What constitutes and English credit in your homeschool?...

[twoblessings]

My dd will be starting 9th grade next year and I am trying to get some ideas on how we want to make up our English credit. Keep in mind that I am really really green :D. This is my first child to go through high school. Thanks for everything.

 

Blessings!

[Chris in VA]

We lump all lit reading and composition and grammar into one giant credit. Just one! In 9th grade, we did Omnibus 1 and added in 7 books (and took out about 7). We also did some of Rod and Staff 6, and a book on composition. Jumping to this year (11th grade), we are doing less composition because I am having a hard time grading it, so mostly English is SAT review grammar and lots of literature (20th Cent right now). Ds has read The Jungle, Heart of Darkness, Grapes of Wrath, Metamorphosis, The Great Gatsby, The Hiding Place, Parallel Journeys and now is finishing The Old Man and the Sea. He will probably do 3 plays, and at least 5 more novels before the end of the year. We did work a bit in Wordsmith Craftsman and Jensen's Format Writing, but I have yet to really teach him that part of English. It's frustrating--I wish we could afford a tutor. Anyway, you have to figure out what you want to accomplish. I think it's important to do a lot of writing, just have let the ball drop here.

Mine is certainly not the only way. Some look at it in terms of hours--120-180 hours per credit.

[MaryM]

Just like Chris, we do one credit for lit, comp, grammar. But in HS we do little if any grammar and vocab is just three days a week plus word of the day online. It's the lit readings, discussions and writings coupled with extra comp learning that constitutes the main chunk. Good luck with your planning!

 

Mary

[cat in black]

We pulled books from the reading list for 9th grade from the 9th grade chapter for WTM. We did Abeka grammar workbook for that year and I made up a writing assignment each week from our literature selection. My son worked independently and met deadlines assigned at the beginning of each week. I tried to assign at least 30 minutes of reading in the lit selection and a couple of pages out of the grammar worktext each day. Writing assignments were due on Friday. He ended up spending about an hour a day on English. More on Thursdays if he left the writing assignment until the last minute.

[Michelle in GA]

Grammar

Vocabulary

Writing

Literature

 

 

These are all included in what I call, "English I,II,II & IV" on a transcript.

[Quiver0f10]

Grammar

Vocabulary

Writing

Literature

 

These are all included in what I call, "English I,II,II & IV" on a transcript.

 

Same here.

[mcconnellboys]

For my older son, I actually ended up issuing two credits - one in "English" and one in "Literature". I did this because we covered so very many books in literature during the course of the year. If we had done less, I would have issued only one credit.

 

The number of hours that various schools across the country use for purposes of issuing credits varies widely, from about 100 to as much as 180. When I added up the time assigned for my son's grammar/vocab/writing, it exceeded 180 hours for the school year. Likewise, his reading time for literature also greatly exceeded this amount of time. That's another reason I chose to issue two credits as opposed to one.

 

I really do think that it's a good idea when doing high school level work to just keep a diary of what work is being done, such as:

 

8:00 a.m - 8:30 worked in grammar workbook pgs 8-10; 8:30 - 9:00 watched news programming; 9-10 did ch. 10 algebra problems, etc.

 

This will allow you to go back and add up the amount of work you did for each subject area and see just how much you got accomplished during the course of a school year. It's amazing how quickly it adds up.

 

For what we actually did (and we started high school level work when he was still middle school in age):

 

He completed Abeka's Grammar and Comp I; completed Vocab from Classical Roots A and B; completed Writing Strands 7; and was in a once weekly, year long English class that covered elements of grammar, did some literature studies, and did a thorough amount of writing. My grades comported with his outside English grade, so I felt comfortable that I graded accurately (in writing and lit study - the other things were straightforward). He got a little taste of Dickens through a coop discussion group, reading some of Bleak House. He completed reading of about 125 lit books that year related to our history study (so lots of historical fiction). We discussed many of these books and he wrote some reports of various sorts related to others.

 

For his second year of "English" work, we did a very similar thing:

 

He completed Abeka's Grammar and Comp II; completed Vocab from Classical Roots C and half of D (the pace picks up in this book with more exercises, etc.); worked in the Writing Strands Writing Fiction book. Again, he had the same instructor for another outside English class for the year. This year, they worked more on library skills, lit study, poetry and writing. He also had some fiction writing practice with a coop group and did a very thorough study of a translation of The Iliad. He entered a poetry contest during this year, too.

