HS History Credit?

[Jeanine in TX]

My dd will be in the 9th grade this year. She will be studying ancients for the third time. DD tends to work slowly, so I designed a bare bones history for her. She needs time to work on other things.

 

Please let me know if this is worth a credit. Hopefully, it will be @ 150 hours. Also, how many pages should her two papers be?

 

- Watch Teaching Company Big History DVD

- Read chapter per day of HOAW. Take notes daily.

- Cross reference dates from HOAW to National Geographic Timeline

- Watch Teaching Company Art Across the Ages DVD (ancient parts)

- Write paper for National History Day

- Write paper comparing/contrasting ancient event to current event

 

She will not write many papers in history, but she will be writing for English (literature papers and weekly 501 Writing Prompts compositions). To keep things simple, history related books like Histories by Herodotus and Plutarch's Lives are being included in English.

 

I created some multiple choice tests for each part of HOAW. This will be her first year taking history exams, so I really do not want to include essays. I may next year after she has done a year of writing with 501 Writing Prompts.

[Jeanine in TX]

Anybody?

 

This is my first high school student. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't asking too little of dd.

[ma23peas]

No worries! It is daunting at first..we just finished our 9th grade year....

 

120-180 hours of study equals 1 credit hour...some say that covering 75% of a text meets that? So, base it on hours..if your work covers that much material and you feel it covers enough of the subject matter..you're good! :)

 

Tara

[Jeanine in TX]

Thank you Tara!

 

High school lesson planning is making me nervous. Everything counts now.

[sadiegirl]

:iagree: I am feeling very overwhelmed with trying to figure out what to do with high school. I thought that we were going to incorporate some outside classes this fall and right now we are facing a potential move and so we are going to do just homeschool and I don't feel prepared. I'm reading as many hs posts as I can trying to find what to do wtih 9th and 10th graders. Too much pressure....

Thank you Tara!

 

High school lesson planning is making me nervous. Everything counts now.

[Kim in SouthGa]

If it makes you feel any better, this is more than my son did for history last year. He had a very tough literature class with lots of papers, so I went a little easy for history. We also used HoAW. He basically read a chapter and either outlined, summarized, or filled out a notebook page from History Scholar. He also read Josephus along side it, and still has to finish Tacitus Annals of Imperial Rome-he will write a WEM/WTM Great Books summary of it when he gets home from camp.

 

I am stepping it up a bit for HoMA this year (10th grade). I think what you have planned looks great.

[Julie in MN]

I think it sounds good I had these thoughts:

 

1. For my ds, watching TTC requires some sort of writing up of a summary, or take notes, or at the very least discussion. Otherwise, he enjoys it for that hour and then it's totally forgotten. He needs to "digest" it in some form or another.

 

2. For high school, I think some sort of tentative "analysis" of events should begin. Maybe you can do that in discussion, or maybe that will happen in the literature course. In 9th, the analysis will probably be a little juvenile still, but I think it's time to head past the accumulation of info and into the rhetoric stage a wee bit.

 

Julie

[Laurie4b]

I think it sounds good I had these thoughts:

 

 

2. For high school, I think some sort of tentative "analysis" of events should begin. Maybe you can do that in discussion, or maybe that will happen in the literature course. In 9th, the analysis will probably be a little juvenile still, but I think it's time to head past the accumulation of info and into the rhetoric stage a wee bit.

 

Julie

 

:iagree: I think the analysis part is critical and shouldn't be skipped in 9th. For instance, a student can compare and contrast between two different ancient cultures, be able to trace continuity/discontinuity within a culture, and to be able to show influence of one culture on another. At a minimum, this should be done in discussion, but ideally in other formats as well (charts, essays, etc.) High school is the time to take the facts already accumulated and to begin to apply higher level thinking skills.

 

I would recommend adding the movie, Guns, Germs, and Steel. Very interesting info and helps give the big picture for why civilization developed and advanced in some places but not others. You can rent it through Netflix.

[Jeanine in TX]

I love WTM. I get so many great ideas here.I am currently creating a worksheet that dd can use to help her take notes for HOAW. If I added the following questions, would this be enough for analysis:

-Compare/contrast current ruler(or civilization) with previous one in same area.

-Compare/contrast with foreign ruler(or civilization) during same time period.

 

My wording isn't the greatest. I would appreciate any suggestions for better questions.

 

For TC lectures, I plan to have dd write down important words that instructor posts on screen. She will also have to write a brief explanation of the word. To help with analysis, I may also use the discussion questions that come in the course guide.

