Parents of High School to College students ....

[nelewaf]

I am hsing my DD, 12 yrs old, 1 1/2 yrs, after public and private school through the 5th grade. We are following the WTM, and I have reviewed the methods suggested for history and LA thoroughly.

 

For those of you who have high school to college aged students, have you followed the WTM methodology? The narrations, outlining, and summaries (from both the history reading list, and the reading list of famous men/women), do you follow the WTM's schedule closely? Why or why not?

 

In retrospect, have they worked? What are you pleased with? What have you changed?

 

SWB, could you give testimony to how this has worked for your sons?

 

The narrations, outlining, and summaries - do you follow the WTM's schedule? Why or why not?

 

I totally agree that this will show my daughter how to think and evaluate. I just need to know if the experienced teachers have "tweaked" this and how? Why? History/Lit is such a passion for my daughter, she is chomping at the bit, and want to make sure when I let her run, it's in the right direction. Any info/wisdom would be appreciated. Thank You . :) (Alot!)

[JennW in SoCal]

Welcome to the boards!

 

SWB has a blog about homeschooling, which you may find interesting. There are a few posts about her own experiences as a homeschool mom and as a college professor that gets homeschool students in her classes.

 

It seems the vast majority who post on this board these days use pre-packaged curricula, most of which were not around when the WTM first came out. I don't have the recent edition of the WTM, so don't know if she does touch upon them, but there are days it seems only 4 or 5 of us are homeschooling highschoolers and NOT using programs such as Tapestry of Grace, Omnibus or several others.

 

I have used the methods laid out in the WTM as my guide to homeschooling, but have not necessarily used the materials she recommends, and certainly have not followed the daily schedules. The daily schedules were something the publisher insisted on, and she has said in articles and interviews that each family has to decide how to go about homeschooling -- that those schedules are not a MUST DO formula. I've graduated one and my second is mostly taking community college courses now.

 

What has worked:

 

Working on writing as detailed in SWB's lectures and articles. (Peace Hill Press has downloads of lectures for a small price.) I had my kids work on narrations, short research reports then essays, but have to confess to not doing outlines as it was tedious for my particular kids. I see the reason for them, but didn't do it. Writing topics were always tied to whatever we were reading, whether literature, history or science. I didn't insist on daily writing assignments, but they wrote every week, and in high school wrote one or two essays per month.

 

Tying history and literature together. I really like having my dc investigate the context of a work before they dive into reading it. History is much more real to them and it "sticks" better, and the literature is much more alive for them. I chose many titles to read that were not on the lists in the WTM as I have enjoyed creating my own courses and tailoring them to my unique teens. We've also read many classics that ARE listed there.

 

For literature analysis I've liked The Well Educated Mind and for writing I've used The Lively Art of Writing and The New Oxford Guide to Writing mostly for reference. I've not done a lot of formal grammar over the years, but it seems one of those areas that is a natural for my kids. We used MCT materials for grammar review last year.

 

Studying logic. I never had logic as a student, but it makes so much sense to study it in order to make better arguments and to be able to dissect the arguments of others. I liked the Memoria Press materials, though my ds didn't do Tradtional Logic until high school, the same year he did geometry -- it seemed a good fit.

 

The result?? My kids write well, and speak well. They can clearly articulate their opinions and logically defend them. They both know how to ask questions, know when to be careful and skeptical when facing the real world. And they are all around great young men. So yes, my particular use of the WTM has worked quite well, and I have no regrets.

 

I would say that there is nothing to lose by letting your dd loose with literature and history. If she loves it, feed her passion without feeling the need to turn each book she reads into a formal academic assignment. Don't worry about direction, don't fret about potential gaps. Choose something each week to write about, discuss everything, and she will learn and absorb so much more than you might think possible.

[Lori D.]

For those of you who have high school to college aged students, have you followed the WTM methodology?

 

 

Only somewhat.

 

But bear in mind that every student and every family situation is different.

 

For me, while WTM was a wonderful resource and introduction into homeschooling; it has just not been realistic or desireable (for me) to follow it to the letter. First, our younger DS has some mild LDs, so we've had to be far more creative and adaptive of all kinds of techniques and methods to make homeschooling work here. Second, I am not the kind of person who works well with such a strict/structured schooling format as what WTM lays out; I *must* adapt in order to keep it interesting for ME as the teacher -- like Jenn in the post above, I pretty much make our own courses (except for math, and now science in high school). Third, WTM is strictly about a certain kind of academics, and while our homeschooling philosophy embraces a goodly chunk of WTM, ultimately homeschooling has been about something much bigger than just academics for us.

 

I'm listing here what has worked for us from the WTM methodology -- but also with how we adapted it to fit our family:

 

- General organization of doing history chronologically

(However, we did it differently than the WTM schedule: we did a 6-year chronological history cycle for grades 1/2 through gr. 6/7. For grades 7/8, we took a break from history for a fantastically worthwhile focus on world culture / geography / comparative religions. For high school, we've done history periods based on DSs interests in this order: ancients; 20th century world; American; medieval world -- and it has worked out great. We have not read many of the non-fiction History Great Books (i.e., Plato, Aristotle, Marx, etc.), but have tried to read *about* the famous key people and what their philosophies, worldviews and key contributions have been -- you can only do so much, and if your DC aren't *that* into source documents, I figure it's better to skip the non-fiction works and do the Literature (since both our DSs are headed more towards media arts fields), and get the non-fiction Great Books as part of the history textbook, the documentaries, etc.)