 

Again, our times invested in study of these subjects were such that I felt well entitled to issue two separate credits for literature and English. Again, he completed about 125 books at home. This time, we diverged quite a bit from historical fiction, to cover lots of modern works. I think we covered a lot of the mystery genre during this year. We were also able to watch movies made from some of these stories, hear radio broadcasts, etc. and discuss how some of the seminal works (All Quiet on the Western Front; War of the Worlds) impacted folks who were first exposed to them. Since we were studying modern history, beginning to talk about the use of propaganda was very useful.

 

For his third year of high school level English study, I had him finish book D of Vocab and do book E. He also worked in Abeka's Grammar and Comp III. But his primary coursework was a dual credit college course through Indiana University covering Greek Mythology. This course covered both lit study and writing very well, I thought, so I did not attempt to do any extra writing with him at home. I only issued a single credit for this year, but it was for the dual credit course.

 

Inge Cannon, in her high school boot camp courses, says that completion of a high school level coursebook constitutes completetion of that course work and merits a credit - no matter the amount of time it takes to do this.

 

She also says that if you're doing your own course and not using a high school level coursebook, you can still glean the topic index from a high school or college level book and make certain that you're covering all those subject areas, so in other words, you're borrowing a course outline instead of making your own. I would argue that you are certainly capable of making your own, but some schools don't seem to understand that we, as parents, are capable of anything, so I guess using an "official" index/outline from a "published" book might lend credence to your programming.

 

Another alternative which Mrs. Cannon told us about was keeping track of hours and granting credit when a certain number had been completed. I think Cafi Cohen talks specifically about the diary method in her books on highschooling (Mrs. Cannon does not write books, but has tapes available).

 

Regena

[Kris]

For my older son, I actually ended up issuing two credits - one in "English" and one in "Literature". I did this because we covered so very many books in literature during the course of the year. If we had done less, I would have issued only one credit.

 

Hi, Regena --

 

We are doing this, too. I tried lumping it all into one, but he's doing *so* much work, I think he should get credit for that.

 

My son didn't get a lot of (if any -- it's looking like there wasn't any at all) grammar, etc., in PS, so we're doing quite a bit of the "mechanics" in 9th grade -- enough to earn one credit. So the lit work, and the writing and analysis that goes with it, are a separate credit. I'm calling one "English Comp" and the other "English Lit."

 

I'm not sure, but I think I got this idea from TWTM in the transcript section.

[StaceyL in Canada]

...how you go about "doing lit" with your high school age students? You'd think I'd know all about this, having taught English in university, but noooo! My efforts with my first high school son were disastrous, as he could not see the point of analysing books. For gr 10, I taught LL form LOTR in a co-op class, and that's the only lit year that went well for him. Last year, after fumbling around with a few novels (and having some success with The Old Man and the Sea and Animal Farm), I finally had him use the poetry study from Progeny Press,with which he did quite well (and which I liked). In retrospect, I probably should have used more lit guides with him.

 

Now I'm dealing with high school son #2 (gr 10) and we've been trying (trying!) to get through some Shakespeare using Brightest Heaven of Invention. That just seems to be falling flat with him. Last year I did try Lightning Lit Middle Ages, but did not care for the assignments. I just cannot seem to get a handle on how to cover lit with my own children. I keep wishing I could be that fly on the wall watching other WTMers conduct "lit study" with their kids so I could see how they do it. Do you, as the teaching parent, read the text being studied ad well as some background and/ or analysis (such as SparkNotes), and then ask your child questions? (If so, how do you make time for all that?) Or do you ask your child to tell you what he/ she thought on a given aspect of the book? Or....? In a group/ class, I seem to do well, but one on one never seems to work. Help!:eek:

[mcconnellboys]

Yes, it might be in there, too, LOL. I've talked to so many people about it and read so much, I can't recall all the places I've heard these things.... I think Cafi Cohen might also suggest that.

 

The bottom line is that as homeschoolers, we can cover a LOT more ground than they do in regular school and our kids should get credit for it. When I juxtapose what my son is doing in an Honors American Lit course in private school this year against what he did at home - it's a cakewalk. They do nothing compared to what we covered. (And he recognizes it, too....) There's no grammar and so little writing that I'm afraid he's going to lose his writing skills before college! (Become slower in reading, too.... since they read so little....)

 

Regena

 

Regena

[MelodyInTx]

WOW Stacey you taught college English. Maybe we all need to pick your brain a little bit. :D I would love hear your college stories.

 

As to the question at hand, we include Grammar, Literature, Vocab and Writing as one HS credit for English.

 

Just to break that down further, this year:

 

Grammar - Daily Grams, HS version. For those who have used Daily Grams we know that each day the student is given a gram, that has 5-7 grammar tasks such as: fixing capitals, sentence combining, sentence correction etc.

