Creating requirements for courses/electives if not counting hours

[Kendall]

I would like to create a 1 semester worldview/theology/etc course for my son. In the past I have counted hours for electives, but that won’t work for this child/timing of course. Do you have suggestions? Do you have an idea of a page/per hour is reasonable for books? Or about how much time to allow per page of writing? I know that this can vary greatly; I just would like a starting point. What have you done when putting a course together based on requirements instead of hours?

Thanks,

Kendall

[mcconnellboys]

Well, by the time my older son was doing high school level work I had gauged how many pages per hour he could generally read in most types of books. So I would require that number of pages from him times the number of hours per week he was supposed to be doing the course work.

 

Likewise, I had gauged how long it generally took him to write a page long paper. So if I were requiring writing, I would allow that much time for each page I expected.

 

If you have a particular text or certain books you want completed by the end of the semester, then I would take the total number of pages and divide them by the total number of days or hours you'll have him working on this class to arrive at how many pages he should cover per day. So, for instance, if he's doing the class for an hour, three days per week, and you have 1000 pages of text you want completed, then he needs to basically cover 18-20 pages of text each day that he does the class. If you want a 2-3 page paper done each week, and that takes him about an hour, then you'd have to have more reading accomplished on the first two days of the week (27-30 pages each, in our example) to allow the last day to be devoted to writing, etc.

[Kendall]

Regena,

 

Thanks for the ideas. I hadn't thought about estimating how many pages he reads per hour in Lit, duh. That will help with the timing on books. I don't even want to think about how long it takes him to write a 2 page paper. LOL!

 

Kendall

[Anne in CA]

I usually get an overview of what I want done, and make a syllabus and see how "complete" it looks. For instance with a Worldview course I did with my ds two years ago I added up his Bible reading time and his service time with church and it didn't look like very much, so I scheduled him a meeting with his youth pastor to discuss his Bible reading and added that to make a complete course. I did add up his Bible reading time, 75 hours, and his service time at different projects, 28 hours, but sometimes hours don't show the whole picture.

[Lori D.]

For some really helpful detailed information on creating your own high school courses, I highly recommend:

- The High School Handbook: Junior & Senior High School at Home (Mary Schofield)

- High School 101: Blueprint for Success (Vicki Bently) -- $6.25 as a download from Lulu

http://www.lulu.com/product/download/high-school-101-blueprint-for-success-%28preview-edition%29/398016

 

Kendall,

Do you know what material you'd like to use? Any outside resources, CDs, podcasts, DVDs, classes, or lectures? Any time interacting with you or others in discussion? Any papers or quizzes/tests you want to include? That will help you start looking at your Worldview workload compared to other coursework.

 

 

Here is a brief overview article on evaluating what makes a high school credit from HSLDA: http://www.hslda.org/highschool/docs/EvaluatingCredits.asp

 

 

And while this is really an example of how to write up your homeschool high school courses for a transcript, it gives you a feel for how much goes into a making a course credit: http://www.houghton.edu/admission/applying/instructions/curricular.htm

 

 

For creating our own classes, I use a few very general "rule of thumb" guides:

 

Hours

- 150-180 hours = 1.0 credit

- 100-120 hours = 0.66 credit

- 75-90 hours = 0.5 credit

- 50-60 hours = 0.33 credit

- 36-45 hours = 0.25 credit

 

Textbook

I don't tend to count hours if we use a textbook -- if we've learned the material, we get 1 credit, whether it took us 50 hours or 200 hours. If we are making our own course and it has a textbook, and is of a similar length and thinking level as, say, a high school science textbook or government textbook, I use that as the guide for determining a 1 credit course -- and if we only use half of the text or it's only half as long, then it's a 0.5 credit course, etc.

 

Books

If the reading and thinking level is below our DSs level, I feel safe assigning about 40 pages a week. But especially for something like Worldview, which you have to think about/discuss, I probably wouldn't assign them more than about 25 pages a week.

 

Writing

How long does it take for your DS to write a paper for other coursework? I would use that as your baseline. For our DSs, they can handle writing for 30-45 minutes per day. So just a one-page summary, takes 1-2 days. Writing that requires research, or an essay that requires comparison, or thinking takes longer. Generally it takes a full week to get a decent 5-paragraph essay (revised, edited, final copy) here. Several weeks to get a 3-6 page paper. We are slower than many other families.

 

Eclectic Mix

I sort-of count hours and pages, but also try to throw in enough additional books, labs/activities, research papers, solo-reading, homemade quizzes/tests until it "feels" about as much as our other 1 credit courses.

 

 

In case it helps, I'm counting up hours/materials towards a 1-credit Worldview course for our DS, too, and here's what it will include:

- 75 hours of instructor lectures, 3 Worldview Academy summer leadership camps

- 15 hours of DVD lectures and follow-up discussion, The Truth Project

- 6 books (3 per semester)

- possibly 1 page summary paper on each book -- OR -- a 3-6 page essay or research paper using information from the books and other resources -- OR -- maybe have him prepare a lecture and lead a discussion on worldview for some middle school homeschoolers students

 

 

Hope something here is of help! BEST of luck -- and enjoy! -- making your own Worldview course! Warmest regards, Lori D.

[Kendall]

Thank you so much everyone! I'm now looking forward to getting a little time this evening to plan this out. Lori-thanks for sharing your writing experience. We are slow here, too and I need to pick up the pace, but I know I can't jump to what some are doing. Your pace is reasonable for him to aim at.