 

- General organization of doing science one general topic per year

(Took the first six years to do: earth/astronomy; chemistry; physics; life science. For gr. 7/8, we split up DSs -- gr. 7 DS = earth science and gr. 8 DS = physical science. For high school, since Biology is such a heavy topic, we spread it out over 1.33 years, and also included a 0.5 credit of anatomy. Had DSs been interested in other sciences, we would have pursued their interests rather than go with the traditional Biology-Chemistry-Physics -- however, they have been fine with that. High school has been the first year of "formal textbook" science (up through 8th gr. we did living books, DVDs, science shows, and loads of experiments, but no formal WTM lab reports) -- sadly, Apologia Biology was NOT a good first textbook fit for us -- sucked away all enjoyment of learning and science; this year we switched to Conceptual Chem. and Conceptual Physics and back to loads of TOPS experiments -- yea, science is fun again!)

 

- Great Books/Literature

(Doing this in high school, matching more than half of the lit. with the history time period; we read aloud/discuss together; it's the highlight of our homeschooling and very enjoyable; I really see how it has honed DSs skills in analysis, logic, discussion, worldview, etc.)

 

- Formal Logic

(Done in grades 8/9, more because both DH and DSs all wanted to do it together)

 

- Latin

(Never could manage it, but we did do Latin roots for several years, which has been helpful with vocabulary and reading)

 

 

 

The narrations, outlining, and summaries - do you follow the WTM's schedule? Why or why not? ...do you follow the WTM's schedule closely? Why or why not?

 

 

We did a little narrating/outlining/summaries in the very early years -- but when you read aloud/discuss together, it's very easy to see what they comprehend. And we were lucky in that both DSs seem to have a natural knack for seeing key points in a text and narrating/summarizing, so it never seemed necessary to force them to do a skill they already had down. I am very aware this is not the case for everyone, and those are good skills to develop.

 

 

 

What are you pleased with? What have you changed?

 

 

What we're pleased with...

Because we adapted the WTM each year to fit our needs and goals, I do feel it worked for us, and I am pleased with how our DSs can think/reason, have developed good character, and are very enjoyable people to spend time with; I feel pretty certain that even after moving out, they will still keep in touch and visit because I think they enjoy us, too. I will greatly miss them as they graduate and move into the next phase of their lives, but I am very proud of them, and know they will do well.

 

 

What have we changed...

I feel that the WTM method is only about the academics of a student's development, and we were much more concerned about homeschooling and academics as one large puzzle piece in the greater overall development of our DSs. As a result, we loosened up or dropped some of the heavy WTM academics focus so we could incorporate the things we felt were very important, such as:

 

- Developing character

(Daily family devotional time throughout our homeschooling, and worldview discussions and resources in late middle school/high school)

 

- Allowing for more time to develop personal interests

(In elementary/middle school years, that meant for us allowing time for daydreaming, exploring, playing games, spending one day a week outside of academics on field trips, games, homeschool group activities, etc. Now in high school, instead of hammering the most rigorous programs, we've backed off some to allow personal discovery: 1 DS is pursuing filmmaking, the other has dabbled with a variety of computer graphics and fine arts programs, etc.)

 

- Allowing for more time to develop leadership and social skills through outside activities

(Involvement with public school sports team; homeschool group student council; volunteer hours; Youth & Government program; church youth group; etc.)

 

 

BEST of luck in your homeschooling journey! Warmest regards, Lori D.

Edited November 15, 2010 by Lori D.

[mhippler]

As someone who has come late to WTM, I have used WTM mainly to inspire my curriculum building and to find resources. I used to teach college writing and after having two homeschoolers in my freshman composition classes, I was convinced to homeschool my daughter. WTM is a great curriculum for preparing students for college, but there is no way we could follow it rigidly. My daughter's passion is also history and literature, so I've crafted a "History in the Round" curriculum that has her reading the history of Western Civilization, art, science and women. The literature selections match the history chapters (Old Testament, The Illiad, Canterbury Tales, etc.).

 

She's also taking Latin, because she plans to learn other Romance languages and it will help her understand English grammar better and help increase her English vocabulary. Logic and critical thinking skills are important across the curriculum, so she'll be working on those from here on out. I would say it's okay to pick the aspects of WTM that are important to you and merge it with your daughter's passions. There are only so many hours in a day, and I've had to back off on some of the academics as well to actually give my daughter the freedom that homeschooling is supposed to give! Allowing time to stare at the clouds is equally important in developing a well-rounded student.

[Joan in GE]

Here's a thread with a lot of info on the topic...

 

If you've followed WTM rec's closely...

 

Joan