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Please - Trisms users - can you answer a few questions?


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My boys will be using Discovering the Ancient World next year in 9th grade.

 

The Trisms website says this course is worth 7.25 credit hours, calculated using NARS' idea of a credit hour (80 hours), which I think is about .5 a credit hour.

 

How much time does DAW actually take your child to complete in an average week?

 

Do you think that assigning this course 1 credit in Ancient History and 1 credit in English is more realistic?

 

I plan to count 150 hours as a credit hour, and I do not want my kids' transcripts cluttered with 1/8 of a credit here, and a 1/4 of a credit there with titles like "Survey of Science History". I think I'd just fold the science history component into the biology course the boys will be taking and count that whole course as 1 credit for science.

 

We are not using IEW -- my kids will take Composition I from Write at Home, instead. Plus we are beefing up English with A Beka's grammar program (just the grammar part) and with vocabulary.

 

How do you actually calculate credit hours for Trisms, and what are the course titles you use?

 

Thank you for your help! I have to get this information together for our school superintendent before I can get permission to homeschool next year.

 

RC

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Right there with you, RC--my son will be using DAW next year. My plan, so far...<heh, heh, heh> is to use Carnegie Units (120 hours) more or less (up to about 150 hours, depending on the course):

 

World History (1 CU)

English (1 CU)--combo of Ancient Literature, IEW, some grammar/punctuation review (Cozy Punctuation, Cozy Grammar, Language Lessons for the Secondary Child, Word Roots software, Editor in Chief)* (may add Shakespeare from LL, but don't know if that would be overkill...we'll see how first semester goes...)

 

Clutter <grin>:

Music History and Performance (1 CU; since he practices classical viola daily)

Art History (.5 CU)

Geography (.5 CU; since we augment with additional activities)

 

Other:

Biology (1 CU) (Abeka, with microscope and labs and DVDs--no way am I watching the fetal pig)

Latin I (1 CU; finish Latin Prep 1, halfway through LP2)

Algebra II (1 CU; the last set of three modules from Videotext) (if he finishes early, we'll start Geometry...)

German I (1 CU; Rosetta Stone)

PE (.5 CU; cumulative through the years, as he focuses on travel hockey, personal training, tennis <for fun>, travel baseball)

 

Summer courses:

Computer Applications (.5 CU)--before 9th grade, MS Word (maybe PP); before 10th grade (web design, Excel)

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My plan, so far (tearing my hair out here):

 

English 1.25 credits (Ancient lit, Comp I, A Beka grammar, vocab, the Beautiful Feet Ancient History through Lit guide)

(our school district requires 1.25 English credits = 5 hrs/wk)

 

Ancient History 1 credit

 

Biology 1.25 credits (required by our district = 5 hrs/wk): High School Biology in Your Home, plus whatever extras offered by Trisms, plus labs.

 

P.E. .5 credit (required). One DS takes karate 1.5 hours a week and will join the other DS at the athletic club. I plan to have fun with this and torture the boys by having them take a month each of various classes, like yoga and aerobics, plus teach them to play racquetball, and encourage them to actually swim in the pool.

 

Computer Fundamentals 1 credit: This will be typing and learning programming fundamentals with Alice (Dick Baldwin's online tutorial), plus (hopefully) learning to use word processing and spreadsheet programs like a pro.

 

Foreign Language 1 credit (required). These 2 boys do not want to learn a foreign language, period. So they will probably take Spanish.

 

Algebra I, 1 credit: Life of Fred, plus Keys to Algebra, and ongoing work with Singapore math word problems.

 

I'm not thrilled with where Trisms leaves off in DAW, so I am thinking about buying Expansion of Civilization and having the kids do 500 B.C. through 500 A.D. this year, too. That may be biting off more than the boys can chew, so I'll decide that around Christmastime. I don't have the Trisms materials yet (they will be one the way soon), so I've got no idea what I'm talking about.

 

One of my boys is going to PS for 9th grade, plus taking German I using the University of Oklahoma online course. It should be interesting to compare how much actual education he gets compared to his triplet brothers who are homeschooled.

 

RC

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I'll have to check into Alice--I want my son to get off YouTube this summer (actually, he alternates with Age of Empires, which I encourage...) I'm surprised that 1.25 credits = 5 hours/week, because that's what we were planning to do for English and History...I wonder if this is typical of other, more experienced highschool homeschoolers' experiences? (I'm going to get another cup of coffee after that sentence!)

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Well, that's for our local high school. They have supplemented the usual 1 hour course with an additional .25 credit hours of writing instruction. Class time = 176 hours + 108 minimum homework hours, for a total of 284 hours of student work per year in English.

 

A one credit hour course takes 141 hours of class time plus 86 hours of homework, for a total of 227 hours student work per credit. So a typical 1 credit hour course meets for 4 hours a week.

 

Our high school schedules on a 7-day rotation, with 68-minute periods. The English class meets 5 times during that rotation. One major reason I dislike our high school is that the 7-day rotation (days A-G) is combined with 5 class periods which also have letter-designations (periods A-E). How the students keep track of that is beyond me. High school students are required to be in class for 990 hours during the 180-day school year. This is 5.5 hours of daily class time, combined with a minimum of 15 hours of homework each week (or 3 hours a night -- I assume they don't include Saturdays and Sundays).

 

Dick Baldwin's Alice site is here: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/alice/Alice0920.htm

 

One of my boys also loves Age of Empires.

 

 

 

I'll have to check into Alice--I want my son to get off YouTube this summer (actually, he alternates with Age of Empires, which I encourage...) I'm surprised that 1.25 credits = 5 hours/week, because that's what we were planning to do for English and History...I wonder if this is typical of other, more experienced highschool homeschoolers' experiences? (I'm going to get another cup of coffee after that sentence!)
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