Edited July 24, 2011 by Jeanine in TX
ETA TC lectures

[Kim in SouthGa]

Hi Jeanine

I created a notebook page for my son to use when he is reading from HoMW. It is pretty simple-3 text boxes, one for important dates, important people, important events. The other quarter of the page is labeled "Around the World" and is for other events happening now in that geographical area or during that time period but in other parts of the world-whatever catches his eye that he thinks is cool :D Once a month he will write an essay as described in WTM. The idea is to have the notebook pages handy so he can look back at them for ideas for his essay. We will also hit the coffee shop once a week, probably on Sat or Sun afternoon, and have a discussion. He will also do a research paper at the end of the year.

If it will help to see what others are doing, I can email you the syllabii that I have for HoAW and HoMW. I feel like I probably did not do enough for history for 9th, but his literature was very challenging. For 10th we are definitely stepping it up.

[LauraQ]

 

I would recommend adding the movie, Guns, Germs, and Steel.

This is also a book, and it is not at all too hard for high schoolers as it was written for laymen. I would highly recommend assigning the book as reading, and it would work as part of a Geography credit, or could be used to supplement history.

[Laurie4b]

I love WTM. I get so many great ideas here.I am currently creating a worksheet that dd can use to help her take notes for HOAW. If I added the following questions, would this be enough for analysis:

-Compare/contrast current ruler(or civilization) with previous one in same area.

-Compare/contrast with foreign ruler(or civilization) during same time period.

 

My wording isn't the greatest. I would appreciate any suggestions for better questions.

 

For TC lectures, I plan to have dd write down important words that instructor posts on screen. She will also have to write a brief explanation of the word. To help with analysis, I may also use the discussion questions that come in the course guide.

 

I think you will need to look at the material to see what is worth analyzing. I don't think you can choose one or two rote analysis questions. I'll include a few typical ones below, but I would also be encouraging your student to ask questions and do the analysis. ( In general, there will be more benefit in contrasting civilizations or aspects of civilizations than comparing and contrasting rulers. Civilization would include thinking through political structure, economy, the arts, technology, social structures, etc. You can contrast whole civilizations or aspects of civilizations. You can see how this stimulates a wider range of thinking than contrasting two rulers.)

 

At first, you will be contrasting within the same time period, because that is all you will have studied. But as you go on, you will see connections between civilizations in different time periods and those are very key connections to make. For instance, one can compare and contrast administration/bureaucracy in Chinese and Persian civilizations. There is both continuity over time and some periods of discontinuity within the same civilization.

 

So for instance: compare and contrast development of civilization along Yellow River with the development of civilization along the Fertile Crescent.

(This is a com/con within the same time period)

 

Trace the impact of Confuscianism on Chinese political structure. (This will be a continuity/discontinuity exercise within the same civilization.)

 

Compare and contrast the means of administration used to govern Han Dynasty with the system used to administer the Roman empire. (Com/con of two different eras)

 

What role did contact with nomadic peoples play in ____ society?

 

I appreciate the struggle to transition higher order thinking in home education. It really is a jump at first, but once you get the hang of it, it will seem natural. You are now looking less for mastery of facts, vocab, etc. than what your student can do with the facts-- in every subject.

 

Hope this helps. If you can pick up an older AP world history book, you'll have access to lots of analysis questions.

[Julie in MN]

This is also a book, and it is not at all too hard for high schoolers as it was written for laymen. I would highly recommend assigning the book as reading, and it would work as part of a Geography credit, or could be used to supplement history.

 

Ooooh, it took me months to slog through that book. Just to let the OP know that YMMV. Maybe it depends on how excited you get by it? It didn't resonate with me much more than a book I might write on my own theories :tongue_smilie: The person who borrowed me the book was very excited by it, though, so I think I'm in the minority here. Yet I do recall that he warned me that it took him a while to read it, too (and he's a retired Chinese VP with an advanced science degree).

 

Julie

[Mad Jenny Flint]

You may consider moving a bit more slowly through HOAW, as I don't think it has enough chapters to do one per day through the entire school year. We did about 2 or 3 chapters per week, I'm thinking...

[Jeanine in TX]

Hmm... perhaps I will just put a section on her worksheet labeled "discussions". That may be more flexible than using the same question each day. I would like her to write something down, so she has something to review later.

 

No, HOAW will not last the entire school year. For us, that is a good thing. We do a couple of activities every spring, so I would like to be done with HOAW by then. She will spend the rest of the school year writing a paper for National History Day and doing some other essays.

[EKS]

Ooooh, it took me months to slog through that book.

 

I'm assigning one chapter per week. There are 21 chapters including prologue and epilogue.