What "counts" as honors/gifted/high school level?

[beachnut]

I know, as homeschoolers, we determine what we teach our kids. But as I approach 8th grade, I'm wondering if some of our courses (language arts, history) would "count" as high school credit? For example, for 8th grade language arts, I'll be using MCT's series to teach grammer/writing/vocab and I'll also be teaching American literature (to coincide with our study of American History). How does what I'm doing differ from a regular/honors/gifted 8th grade class in public school? How can I "prove" that my homeschool language arts approach is on par with what my DS would learn in public school at the high school level (for 9th grade)? Is it a matter of depth in what I teach, the assignments I give my DS, the curriculum we use, the books he reads, etc.? Any advice?

 

Lisa

[AnitaMcC]

I know, as homeschoolers, we determine what we teach our kids. But as I approach 8th grade, I'm wondering if some of our courses (language arts, history) would "count" as high school credit? For example, for 8th grade language arts, I'll be using MCT's series to teach grammer/writing/vocab and I'll also be teaching American literature (to coincide with our study of American History). How does what I'm doing differ from a regular/honors/gifted 8th grade class in public school? How can I "prove" that my homeschool language arts approach is on par with what my DS would learn in public school at the high school level (for 9th grade)? Is it a matter of depth in what I teach, the assignments I give my DS, the curriculum we use, the books he reads, etc.? Any advice?

 

Lisa

 

What I base it upon is how much is to be done/covered and what quality of work I am looking for. Also it depends on what level the curriculum is for.

 

Whn my going-into-10th grade twins did Accelerated Language Arts in 8th grade ps.... they used 9th grade materials and did the work that regular 9th grade English 9 were using. So I will be count it as accelerated (honors) 8th grade language arts or as 1 highschool credit of English 9.

 

It depends on what your future plans are IMO.

 

For my Dd she plans to do 5 1/2 credits of high school English/L.A.; she does not "need" high school credit for the L.A. in 8th grade. She will have:

1 credit English 10,

1/2 credit World Literature,

1 credit Advanced Composition,

1 credit Themed Literature,

2 credits of CC Rhetoric I and II.

 

Her twin brother wants to graduate high school by end of 10th grade, so he does need it to count as credit. He has taken the SAT in 6th and 8th grades and scored well, as well as took the CC placement test and scored easily into college freshman courses. So he does not "need" more langauge arts, but he is weak in actual writing papers following MLA format, so that is our focus for him in 10th grade. He will have:

1 credit English 9

1 credit English 10

1 credit Advanced Composition

1 credit Themed Literature

[Crimson Wife]

With the humanities, it's really hard to prove high school credit unless your child is enrolled in an outside course. It's not like math & science where there is fairly broad agreement as to what is and what isn't a high school level course.

[TravelingChris]

I didn;t count any humanities courses before ninth grade on the high school transcripts. FOr high school, I consider a class honors if it is done at a higher level than would be done normally or extra work is done. So my middle's ninth grade English was honors since she was the youngest in the class and the class was designed for 11th and 12th graders.

[Nan in Mass]

This doesn't help you, particularly, but on my son's transcript, I called most of the classes taken at the community college honours. I also called anything that required extensive travel honours. By extensive, I mean a month or more out of the country, or three months doing something interesting in the country. I don't think it matters whether you give 8th grade credit or not unless it is something you need four years of that you wish to stop studying before the end of high school. If you are wanting to graduate early, then the easiest thing to do might be just to relabel 8th grade and call it 9th grade. Just be careful if you do. You don't want to have to change your mind and demote your child when they reach 12th grade because you don't think they are ready to go to college yet.

-Nan

[asta]

As far as high school, I just look at the books. If they are high school level books, they are high school level classes. And that is "normal". If they are college level books, that is "honors". Not "AP", as that is a total pain in the arse, but "honors".

 

And if anyone wants to question his transcript, they can look at his booklist.

 

 

a

[Nan in Mass]

This is slightly more difficult if you are doing something like great books with TWEM for English, but a booklist should still help significantly. If most of the literature on the list is high level classics, lots of them, then I would think that would help colleges to believe the honours label. Textbooks with titles like Biology, which don't contain the word college in them, could have parenthesis next to them saying college level, in case the person screening the transcript doesn't happen to recognize the author. It is easy enough to send a partial reading list with one's transcript, school profile, and councilor's recommendation. Sending course descriptions is another option, but not all colleges want to wade through lots of paperwork. Reading lists are shorter.

-Nan

[EKS]

This is an interesting question. It's pretty easy to define high school level for math, science, and foreign language--use high school (or college) level materials and require the output dictated by those materials and there's your high school course. History and English are harder to pin down. A good first step would be to use high school or college level materials, but you need to be sure you are requiring high school level output as well. And you also need to define what level of high school level output. Sure, my 8th grader was producing high school level output on some level, but was it honors/high level or average level? Since I have no experience with high school students other than my own, I have no idea.

 

I'm sure this was somewhat less than helpful.

