in less than 2 weeks. I never really wrote out complete lesson plans for the 1800-1850 portion, but I think we covered that part the next year, tacking it onto the beginning.