In addition to this, on each gram, I added 2 additional sentence completions, analogies or additional practice questions courtesy of collegeboard.com, The Official SAT Study Guide or the 10 Real SATs book.

Last year we did Abeka Grammar, so this is a 'keep the skills alive' year, so to speak.

 

Literature - Lightning Literature, plus additional reads and study quides. For example the twins did not want to read Moby Dick, so I took that out and replaced it with 'The Crucible' and 'The Great Gatsby.' We used study guides from Glencoe, Sparksnotes and various English teachers websites.

 

I must say if you have not searched the internet for high school English Teachers or college professor's websites, consider doing so. They are a wealth of information. I have found several to where the instructor has study guides, grammar, vocab and quizzes available.

Try this one:

http://www.argo217.k12.il.us/departs/english/blettiere/index.htm

 

 

Vocab - VFCR book E. We do a section a week, so I needed to fill the other half of the year. For this we are using AP Vocab from layingthefoundation.org. From this site we are using the vocab from the books we were reading, such as 'Huck Finn' and 'The Crucible,' but then I also used the SAT vocab.

 

Writing - I generally assign a paper to be due once a week or at least once every 2 weeks. They also have a journal. This we use for in class in promtu writings or prompts.

HTH

[twoblessings]

Stacey, I am having this same problem. I am not sure how to do lit w/my dd. For Literature, do you read, discuss and write about the book, or just read and discuss. Maybe either way is fine. I just dont know. I am not sure if some writing needs to be going on that ties in with the book they have read. Can we call it good if we read and discuss as long as composition is taking place in other areas of our homeschool? Hopefully some of these wise ladies can help us figure this out.

 

thanks!

[Susan in IL]

Third it.

[Beth in TN]

I'm in the process of planning for high school. I decided that an English credit would include:

 

Grammar

Composition

Literature

Vocabulary (from literature)

Speech

 

I've tried to make this year (8th grade) as much like high school for my dd14 as possible so that the transition would be less for her. Unfortantely we have just begun to get into analysing the elements of the literature she is reading. I'm using Teaching the Classics to assist me. We have always discussed the books we read, but usually not very "deep".

[Cynde]

Like others, we do what I call English I, II, III, IV. Then I add to the title depending on what we studied in literature. Our years have looked like this: English I: Ancient Literture, English II: American Literature, English III: 20th Century World Literature, and English IV: British Literature. There are many correct ways, groupings, and sequences to study literature; this was just ours.

 

Each year except our senior year has included: literature, composition, grammar, and vocabulary. In our senior year, I no longer require vocabulary because our SATs are done and we've made it through all the Vocabulary from Classical Roots books and Vocabulary for the College-Bound Student at the end of 11th grade. I also didn't do formal composition because our dc are taking College Composition at the community college in 12th grade. They still write papers for other classes of mine at home.

 

Every year for English our dc put in much more time than the required hours for one credit which is generally considered 120-180 hours. Based on these guidelines for hours, I could easily give two credits in English every year. However, I've opted to only give one credit because I didn't want them to have too many credits (this would put them at 32) and make their transcript look suspicious. For the colleges our ds has applied to, I've had to submit a course description/curriculum list, so the colleges can see that our ds has had a solid program anyway.

 

Hope that helps. As you can see, there are lots of ways for us all to basically get to the same point.

 

Have fun and good luck with your high school adventure!

[Michelle in MO]

We do Abeka for Grammar & Composition; that takes approximately 30 minutes per day (this is for my 10th grade dd). We also do two vocabulary books a year---Vocabulary from the Classical Roots in the fall, and Wordly Wise in the spring. We're also doing four writing tutorials this year, which are fairly time-intensive in and of themselves: two with Cindy Marsch (Beginning and Intermediate Progymnasmata--two sessions of the latter). Plus, we're doing Omnibus for literature---not all of the books, but most of them. I think in any English class in h.s. they'd be lucky if they covered more than 4 or 5 per semester.

 

So, under English II (for this year---10th grade) I'm giving my oldest one credit for: Abeka Grammar & Composition, the two vocabulary books, and the four writing tutorials. I may possibly even give her a separate Composition credit, depending on how the hours look.

 

I'll award another full credit for literature. She's worked really hard this year, and her test scores show that her comprehension of grammar and all things verbal is very high. So, I'm giving at least two credits for English----English I and Literature, and possibly a third for Composition. She has almost 280 hours logged so far for all of the above, and will probably top 350-400 by the time the year is over.

 

HTH!

[twoblessings]

It has given me some things to think about.

 

Blessings!