If you use a text book for a course...

[Hunter's Moon]

do you generally go through the whole book, or do you pick and choose like teachers do at school?

 

I will be taking an Ancient History course and I will be using the textbook-Ancient History: Patterns of Civilization.

 

http://www.amazon.com/World-History-Patterns-Civilization-Beers/dp/0139638857/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274295086&sr=1-1

 

There are 37 chapters, so I suppose I could do about 1 chapter a week, and throw in one chapter towards the end of the year.

 

Also, any Ancient History project ideas?

 

Thanks

[AnitaMcC]

do you generally go through the whole book, or do you pick and choose like teachers do at school?

 

I will be taking an Ancient History course and I will be using the textbook-Ancient History: Patterns of Civilization.

 

http://www.amazon.com/World-History-Patterns-Civilization-Beers/dp/0139638857/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274295086&sr=1-1

 

There are 37 chapters, so I suppose I could do about 1 chapter a week, and throw in one chapter towards the end of the year.

 

Also, any Ancient History project ideas?

 

Thanks

 

For my twins I plan for them finish the book.

 

But it also depends on the subject and their future goals.

 

Dd is not going to be a math/science major (she is going into music) so I won't worry if she doesn't finish the last few chapters in the math and science books.

 

Ds is planning to be an astrophysicist... he is to complete all the math and science books but I may ease up on the other subjects if time is an issue.

 

I may let them skip some sections if they are struggling to understand the material and I know they do not need to learn it right now (For example Ds is having troubles with understanding inverted matrices and 3D graphing... he will cover it again later at CC next year so I expect his professor can explain it better than I can).

 

I allow them to skim over some chapters if we have plans to cover the material again later. For example they are doing World History right now: The United States sections I just let them read but I don't test them or make them do any homework on it. This is because we will be doing U.S. History next year in depth.

[Guest Cheryl in SoCal]

If that is the text for the class I have them finish it completely. If it's a text that's being used as a reference, they use it as dictated by the curriculum and do not complete it. For instance, we will complete our Biology text but will not complete the Western Civilization text we use with our history curriculum because it's used as a resource. I hope that makes sense.

[hoosiermom]

I was a public high school teacher before I was a homeschool mom. High school math and science textbooks used in public schools ALWAYS have more chapters than can realistically be covered in a school year. It was up to the teacher (or the school's curriculum director) to decide which chapters must be completed in order to meet the school's and/or state's learning objectives. I would say the situation is the same for other subjects as well--I've never been associated w/ a school as a teacher or student where an entire history book has been completed.

 

I have found, however, as a homeschool mom, that most books written specifically for homeschoolers are meant to be completed. My dd just finished high school biology (w/ a traditional homeschool text) and we did the entire textbook. However, we're using Dolciani for Alg 1, which is a textbook originally written for public schools, and we will not be doing the last chapter (because of time constraints and because I know that material will be covered in Alg 2). For world history for next year, we're focusing on Renaissance thru Age of Exploration, so I will choose the chapters in our history text accordingly.

 

There are some subjects where it seems more crucial to cover the entire book (foreign language, for example). I've learned not to stress out if we don't cover the last 1 or 2 chapters in spelling or if I leave out 1 novel in a list of 7 or 8 for a lit class.