[Nan in Mass]

That is why I only designated honours things that were done outside the house or things which I have watched adults fail to do. It is also why I don't grade. If I graded, I would have to know what they ought typically to be capable of and compare my son to that. I have no idea what other 9th graders do. I can't even compare my children because they are so different. All I can do istry to choose input that challenges them some but not too much, and then urge them to work as hard as they can on their output. Sometimes I wish I could look at papers from all subjects for each grade in high school and get some idea of what a normal range of output looks like. And sometimes, I think that it wouldn't make any difference even if I knew, because we can't really do any better than we are doing. I suppose it might help if I could show my son what his peers are doing if he were doing slightly sub par work. And I suppose it might help me to know where I am failing completely and we need to outsource, or to know where I need to try something different. Standardized testing doesn't help much because it is a test and neither of mine test evenly across subjects at their normal output level, and because it doesn't test the normal essay questions/paper/show your math work type output.

-Nan

-Nan

[beachnut]

Thanks for all the replies. I guess there is not really a cut-and-dry answer for this one. I'm just unsure if I'll be covering American literature again exclusively, since we'll be covering Ancient-Modern History & Literature over the next few years, and I wanted college admissions officers to see that my son did read, discuss and write about great American classics. Maybe I'll just count the literature portion of the class as a .5 credit English class called something like Survey of American Literature.

[Truscifi]

That is why I only designated honours things that were done outside the house or things which I have watched adults fail to do. It is also why I don't grade. If I graded, I would have to know what they ought typically to be capable of and compare my son to that. I have no idea what other 9th graders do. I can't even compare my children because they are so different. All I can do istry to choose input that challenges them some but not too much, and then urge them to work as hard as they can on their output. Sometimes I wish I could look at papers from all subjects for each grade in high school and get some idea of what a normal range of output looks like. And sometimes, I think that it wouldn't make any difference even if I knew, because we can't really do any better than we are doing. I suppose it might help if I could show my son what his peers are doing if he were doing slightly sub par work. And I suppose it might help me to know where I am failing completely and we need to outsource, or to know where I need to try something different. Standardized testing doesn't help much because it is a test and neither of mine test evenly across subjects at their normal output level, and because it doesn't test the normal essay questions/paper/show your math work type output.

-Nan

-Nan

 

I score tests through Pearsons in the spring (the ones where a person has to score it because it is an essay or show your work type question), and it has given me a pretty good idea of the range of output at least for the levels I have scored. I have to say I find it rather depressing work because well over half the items I score are always at the very bottom of the scoring guide.

 

Based on that experience, I don't think you should worry about comparing to his peers. If you were going to try to compare him to anything at all, I would try looking at a syllabus for the same or similar course from a college or university and use that as a guide for high school honors.

 

Of course, my ds is 6, so what do I know :tongue_smilie:

[jeri]

She wants the opportunity to "graduate early" but honestly, I'm not sure what she would mean by that (nor would I plan to send her away for an undergrad program at age 16! We are in a little different situation than others in that we live overseas so CC is not an option right now.

 

Next year she is doing the following:

 

**Alg 2 (she's halfway through right now) and either Geom or Number Theory (AOPS)--So, I will count math as 1/2 +1/2 (Alg 2 + theory) or 1-1/2 (Alg 2 + geom)

**German 2 as 1 credit (OK State higfh school course, so it's pretty obvious)

**Latin 2 as 1 credit (she's been doinjg Latin forever and the tutor I hired last year things she's done 1-2 years of high school Latin--I will revisit this with her before school starts in Sept)

**Apology Chem as 1 credit (she wants to take AP chem at the high school next year)

**Logic I and 2 as 1 credit (MP)--use as high school elective

**Omnibus + homemade Ancient History as 1 credit

**English as 1 credit (R&S 8 but since I think this is well above most US English courses, plus she will be doing literary analysis/writing using the Omnibus books, I think that this works)

 

*I* would appreciate any feedback on this too! I think it's a tricky questkion and I wouldn't even thing about it if she was officially in 9th, but the "problem" is that she isn not! If colleges don't think that all this flies for high school courses, I'm still pretty positive I can count the math, German, Chem as credits, which is still better than nothing in 8th!

 

On the other hand, I think it's important to sort of plan out your child's high school career. My plans for her are to replace logic with US history next year and pretty mcuh continue along with the "next thing." I am trhying to gifure out how to add such things as civics (1/2 credit), art (1/2), or anything "fun" if we keep on the same track. BTW, she currently thinks she wants to go into schence/math and go to MIT or Harvardx.

 

Any wise input for here? (no, Im not trying to hijack this thread!)

 

Sorry for any and all typos--I'm doijng this while watching th eWorld Cup! (US against Algeria) Go USA!

 

Jeri

[beachnut]

Maybe I'll just count the literature portion of the class as a .5 credit English class called something like Survey of American Literature.

 

This is really an off-shoot of my original question, but I wanted to share a fantastic website that will help me tremendously when I teach my son American Literature. It is http://www.neabigread.org/ created by the The National Endowment for the Arts. It includes tons of free materials, including reader and teacher guides with language arts lessons and activities, radio programs, video profiles, and information about book authors. It covers about 2-3 dozen classic books, such as "The Great Gatsby," "A Farewell to Arms," "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," "The Grapes of Wrath," etc.

 

Sorry if this is off-topic from my original post, but I wanted to share this wonderful resource.

[Nan in Mass]

Very cool! Thank you!

[ouzel]

One of my sons just finished 8th grade and some of his work was definitely high school level (Alg II). I will probably do a transcript by subject rather than by grade level, so that will give me some freedom. A friend of mine did this and it worked out great for them.