Teaching histor and science different semesters?

[Rosyl]

This post pertains to my rising 7th grader.

 

I am tossing the idea of teaching/scheduling science for 18 weeks (FALL semester) and History for 18 weeks (winter/spring). The reason i want to do this is time oriented. I have 3 other dc I need to teach, 2 to teach phonics, reading and writing--very time consuming. I am trying to keep school simple and for us all to be single-minded when going about our work.

 

 

I plan to have him spend 60-90 minutes per day, 4 days a week(M-Th) and test on Friday. I will need to get through 2 chapters (36 total chapters) a week for science and 1 chapter for history(18 chapters). Does this sound about right? My goal is to have my 7th grader do this on his own, but I still need to be available occasionally and he is notoriously needy.

 

This is out of my comfort zone, which is why I am posting;). Have you done this and how did it work for you? Is it cramming info? Or is more info retained doing the schedule this way?

[Rosyl]

:lurk5:

[prairiegirl]

Lynn, I haven't done this in semesters but I do history and science in blocks of one month periods. This year for Gr. 7, we will be adding literature to this block sequence as well. So we do history for one month daily then we do Science for the next month, etc. We have done this for the last two years and my dd enjoys it much better this way rather than history and science two times a week. She is able to immerse herself and fully focus on this subject for a lenthy period of time. We will be using this schedule for Gr. 7 & 8 and then we will re-evaluate for high school.

[elegantlion]

We were going to do that this year and life happened. We had an extremely chaotic year and NEVER got to our scheduled science.

 

A few things to keep in mind:

 

1. if anything throws off your schedule how will you proceed? Finish over the summer?

 

2. How does your ds work on his own? 7th grade is a notorious time for puberty brain. My ds was doing good to remember his name on some days. Do you have play in your schedule in case of off days? Will you be available to prompt and answer questions when necessary.

 

As pp suggested, maybe don't lump it all into semesters. One year we switched history and science on a weekly basis, it worked great. If you did once a month it would give you more leeway at the end of the year.