Survived our first eval!

[Carrie12345]

Ds has been officially recognized as "a bright boy with a great future", having "demonstrated... that he is excelling in a comprehensive home education program."

 

I am so happy to have found a very pleasant evaluator who not only arranged to help us out on 6/30, but also has small children who entertained my younger 3!

 

And I'm thrilled that we don't have to see her again for another year, lol!

[4kiddies]

Care to share what you included in your portfolio? We will have to do our first eval next year--we are in PA as well. Also, could you please pm me your evaluators name? I'm not that far from you I think.

 

Thanks!

[Carrie12345]

Care to share what you included in your portfolio? We will have to do our first eval next year--we are in PA as well. Also, could you please pm me your evaluators name? I'm not that far from you I think.

 

Thanks!

 

I'll definitely PM you her info! She was great!

 

Mine seemed pretty thick, but it was fairly basic. I had tab dividers for the log, then for each subject.

 

In the log tab, I had a list of books for each subject (at least, the subjects we used books for), and then my messy daily lists of the subjects/books we covered each day. Lots of abbreviations, which is why I included a master list. I only put the titles - no authors or publishers or anything like that.

 

For each subject, I wrote a brief paragraph about what was accomplished. For instance, for Math, I wrote that ds demonstrated understanding of all of the concepts covered, but still makes mistakes due to his resistance to showing work. In just about every subject, I mentioned the fact that we used a lot of conversation, documentaries, games, etc., but I didn't really specify because I'm not required to. :tongue_smilie:

 

Keep in mind that ds just finished "6th grade".

 

She told me ahead of time that she'd like to see a lot of math, so I included about 6 Saxon tests plus his final to point out all of the different concepts covered.

 

For English, I included approx. 2 grammar worksheets, 2 vocabulary pages (she asked about spelling, and I told her we just used vocab for that), 1 book summary/report, 1 short essay, and a... well... "freestyle report" he had written about baseball, because I felt it reflected his personality well. She asked about reading comprehension questions. Ds told her he did do them, but I hadn't included them because they were mostly done verbally, with a few answers written down in notebooks that wouldn't make sense without the student book on hand.

 

History- an outline, 2 SOTW tests, 2 SOTW maps, 2 worksheets from his book about the Constitution, and a picture from the British history play our homeschool group performed.

 

Science- I included his lab safety sheet, 2 worksheet pages, a lab report, a 1 page summary on genetics.

 

Art/Music- In my summary, I had written that ds plays piano/keyboard mostly by ear, but does practice scales and what not. I only included a few drawings because - get this - we can't find our box of art projects!!!!

 

Health/Safety/PE - I wrote that he played baseball, health was mostly through conversation, and that we attend the annual XYZ Township fire dept. open house and practiced our fire drill.

 

I also included his Latin final, 2 workbook pages from Logic Countdown, and a short essay on one of the chapters in Critical Thinking Book 1.

 

Her form DOES include a spot for "socialization experiences", which irks me on principle, but it wasn't a big deal. In the report, she mentions that he played baseball, spends time with our homeschool group, plays video games and goes to the library.

 

Written out, it looks like A LOT, but it was really a matter of spending about an hour writing quick summaries (which aren't even required), and making sure I had filed everything in the right spot. Most of the people around me spent WEEKS "perfecting" their portfolio in crazy detail. I was very nervous about how mine would look in comparison, but I stuck to my guns.

 

The whole thing still needs to be cleared by the superintendent of course, but we were given a glowing report!

[NanceXToo]

Glad it went well for you :) I'm in PA, too, we just did our eval this past Monday, but it was our second time using our guy. Ours is in the Lyons/Lyon Station area which is a bit of a hike for me but it's only once a year, and what I like about him is that he is affiliated with a small private religious school, and he said that at the end of our homeschool career, as long as we've continued to use him as an evaluator and meet the requirements of however many "credits" you need for each subject etc, that he can issue a "real" diploma to our daughter at the end, which I really like. (And he knows my family is Jewish, not Christian, and has no problem with that, which is a plus for us. So she'll have a diploma from a private religious school, but that's fine by me). And we don't have to use any particular curriculum to get those credits, we can cover them however we normally would. My plan as of now (with my daughter only entering fifth grade) is to just continue using Oak Meadow.