Suggestions From College Freshman

[rieshy]

I asked my son, who has just finished all his freshman mid-terms, what I could do differently with his younger siblings in order to make their transition from home school to college easier.

 

His main suggestion was that I should have his siblings take their tests sitting in chairs at desks without letting them get up and move around. He also suggested that I give strict time limits in which the test must be completed.

 

I had to laugh- my son always took tests lounging on a sofa or moving between the sofa and a comfortable arm chair. Evidently he's found it difficult to learn to concentrate on a test while bound to a tiny desk:)

 

Anyway, food for thought. Anyone else have suggestions from their older children about making changes to their home school?

[emubird]

My oldest has been advising her younger sister not to take AP tests. She thinks they're a bother and not worth much. She gets a lot more out of taking the actual class.

 

I don't completely agree with her, but I can kind of see where she's coming from.

 

She is in favor of dual enrollment classes.

 

The big thing she's noticing, though, is how little she's noticing having been homeschooled. She seems to fit right in.

[Capt_Uhura]

I love reading these threads! Looking at how much kids bounce around, get up every 5min, I wonder how they survived in PS. The oldest went K-2 and the middle only for K but still I wonder how they survived.

[Cedarmom]

I second the timed tests. We did these very rarely. Now my son is having to learn how to budget his time on his tests, I wish we had practiced that more in high school.

 

On the up side though, he figured out his own answer to sitting at the desk. He commutes from home, and last time he stopped at a bus stop futher from school so he had a chance for a brisk walk. Then he had the movement which helps him think, but was able to sit in a desk at quiz time.

[jld]

I love reading these threads!

 

Yes, thank you so much for starting this!

[Alyce]

She said I should definitely do dual enrollment. She found when she got to school that a lot of the other freshman where having a hard time adjusting to college level work. They couldn't keep track of their time very well and several had commented to her that they were used to being reminded several times when the test would be or when a paper was do and they were also used to getting to redo their mistakes. She said that as they get into high school it would be better to just give them their grade based on the first test they took and then if you wanted them to correct the problems let them do that. She also thanked me for the way I let her be responsible for her dual enrollment courses. I didn't follow behind her and check when such and such was do and continually remind her about things. I just gave her some advice here and there and left the rest up to her. So it made her learn how to be more accountable for her stuff so when she got to college she already knew how the classroom worked and only needed to get used to the social end. She said many of her fellow freshman were really stuggling to stay afloat because they had been so "coddled"

 

She also said she'd never take another online course. She found them to be uninteresting because there was very little discussion. She much preferred learning face to face. I guess that's true for her. Her grades for her freshman year were much higher than the grades she had gotten for her online classes.

[Photo Ninja]

My dc said that one of the most practical things was that I made them write timed essays. Many of their classes include timed essay tests and they said they were well prepared for them. Many of the other students had difficulty writing a well formatted, content heavy essay in a short time.

 

My dc also said that they are able to handle organizing their time and remembering assignments because I gave them work for at least one week at a time, and a due date for , and due dates for longer assignments. They were responsible to complete the assignments and ask for help when they needed it. They have friends in college who struggle with planning their time and working from a syllabus to remember when assignments are due and are just now learning to estimate how long it will take to complete the assignments.

 

Taking college courses while in high school is another plus. My dc said they were already used to course formats, using a syllabus, and having courses only once or twice per week. They already worked out strategies for succeeding.

[Anna]

This is a re-post of a message I posted a year ago. One of my main goals with writing in high school was to prepare my kids for college writing so this is specifically about writing skills. My oldest dd is now a college senior, her fourth year in Honors Program.

 

This is what she had to say:

 

You want me to dig up my college freshman writing assignments? If a description from memory suffices, then...

 

French - no real writing assignments. Maybe 1 paragraph descriptions of myself, my friends, my house, etc. (in French, obviously).

Biology - no papers, just filling out lab forms.

History - multiple little reading responses. I recall a 1-page minimum. It was just to make sure we kept up with the reading; they weren't even graded. Dr. ------ just counted them as participation points.

Spreadsheets - no papers.

Art Appreciation - three 2-3 page papers responding to specific pieces of art at different venues; basically a free-write on how we felt about what we saw.

American Government and Politics - little outlines to show we were reading and three 2-3ish page media analysis papers (very light research: just comparing different media outlets)

Intro Psychology - one 3-4 page paper that was drawn strictly from the text (no research; just regurgitation)

Intro to Information Lit - no papers. This was the class that prepared you to write research papers (see below).

Algebra - no papers

World's Living Religions - one 10-page, research-intensive paper. NOTE: This is typically a junior/senior class. My advisor suggested I take it because she felt I was ready for it writing-wise.

 

To sum it up, for first year, 100-level courses, the writing was not at all intensive and barely research-based. They were mostly designed to make sure we were working and start getting us used to writing papers. Second year jumped into research, sooooo...

 

Based on my personal experience as a student and a TA, there are two essential components of preparation for college writing

• Familiarization

o Know HOW to research. This is strictly mechanics. Know how to pick a topic, formulate an outline, find academic sources, when/how to cite sources.

o Know the college's resources. If this isn't covered in a tour/general education requirement class, go to the library and ask a librarian to show you what options you have for research: databases, full-text online journals, microforms, bounds, periodicals, books, interlibrary loans, etc. This will be how you find information for a paper. NOTE: Ask a librarian, not a circulation assistant. Circ assistants won't know/remember everything.

o Know what's academic! Most professors do not consider encyclopedic entries as scholarly, nor things from publications like TIME / Newsweek.

o Know when to cite. Actually, my advice is to cite the bejeebers out of papers: professors have become sharks about plagarism and if you're not extreeeemely careful, you could wind up in the dean's office looking at suspension/expulsion.

• Organization

o Know how to organize your research process, your information, and your paper. This is CRUCIAL. I can't tell you how many papers I've seen (from peers and mentorees) that ramble all over the place: they start a thought, leave it, and sometimes come back to poke at it once more towards the end of a paper. It makes for very incoherent reading. Come up with a system that keeps you organized and on target once you start your paper. That's my two cents worth.

[Miss Marple]

DS1 was home once when the other boys were working their algebra/geometry problems. I have forever harped on them to "show your work" so that they can go back to see where they had a problem. DS told them that they better learn to do it now or they would suffer in college. His reason: you can get at least partial credit even if you get the wrong answer.

 

They're still not showing their work regularly....